Email is rapidly becoming the standard means of communication among businesses, associates, and even friends. While many people have now been using the internet and email for years, there are thousands of new users on the internet each day. With inexpensive web hosting, free email services, and the blog burst upon us, getting your own slice of the internet pie has never been easier.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking for a refresher course, or you’re new to the internet and email and want to start off right, here are some easy steps to follow to reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Don’t choose an obvious email address. Spammers will generate lists of email addresses based on common names. A common list would be something like: nick@yahoo.com, nick1@yahoo.com, nick2@yahoo.com, etc. If you create an email account with less obvious combinations of your name plus some numbers, chances are better that you won’t find your way onto one of these lists.


Treat your personal email address with care. Only give out your personal email address to close friends and family who you trust. Give your direct business email only to clients and other contacts you trust to only use your address for legitimate business purposes.

Use different accounts for different functions. Create different aliases with your business’s domain name or create a few free accounts from free email servers like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Excite, etc. Use one account that you don’t care about for posting to forums or discussion groups. Use another to subscribe to newsletters and newsgroups. When any of these addresses starts to get spammed too heavily, simply delete the account and switch to a different one.

Remove your email address from your website. Between blogs and cheap web space, it seems everyone has their own piece of cyberspace. Before you put a link to your email address on your site, remember that spammers have bots that harvest these addresses. They will even find addresses printed in plain text. Consider using a web-based form for communication from you website, or place your address as a gif or jpeg.

Do not open, respond to, or purchase from spam. Interacting with spam in any of these ways indicates to the spammer that not only is your address valid, it’s also active. Do not respond with “unsubscribe” in the subject line, or click on any links to remove your name out of the database, as both of these are common ploys to confirm your email address. Remember, because sending email is so inexpensive, spamming can be profitable even if only a small percentage of people purchase what they’re selling. Don’t support what you’re trying to stop.

Finally, Filter you incoming email using filtering software. Even if you guard your email address religiously, you’ll likely still receive spam. Filtering software is usually inexpensive and effective, but there are some important features to consider with any filtering package:

• Make sure you can control what comes to your inbox and what gets deleted. The best programs create a spam folder for you to review before permanently deleting emails.

• The software should block images from incoming emails. Many jpegs in spam actually hide code that notifies the spammer when the email is viewed. Blocking images will not only keep offensive content off your screen but will also help prevent more spam in the future.

• Choose software that provides you with updates - as new spamming techniques are created and proliferated, filtering software should keep up.

While eliminating spam from coming to your email address is nigh unto impossible, following these simple steps will mean you’ll have to spend less time deleting spam from your inbox, giving you more time for the important things of life – like reading this article.

How often do people loose their email data?
Is this important to backup your email client before loosing important emails?
Are you thinking it won’t happen to you?

Well, for those who use an email client and loosing their emails is one of the worst nightmares. Unfortunately this situation is quite probable.

There are several causes for this:
- Hard disk failure
- Viruses and Trojans
- Windows crashes
- Some time un-expected things


Hard Disk can fail from several reasons: logical problems like bad partitions, hardware problems caused by dropping them or something on them, or, sometimes they just stop functioning. You can use several data recovery tools like GetDataBack or Acronis, which might save your day. But you might not be able to get back any byte.

Viruses are increasing their numbers day by day. It’s hard to keep up even for the big players like Symantec or Kaspersky. They reduced the response time for a new virus, but if you are unlucky, the virus crashes your computer before you can apply the antivirus.

Well, we all know how reliable Windows is. There is no person that can say he never saw a “blue screen”. Because most of the email clients store email, account and settings data in My documents, Program files or in Windows registry. When you reinstall the operating system you loose them all. Even Microsoft CEO Bill Gates acknowledged that they counted 5 percent of total Windows based computers to crash twice every day. Here’s a small report: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/25/technology/25SOFT.html - September 1, 2005.

The best way to count those situations is to backup emails on a CD or another hard disk. People who know a little about Windows and computers can do it by hand. Outlook Express is still the most used email client.

