2. Write your email like this - username (at the) domainname.com or net, or edu, whatever it may be.

3. Use a web form. Those who genuinely want to contact you will fill form with their details and get in touch with you. So you know who is contacting you.

4. Never reply to a spam email. Many advise that replying to a spam email confirms your email address to spammer.

5. While leaving your email address for filling up a form to get more information please check with their privacy policy, to ensure that they won't misuse your email for any other purpose, other than one you've requested.

6. Make use of your email provider's filtering facility to reduce spam.

Be aware that there are some people, who hate spam with such a passion, they actually get software that parses a message and automatically sends a complaint to every email address and domain it finds.

Someone had published an article I had written, and since it included my domain name, a complaint was fired off. That is simply not fair. I didn't send email, it wasn't sent from my account, but I received a warning. The retard who did that apparently doesn't care who they hurt in pursuit of their "holy grail".

But perceived spam is only a very small part of real problem. I don't mind getting an unsolicited email from a real person. I can always ask them to remove me, and they normally do. A real problem is spammer who forges an email address, and if you try to respond, your message is returned as undeliverable.

Some ISP's have identified domains spammers use and it is automatically deleted, so you never see it. In order to combat this, spammers send it out their scams with a stolen email address that actually exists. I recently received over 6,500 remove requests from people who had received an ad for a sex site, sent out with my return email address someone had used. This is rather a simple matter, and headers in email clearly show it didn't come from me. However, inexperienced would lay blame squarely on my shoulders. This is identity theft and perpetrators should be severely punished.

You are especially at risk to a hack attack if you have either a DSL or Cable connection, as you are always connected when your computer is on. Someone could break into your computer and spam to their hearts content using your account. We have our computers networked together, and it requires a password to access files. While that will protect us from majority of attacks, a determined effort could gain access.

The best protection average person can use is a "firewall" which prevents people from accessing their computer. Search engines will quickly reveal where they can be obtained.

Now if we could only get hackers to concentrate on spammers, maybe this entire problem would go away.