by Matt Gadfield

Created on: June 10, 2008

Unwanted email, popularly known as spam, is beginning to strangle the internet. Analysts have suggested that well over 50% of email traffic is unsolicited mail, ranging from advertisments by companies that you have had legitimate dealings with to the never-ending stream of advance fee frauds and quack "remedies" for feelings of inadequacy.

It is almost impossible to completely stop all spam, however there are a few measures which will help cut down the amount of junk you need to wade through to find the real messages. To begin, consider your email address. If you are setting up a new account then pay close attention to the name you use. In my experience addresses with a conventional name attract far more spam than addresses which use the name of your favourite ship or aircraft. While your friends may be slightly baffled by "Mauritania@yourisp.com" it is likely to attract less attention from the scammers and spammers than "JohnBloggs@yourisp.com".

Once you have your shiny new email address, be very careful about who gets hold of it. Registering for websites which have a dubious sense of privacy, for example, could put your address straight on the spam lists. With any website, even well respected and ethical ones, you should as a matter of course tick any boxes to opt out of receiving marketing messages. It is worth reading the small print, as some companies will offer you the chance to opt in, while others offer the chance to opt out. At base, you need to tell them that you will not accept your details being passed to other parties and that you only wish to receive essential information from them such as order confirmations.

Do not post your email address on a public forum or website. Automated search programs crawl the internet picking up such data and passing it to spammers. Likewise, if you join a forum that requires your email address you should be careful to adjust the privacy options so that your address is not visible to other users. There is usually a private message service on the forum if other members have a legitimate need to contact you off the board.

Many email providers offer a spam filter service, which can be tailored to your particular requirements. The problem with these can be that they are sometimes over-zealous and flag genuine messages as spam, so you will have to check your spam folder on a regular basis in case anything has been filed there by mistake. That said, the programs used are improving dramatically and there is usually the option

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