If you want to backup Outlook Express by hand, you have to save registry keys and DBX files. Saving messages, signatures and the address book can be done within the email client, but for settings you have to search through Windows registry. It can be pretty difficult to do it for a beginner.

After a long search now I found a tool that can do this job automatically. Adolix Outlook Express Backup: http://www.adolix.com/outlook-express-backup/home.html You can use this software to backup Outlook Express, IncrediMail and some other email clients. It’s an email saver program that can backup and restore emails, addresses, folders, signatures and options.

What it cannot do is backing up Outlook Express and restoring to Pegasus Mail for instance. Synchronization can take place between different instances of the same email client.

It can be used to move emails from one computer to another. For instance if you own a laptop and a PC, you can transfer emails between them. Furthermore, you can backup Outlook Express from Windows98 and restore it to Windows XP.

Adolix Outlook Express Backup has a wizard mode for beginners, but the most experienced users can use Standard mode for more speed. It costs only $24.95 and I think worth for too much.

It’s pretty clear that anyone can loose emails. So backing up your email client is essential, but you have to decide whether to do it by hand or to purchase a tool like Adolix Outlook Express Backup.

Keeping your email organized is imperative, especially in corporate or small business settings. When you use email for business purposes, you are essentially handling customer files. Because of the importance of this for even the smallest of businesses, those files should stay as organized as possible. You wouldn't just lump all of your paper customer files into a corner would you? Most of us wouldn't, so here are some ways to keep the email files (correspondence) organized as well.

If your business email inbox is currently cluttered with hundreds of old items, set aside some time to clear it out. This first clearance may take several hours, so you may want to delegate some weekend or evening time to tackle it.

Filing Methods

Before starting the actual filing of the items, you'll need to brainstorm your organizational structure. If you do not have a solid contact management software program, I strongly suggest investing in one. My preference is GoldMine, and I'll explain why further on in this section. For now, you simply need to decide how you work, and what filing system will work best for you personally. If you need help coming up with filing and organizational ideas, here are a few popular ones:


1. Customer Name Folders – Create email folders that are named the same as your customers. All email to or from a particular customer will be filed to that customer's individual email folder.
2. Project Name Folders – If you work primarily with projects, you can create email folders that match past, existing or future project names. From there, you can file all email related to the project, regardless of who it is to or from, into the corresponding project folder.
3. Month and Year Folders – Create email folders that are named for each month and year. Then file all email sent or received in that month/year into the matching folder.
4. Print File Cabinet Mirror – Create email folders named to match your Print File Cabinet system. Then file email into the email folders in the same way that you file print papers into your hard copy system.

Once you have decided how you want to organize your email, set up the folders and then go through each and every item in your inbox. This is the part that may take hours so make sure you have set aside enough time to fully complete the job.

While you're sorting your messages, you may find several items that have not yet been addressed but need to be. Try to address these before filing them, or make a note on your calendar or to-do list. Alternatively, if your email system has the capability, you can mark them for completion later. Be aware however: If you file the messages away you are not likely to address them later unless you have something scheduled that reminds you to. So, if you can, it is better to address them now and get them out of the way.

If your email program has the ability to link messages to contacts, I strongly suggest using this feature. This is the primary reason I use the GoldMine software. With GoldMine, I can keep a running history for each and every person I come into contact with. All email messages sent or received can be filed into the history right along with the appointments, phone calls, faxes, project notes and any other correspondence I have accumulated.

By utilizing contact management software that files email according to the person whom the email is from or to, you do not have to continuously search through various email folders when trying to find a specific item.

Ongoing Habits

Now, once you have spent the initial time needed to organize your inbox, it is fairly easy to keep it organized from that point forward. It may take a bit of effort to get into the habit in the first week or two, but usually the joy of having it all cleaned out helps to motivate you into keeping it cleaned.

With the number of spam filtering solutions increasing each week it's getting tougher for consumers to make informed choices in their purchases.


