Spam. Those annoying, time-consuming emails that clog your Inbox and ruin your day. You wonder: How did it ever get so bad? While it's not possible to completely eliminate spam, there are a few things you CAN do about the problem.


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To view this and other helpful articles on search engine optimization, internet marketing and development available both in audio and video format please visit www.site-referrence.com. How to stop spam by caring green streets, for more information visit her website at www.passionforbusiness.com. Spam, those annoying time consuming emails that clog your inbox and ruin your day. You wonder to yourself how did that every get so bad? Well it is not possible to completely eliminate spam there are quite a few things you can do about the problem to reduce your burden. Spam is defined as an solicited email trying to get to you to buy something in addition, it is emailed and tries to get you to give up something like your credit card number, social security number, login ID et cetera by pretending to be a legitimate email. Here are some tips for stopping the current spam you are getting and avoiding in getting on new spam list. Number one, maintain two email addresses, a personal email address that you give to family, friends and business associates and a safe email address that you give when ever you are ordering something online. Signing up for an email news letter or creating a profile on a website. Hotmail has a great anti-spam filter built it so it is easy to see what spam and what is not. Number two, use your safe email address to send emails to companies who might be harvesting email addresses from incoming emails. For example, so you want to write a company to ask them about their products, some companies will harvest your email addresses from the email you send them and put you on a mailing list. By using your safe email address you can avoid seeing messages from these companies come to your personal email address. Number three, stop giving your email address to everyone who wants it, does your local bank really need your email address? Does your grocery store need it? Just because somebody asked for it does not mean you have to give it to them. Always ask yourself, do I want to be contacted by this company via email? Number four, do not put your personal email address on your website instead, use a form so that your email address is hidden. However, some spammers use special software that looks at the HTML code hidden in the form to steal your email address. So using a form by itself is not always the safest route. Better yet, use a free form processor so that your email address is never even in the HTML coding on your pages. Number five, never buy anything that sender spam email, first it just encourages them to continue to spam and second it tells them that your email address is accurate and they can sell that address to somebody else. Number 6, never reply to a spam to asked to be unsubscribed, ignore it anyway and it tells them that your email address is accurate which just keeps you on the list. Now, keep in mind many legitimate email newsletters and mailing list use automated unsubscribed links at the bottom of their emails and you can use this to get off their mailing list. Number 7, use anti-spam software like Norton Internet Security on your own PC to filter spam as it comes in to your email system. You still receive spam but it gets filtered to a junk mail or bulk mail folder and segregates the spam from legitimate email. Most anti-spam filters need to be trained however, so you will have to occasionally tell the filter that something is not spam that is and avertedly put in to your junk mail folder. Number 8, check to see if your ISP or hosting company has anti-spam technology in place to catch spam before it even hits your inbox. Be careful though, because sometimes these filters are over zealous and you have to train it to accept emails from mailing list that you have subscribed to. Number nine, do not use a catch all email address. A catch all email address is set up if you have your own website and it is intended to catch all of the incoming emails sent to your domain if there is not legitimate mailbox by that name. Spammers know about catch all email addresses and will take your domain name and add common prefixes to it like info or admin. If you have a catch all then those spamming emails will come to you even if you do not have legitimate mailbox of info@mydomain.com or admin@mydomain.com set up with your hosting company and you can see how easy it is this way for spammers to get to you. Number 10, finally if spam is really bad, create a new personal email address for yourself and tell everyone about the new address. Give them several reminders that you are changing your email address et cetera then delete the old personal email address. This may seem a little dramatic but if you received 200 spam emails a day it might be time to do this final step to eradicate it. You are not powerless against spam but you do have to take action to fight back. Do not let them bully you into accepting 100 of unwanted emails a day, take action now and reclaim your inbox. This article was written by Karen Green Street, for more information visit her website at www.passionforbusiness.com. To view this and other helpful article on search engine optimization, internet marketing and development available both in audio and video format please visit www.site-reference.com.