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addresses, one for work, and one for everything else. MSN, Yahoo, and many other websites let you create email addresses for free. Use the Yahoo or other public email address for anything that is not work related. If you never use your work email address at public websites, you will greatly reduce the risk of getting spam.

Ideally, create two or three of these public addresses. Use one at sites or for people that you really want to get email from, and you trust the site or person. The second, use for sites where you probably want their email, but don't necessarily trust them not to sell it. Third, is an address you use when you don't want anything from the company, and never plan on reading it if they send it. This third address, you never even go to. It can fill up with spam for all you care. The second address gets a lot of spam, but you still look at it occasionally and clean it out looking for legitimate mail. The main public address you clean daily and am very careful about when and where you use it.

As for robots that scan websites farming email addresses, they can be stopped but with more difficulty. What these programs are doing is looking for something that looks like an email address, so you have to make the email address look like something else. One way to accomplish this is to simply explain on the site how email addresses are created, if there is a standard form. For instance, state at the top of the page that all email addresses at this company are first name, last initial, followed by @company.com. Then you need only supply a list of names and a human can determine your email address where a machine cannot.

Another lesser-used method is to change the address so that even if it is harvested, it is useless. For instance, use the word at instead of @, or add a space in the address. Humans can figure it out, but machines can't.

The bottom line in all this is, protect your email address. The more you use it and give it out, the more spam you will get.

Okay, you've done the best you can, but you still get spam. What can you do? First, let's look at what not to do. Don't reply to spam. Iit's tempting to hit the reply button and type in some vulgar reply, but all you are doing is validating that they have reached a legitimate address. This will only flag your address for more spam.

The same goes for clicking on any link in the email, including something that will allegedly let you opt out of future emails. Think about it. If the company were that legitimate,

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