There are 3 basic types of spam blocker:

1. Integrated
2. Standalone
3. Online


We'll look at each type of spam filter and at the end you should be able to decide what spam filter is right for you.


Integrated spam filters
This type of spam filtering software is the most common. Once installed it sits "on top" of your existing email software and installs a new set of buttons into your email software. In future when you collect
email you'll see options for marking email as Spam, marking the email as Not Spam, Bounce the email back to sender, etc. The description and position of these buttons varies from one product to the next but their purpose remains the same.


Most integrated spam filters automatically place suspected junk email into a separate folder on your PC for you to review or
delete later on.


The newer integrated spam filters are also "intelligent". They can basically learn the difference between what is
spam and what is not and delete the junk email you don't want.


The most popular integrated spam filters are:

iHate Spam
Spambully
Spam Inspector


Integrated spam filters are most popular amongst people who want a one click solution to collecting their personal email and filtering junk email at the same
time.


Advantages:
One click solution.


Disadvantages:
Software specific. Some work with Outlook and Outlook Express only.



Standalone spam filters
These are less common than their integarted counterparts but that doesn't make them any less useful. A standalone spam filter is basically a separate piece of software installed on your PC that you use to check your email for spam.


Standalone filters have the big advantage of being able to preview your email on the mail server before it's downloaded to your PC. This one single feature has the
huge benefit of allowing you to just download the email that you want as opposed to downloading all of your email, including the spam, and then sorting through it.


Using a standalone spam filter is a little more work simply because it's a separate piece of software that you have to run
before you open up your email software. Most standalone filters do allow you to configure them so that your standard email
application is opened once you've chosen what spam to filter. This suits some people and not others.


The most popular standalone spam filter is:

Mailwasher Pro


Advantages:
Doesn't rely on specific email applications to work properly.


Disadvantages:
Two step process. Load standalone filter and then your email application.



Online spam filters
There are really two types of online spam filters. One is for business use and one is for home use. A typical example of
a business type product is iHate Spam server edition where the software deletes junk email directly from the mail server before the end user even sees it. Large companies employ this type of technology.


Home users will be using Spam Arrest or similar. Spam Arrest offers an inventive solution to spam whereby any email sent to
the users account has a challenge request sent back to it which the sender must authenticate. The automatic junk email software used by spammers can't currently deal with this type of response.
Any failure to authenticate the challenge email results in the junk email being left to die in cyberspace. A user is authenticated with Spam Arrest only once for security just to make sure the software
doesn't become a nuisance.

The most popular online spam filter is:

Spam Arrest


Advantages:
Users are guaranteed to only receive the email that they want or requested.

Disadvantages:
Any techncial problems with the Spam Arrest server and you have no defense against spam.


Now you've seen what spam filtering options are available to you just ask yourself which one suits you most. If you're still not sure drop by www.spam-site.com and check out our product reviews - we have something for everyone.

As a veteran Internet user, I can honestly say I remember a time when HTML email was not possible. Back then RTF wasn't available either and for that matter, email programs did not even wrap lines for you or allow file attachments.

Today however, I receive a steady and annoying stream of email in all shapes, colors and sizes. Almost all promotional advertisements and many newsletters come in Html format.

Now, Spam is annoying, Spam in droves even more so, but Spam with "twirlygigs" is intolerable -- and dangerous. HTML is for websites. I visit them all the time and enjoy their various amusements. Email however, is a tool. A communications method used for getting work done. I get plenty of regular email, hundreds of pieces a day usually, due to the support, consulting and writing services I provide. If all of those emails are in HTML format then I'm stuck looking at potentially hundreds of web pages and thousands of graphics.


