Spam is one of the worst things about using the Internet. Nearly everyone who uses email has to deal with some amount of spam each and every day. It wastes our time, our bandwidth and increases our stress. Thankfully, there are also many ways we can drastically lessen the amount of spam we receive. Here are some tips:

Filters

This may seem obvious, but many people don't bother to use simple filters built in to their email programs. While a simple filter for "something" won't stop every spam about "something", it will help to lessen it, especially if you get many duplicate emails on the same subject. Read your manual about setting up spam filters, you'll be glad you did.

Free Email

Using any of the big free email services, like Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail, you'll receive dozens or hundreds of spams a day, even if you've never given your email out to anyone! Luckily, these free email services also have some of the best spam filters. Yahoo, for instance, puts suspicious email into a "Bulk Mail" folder, where you can still access it. Gmail uses a "Spam" folder. Both do a good job of keeping unwanted email out of your main inbox. However, Gmail seems to do the best job overall with few spams making it into your inbox. All in all, using a free email service is a good way to reduce the spam you receive, especially if you're used to using Outlook or AOL.

Disposable Email Addresses

Another way to reduce spam is to use a different, disposable email address when you sign up for different services or websites. For instance, if you sign up to access a news site, which requires registration, you can sign up with a disposable email address so you can validate the account and then discard it. This way you don't need to worry about them adding you to some other mailing list or getting their daily newsletters.

Be Guarded

When you sign up for an email address, give it only to the people you know you want to receive email from. Don't post your email in public places, like message boards or blogs. Most importantly, don't post your email to your website in any way. Spammers have software that crawls the web looking for emails to add to their lists. If you have posted an email contact link on your website, presumably so that people can contact you about the website, you are inviting spam! Don't do it. This is one of the top ways people get on spam lists.

Change Your Email

Don't hesitate to dump your email address if you find it's overrun with spam. You can sign up for a new one at any of the free email providers if needed. Just make sure to save your address book and/or any emails first, and make sure to notify your contacts of your new address.

Use Several Email Addresses

One excellent way to keep your inbox clear and organized, is to use a different email address for different applications. For instance, if you like to sign up for free newsletters on various subjects, sign up for them with one email address. Then you can login to read just those newsletters. Likewise if you like to enter contests, sign up for free samples or free games, use one email address specifically for this. Then use another address for your personal emails. This keeps everything neat and organized as well as helps keep spam at bay.