Spam in Your Inbox
Do you ever wonder how spammers get your email address in the first place? Besides getting your address from an infected computer, most of the time, you gave them the address! Now I know you didn't intend to give it to them, but more than likely you did!
You could have given it to them by filling out a form on a website. You know, those websites that make you register so you can login to see the content. A lot of news sites do this. They promise they won't sell your email address, but way down on their 'Privacy Policy' page a lot of them do say they will give it to their 'Partners'. Nowhere does it say what their 'Partners' will do with your email address! Spammers pay big bucks for email address lists!
You could have given it to them by signing up for 'freebies'. Everyone likes free stuff! Free screensavers, free computer wall paper, etc. By now you should have learned that there really isn't very much 'free' stuff. If you have to register on the site to get the 'free' stuff, guess what will happen to your email address! (This is sorta like the ploy used by people who signed up to win a free car, trip, etc., only to find they had agreed to switch their long distance carrier!)
You could have given it to them by sending a joke to someone. How would that do it? Well, picture this! I send you a joke you think is really funny and you forward it to two of your friends. You don't remove my email address first before you forward and you don't use BCC for the forward, just the TO. Both of your friends think the joke is funny and each of them forwards the joke to two more friends and they don't remove your email address or my email address and they don't use the BCC, just the TO. This scenario keeps going on and on indefinitely, with some of the senders sending the joke to five, six or a lot more email addresses. Sooner or later, a spammer gets this joke. The spammer uses a 'harvester' to get all of the email addresses and now everyone who sent the joke on it's merry way starts to get all that unwanted junk in their inboxes.
What is in your control is whether or not you use your main email address to fill out forms on the web. There are hundreds of places to sign up for free email addresses. There is Hotmail, Yahoo mail and Google's Gmail, just to name a few. I have several 'throw-away' email addresses to use for this kind of use. I just log into the 'throw-away email account occasionally and delete all the junk. I use the throw-away along with a fictitious profile if I really, really want some of that 'free' stuff. (I never want it any more; it's usually full of spyware!)
If your main email address is already compromised, get a new email address! Most ISPs allow you to have more than one email account. Use something for your email address that has both letters and numbers to keep the spammers from using a 'dictionary attack' and finding your email address.
Learn how to 'forward' a joke or other information by using BCC and deleting all of the email addresses that are in the email. You can highlight and delete all of the unwanted information, or you can just copy the part you want to send and paste it all into a new, blank email.
I don't get much spam since I started using these tactics. I don't even get much spam from the email address on my website as I use code so that spam harvester can't read the address.