HTML email takes extra time to download, and for me it takes extra time to read. You see I don't trust HTML email. I've coded many websites in my day and I know that scripts can be hidden in the pages. Now when you couple that fact with the daily news about viruses and worms being sent, well that's just downright scary, so I do not allow my email program to automatically open HTML formatted email. Now I rarely use Outlook and Express (sorry Microsoft but they feel just a bit too dangerous to me now days) however I'd rather be safe than sorry no matter which email program I use. So, I have my email software configured to show all HTML messages as attachments.

Having the email converted to an attachment allows me to immediately see if there are any other files included with the message. And let me tell you, this has saved my butt time after time! I've lost count of how many times I've gotten email with the HTML attached, and malicious code, worms and viruses attached right next to it. If my email program was configured to "conveniently" display HTML as a web page, then a lot of those attached files would have opened on their own and done who knows what to my system.

So, if you receive a lot of email yourself, be careful what you allow to come in. If you run a newsletter or Email update service of any kind, please be courteous and at least ASK before sending HTML formatted email. And when you do have permission to send HTML email, don't include heavy graphics, scripts or other file attachments.

Text may not be as glamorous, but it's a heck of a lot safer and much easier for your readers to glance through.

Email marketing is labeled as a killer method when it comes to effective low-cost Internet marketing endeavors. This is because it is the most widely-used and has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites. It is used to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers.

It's as easy as writing an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and sending that to as many targeted recipients as possible. However, there's an ideal way of going about it. Email marketing is not just about writing any email that you will be sending to anybody. To clarify that, here are some simple tips in doing email marketing the best way possible.


1. Join the "Can Spam" campaign.

Email marketing is not at any rate tantamount to spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for.

2. Make your email list open it.

Your email might get lost together with the hundreds of emails that inbox owners are confronted with everyday. Improve your subject line by using extra white space creatively, adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter, asking compelling questions, not making any unbelievable claims, and not using the word FREE.

3. Keep it real.

Not including any too good to be true statements is not only applicable to your subject line. Your email content must never embody any promise your business can't keep. Make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.

4. Don't go too low.

If you inform your customers regarding discounts, minimal discounts are not that effective compared with substantial discounts. But never offer discounts that are lower than your profit. It will defeat the purpose of this email marketing effort.

5. Make it eventful.

It's not about contradicting the advice that you should keep an email short and sweet. This tip is on including seminars, conferences and other events in your email. Businesses that require training benefit much from this method. With these RSVP-requiring emails, repetition is important. Just make sure that an ample interval is considered before sending out a reminder email.

6. Post news.

Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point for this feat to be effective.

With these simple ways of going about your email marketing endeavor, your business will prosper in no time.

1. Ignore Spam Email

Do not open an unsolicited email. Spammers are just playing a numbers game. They simply send out like a million emails and hope that at least a third of them stick.

Spammers try to gather as many email addresses as they can. They don’t even know if any of the addresses are active. It is when you answer them that they know whether or not it is an active account that is checked often.


2. Do NOT Click On the Unsubscribe Links

It is natural for you to want to click on the link at the bottom of the email that promises that you can be taken off of their email list, but do not think for a second that this is what happens.

When you click on the “click here if you wish to stop receiving these emails” link, the spammers simply change the name that sends it to you. All you have proven is that you are indeed opening and reading emails.

3. Use Various Email Addresses

Since it is unavoidable to receive spam, set up a “dummy” email address. You would use this address when you register for newsletters, order products, enter contests, and register your new software.

You would like to avoid using you primary email address, or the email address that you receive from your ISP for things like that. This is the email that you would give your contacts or “safe people”.

4. Don’t Post Your Address

If you have a web site, avoid posting your email address in your “contact me” section.
Since spammers scan through web sites and look for the @ symbol, write your email address with the word “at” instead.

That makes it a bit more difficult for spammers to find your email address because they use special software that searches for the symbol, and not just the words.

5. Do Not Purchase from Spam

The absolute worst thing that you could do is buy something from spam. Just imagine how perfect the world would be if everyone gathered together to refuse to buy things that were offered in an unsolicited email. Spammers would be out of business the moment that they realized that they weren’t getting anywhere.

