4. DON'T buy anything from a spammer. Search and find a substitute elsewhere.

5. DO read privacy policies of every site that you give personal information to. These documents are on every responsible organization's website, and pages tell you what they will do with your personal information.

6. DO realize that you may have okay'd spam - perhaps you provided your email address to a company that stated in its privacy policy that it will provide your information "to affiliated sites"... this means that if they affiliate with 10,000 sites, then you may get 10,000 or more 'opt-in' junk emails. More responible or ethical of companies will let you decide, or inform you of other options. However, as noted at FTC forum and elsewhere, this creates a loophole - claimed by bulk emailers as legal - for using your address for just about any purpose. Millions of people have wanted to win contests or prizes, and given their email addresses, only in many cases to find out that they won a ride on "Wheel of Spam Carousel"

7. DO get a disposable or extra email account to give to "suspicious" sites (even if they have a privacy policy that you like).

8. DON'T get too crazy or upset about all of junk - you have better uses for your energy and talents! Also, calling spammer-provided toll-free numbers (in U.S. at least) can reveal your telephone number - even if you block caller id.

9. DO be prepared to spend money, time, or both in order to achieve a slimmer email in-box. There are products and services that can help, some free, but they all take time to understand and use effectively.

10. DO stay informed - technology, laws, and tricks are evolving. Locations of online resources are provided in many places, and there are a continuing stream of articles in news.

Copyright 2003 Esu Matra

2. Replace your "mailto:" link with an IMAGE of your email address. To see an example go to http://www.pcpages.com rafficy/links.html Feel free to examine HTML code of page by right- clicking anywhere in window and then scrolling to "View source" in drop-down menu. Instead of my email address you (and Uncle Spam Bot as well!) will only see a link to "emaddress.gif". In this case additional security brings about some inconvenience - address is not "clickable" and thus one has to memorize it or write it down. This slight disadvantage is circumvented in next approach.

3. Replace several REAL characters in your email address with so-called SPECIAL characters. These special characters always begin with "&" and end with ";". Whatever is in between determines how browser will interpret that particular special character. For example, typing "&" "#" "6" "4" ";" (without quotation marks and spaces) is equivalent to using real character "@".

If you are skeptical that this replacement alone is enough to fool Spam Bot (that, by way, makes two of us) - proceed with replacing other characters in your email address. Here is your cheat-sheet to substitute all vowels: a=#97, e=#101, i=#105, o=#111 and u=#117. Remember to start every special character with "&" and end with ";". You can see how it works by going to http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/links.html

My human visitors can see and click on my email address by using "Click here to get my email address" link. When viewing code of little window, you will not find address in an explicit form - just a long string of special characters with some letters in between. This (hopefully!) is enough to confuse Spam Bots visiting my site.

We will never be able to totally eliminate SPAM that seems to come with cyberspace "territory". Yet I should feel just a little better if above suggestions at least partially shield your inbox from unwelcome (and often very badly phrased) offers to consolidate debts you don't have or safely enlarge a part of your body that... well, you do not have either.

Copyright (C) by Irina 2003.

=========================================================== About Author: Irina helps people save on healthcare and create steady stream of residual income working from home http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ http://www.megaone.com/hbb/makemoney/ ===========================================================