But lately it's got out of control. Over half of my email is now spam, and it's growing by week.

Spam is now such a problem that I know people who have had to close down their domain name. This article offers some tips on how to avoid being buried under a mountain of spam.

--------------------------------------------- How Do They Get Your Address? ---------------------------------------------

In old days, spammers got their addresses mainly from Newsgroups - if you didn't post to Newsgroups, you were reasonably safe. But they're now using a much more efficient method to build their lists - email harvesters.

Email harvesters are robots that roam Internet collecting email addresses from web pages. Examples are EmailSiphon, Cherry Picker, Web Weasel, Web Bandit and Email Wolf, to name just a few.

How can you protect yourself from email harvesters?

By 'munging' (mung = 'mash until no good') or cloaking your email address.

There are many ways of munging your address - easiest technique is to use HTML code for punctuation in your email address (instead of symbols).

For colon after mailto use : and for @ symbol use @ and for period use .

With this method, my email address would become: mailto:msouthon@freezineweb.com

Your email address will appear exactly as it did before, and it will still be 'clickable', but email harvesters will ignore it and move on.

There are also JavaScript's that you can insert into your web page that will make your email address visible to humans but invisible to harvesting programs. Here's one that works very well: http://pointlessprocess.com/JavaScripts/anti-spam.htm

---------------------------- How To Fight Spam ----------------------------

The most important thing is never, ever, reply to spam.

Most spam contains an innocent-looking 'remove me' email address. Do not use it. Here's why:

Spammers typically buy a CD containing a million or so email addresses, but they have no idea how many of those addresses are active. So before beginning their marketing campaign in earnest, they send out a 'test message' to entire list.

The test message contains an email address for removing yourself. When you reply to that address, it confirms to spammer that your address is active and therefore worth spamming.

Worse still, spammer may be distilling from that CD a list of confirmed active addresses that he will then sell to another spammer.

The key to dealing with spam is to report it to a 3rd party: (1) affiliate program that spammer is advertising, (2) spammer's web host, or (3) ISP spammer used to connect to Internet.

When you report spam to a 3rd party, remember to be polite - they didn't send spam and they're probably just as anti-spam as you are.

(1) Reporting to Affiliate Programs

Many spammers are affiliates advertising someone else's products or services. So look for a website address that contains an affiliate link, something like this: www.affiliateprogramdomain/841526

Then just send an email to affiliate program (abuse@affiliateprogramdomain.com), informing them that you are receiving spam from one of their affiliates.

Most affiliate programs have zero tolerance for spamming and will remove an affiliate spammer without warning.

Spam is such a hot issue and no one knows "right" view of spam that fits everyone. You either: - will take all measures to prevent people from sending it to you - don't mind it at all and happily delete, delete, delete every day - OR hate it sometimes and ignore it other times.

I think I fall in last category, which is what started me thinking about good and bad spam. My point of view has now developed into this:

BAD Spam- -It is bad spam when you reply to it to be removed and it is returned to you because address is made up. -It is bad spam when removal link does not open a real url. -It is bad spam when you paste message source into Spam Cop and info you get back before clicking "Send spam report" shows tons of dead ends and made up domains, etc.

This means that this "Cowardly Lion" harvested your address, and went to great lengths to cover their tracks in order not to get caught sending spam.

GOOD Spam- -It is good spam when there is an actual person on other end, apologizing for inconveniencing you.

What made it good spam? Because here is spam that you most likely will not get again, because it is more legit then bad spam. These people are not out to break any rules, upset anyone, or ruin your day. 9 times out of 10 they really don't know any better and will learn, very quickly I might add.