6. Beware of Free Trial Software

For every legitimate download, there are plenty that are designed to get your personal information, which will eventually lead you to more spam. This is particularly popular from free trial software as well as free software.

Spammers use this method in a similar manner as they would use a gift promotion and contest sign in. That is one of the most beneficial ways for spammers to get you on their hook.

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of spam tools coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just don’t work anymore.

Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.

One method used to combat spam is whitelisting. Whitelists are databases of trusted email sources. The list may contain specific email addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. Emails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the user’s email box. The list is built when users and email administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives.



It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate email senders because legitimate email can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an email to a user’s account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response emails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who don’t use such a system.

Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new email source to their whitelist, or if the domain or IP address is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate email communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.

Whitelists are not widely used by email users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of email sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

The unsolicited junk or bulk email that you receive is known as Spam. Spam is a very serious problem the people have to deal with daily. Sometimes the junk emails exceed the regular email messages that we receive in our email account. Spam filter can be a solution for you to get freedom from Spam mails. There are different types of software to keep out the Spam emails from your inbox. Spam filters can monitor the emails that come in your inbox and prevent any Spam mail from entering in to your inbox.


The Spam email that you receive is due to the inappropriate usage of mailing list. The mailing list consists of email ids of different people and all of them can be flooded with bulk or junk emails. Many companies send out the Spam email massages to a large number of people who do not ask for such massages. Spamming is considered to be very bad netiquette as it amounts in violating a person’s privacy. Netiquette demand that no email id can be used without the user’s permission.

Many Spam filters are designed to help people who are constantly bombarded with junk or bulk mails. Spam filters make use of filtering technology to filter the contents of the incoming emails. Spam filters can effectively help a person by sorting out these types of incoming emails.

Different types of Spam filters can be helpful for controlling spam. Content based Spam filter is one type that can be used by you. The filter scans the content of the email, and searches for tell tale signs for Spam in the message. Content based Spam filters have however not been very effective in controlling the bulk or the junk messages. The main reason for this being that the spammers had devised ways and means by which they can communicate their message despite the presence of such filters.

Spam filters that are prepared these days are designed to give advanced protection against unsolicited emails and spammers. Bayesian filter technology is another effective way of controlling these mails. Bayesian technology is not like other filtering methods that search for Spam identifying words in the header and the subject line. The Bayesian filter uses the entire perspective of an email when it looks for characters or words for identifying a Spam. Another feature of Bayesian Spam filter is that the more it analyzes the incoming mails, the more it learns to identify Spam mails.

Spam mails can sometimes bombard you in such a manner that you may end up receiving more Spam than the regular emails. Most email service providers have Spam filter software enabled in their sites. All you need to do is select the options of setting the Spam filter for your emails according to your liking. You can mark the sites from which you want to receive or not receive mails in your inbox. Setting the options for blocking the bulk or the junk mails is entirely your prerogative.

eBay Stores come with a very powerful feature: store newsletters. When buyers add your store to their favourites, you can offer them the chance to join your mailing list. You can then send highly targeted emails to people who you know were at least interested enough in your products to add the store to their favourites.


How Do I Send Them?

First, you need to get some people to sign up for your newsletter – this will happen with time, as people buy from you and browse your store.

Once you’ve got a few subscribers, it’s worth sending out a newsletter. To send store newsletters, go to My eBay, click ‘Manage My Store’, and then click ‘Email Marketing’. Once you’ve done that, click the ‘Create Email’ button, and you’re away.

All you need to do now is write an email subject and a message, choose any items you want to include in the email, and specify who you want to receive it. The subject and message can be something relatively generic, like ‘here are my latest deals’ – it’s the targeting that’s important, and eBay’s is powerful. You can choose to only send an email to people who’ve bought from you in the past, or only to people who’ve opened your email before.

It is important to note, though, that you can only send one email per week to a mailing list.

The Ups and Downs.

The downside of store newsletters is this: they’re expensive. A basic, $15.95 per month store only comes with 100 emails, while $49.95 comes with 1000. Even the $499.95 anchor store only comes with 4000! Extra emails for all stores cost 1 cent each. That’s $1 per hundred extra emails. If your mailing list has a significant number of people on it, then that’ll get really expensive, really fast.

Surprisingly, though, it can often be worth it, despite the cost. It’s very rare to send out a newsletter to a mailing list of a hundred and not get at least one sale, and you’ll often get three or four, even to small lists.

Measure Your Success.

Each time you send an email, eBay produces a report telling you how well that email did. You can view these reports on the ‘Email Marketing’ page by clicking the subject line of an email you sent.

This report will show how many people received your email, how many opened it, the number of clicks it generated on your items and your store, and the number of bids and Buy it Now purchases that resulted from the email. Some of the numbers might be too low, though, as many people use email software that displays email in plain text format and so stops eBay from collecting statistics. Also, you will notice that you’ll have more success if you send out emails regularly, as people will start to expect them, and react in a more open way – don’t expect the Earth from your first email.

By now, you’re probably getting pretty good at selling on eBay – isn’t it nice to have all those satisfied customers? Not to mention the money… However well you’re doing, though, there’s always room for improvement. The next email will give you ten tips for being an even better seller.

Things just got a lot hotter in the hyper-competitive world
of online email providers.

In response to Google's announcement that their soon-to-be-
launched "Gmail" service will offer users 1 gigabyte of
email storage, Yahoo! announced an upgrade of their free
email service to allow users 100MB of free email storage
along with other enhancements.

Microsoft's Hotmail will surely also announce a free
upgrade in email storage space.


On the surface it might just appear like a simple case of
one-upmanship, but it actually represents major forces
digging in online and preparing to do battle.

It appears Yahoo! simply wanted to take the issue of email
storage space off the table as a consideration for users as
to which email service to choose.

Google enjoyed considerable media and public attention over
the past few weeks with the media marveling at how Google
intended to give hundreds of megabytes more space to its
users than Yahoo! or Hotmail.

With this move, Yahoo! made storage a "non-issue," but the
real war has only just begun.

Email ranks as the number one most popular online activity
according to virtually any survey you care to read.

When people go online, they spend the single biggest chunk
of their time sending, receiving, and reading email.

Online email providers understand that eyeballs on a page
looking at advertising and responding to offers is what
makes them money.

By increasing loyalty among email users in order to
repeatedly draw them back to the same website (often
several times a day), email service providers like Yahoo!,
Hotmail and Google can keep people looking at revenue
generating ads.

Despite the best efforts of government regulators, private
organizations, software filters, ISP's and others, over
half of all email sent online rates as unsolicited
commercial email (SPAM).

Besides storage space, Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail will
start claiming that their spam filters rate better than the
rest.

These online powerhouses hope to attract users with the
promise of cutting down and even eliminating the avalanche
of get-rich-quick, pornography, and ink-jet cartridge
offers (among others) that bombard virtually anyone with an
email account more than 15 minutes old.

This will, however, lead to another problem that many of
them won't talk about, which involves filtering legitimate
email as spam.

Unfortunately, the sword cuts both ways on this issue.

So where does it all end? Never! Hotmail will enter the
fray with expanded storage capacity as well as the promise
of less spam and a more "friendly" interface to make your
email life even easier.

Yahoo! and Hotmail will most likely copy Google and start
serving context sensitive advertising based on the content
of each email message as it get viewed.

Privacy advocates will weigh in to claim that all of the
filtering and serving of ads based on an email message's
content violates our rights to privacy and heralds the
arrival of "Big Brother."

But all this jockeying for position and enticing users from
one email service to another actually represents a great
boon for the average Internet user.

It will force three of the Web's biggest players to wake up
and improve their services after 2 or 3 years of "business
as usual" and we can all expect a few valuable innovations
to result.

Spam is a daily nuisance for all of us. It doesn't matter whether you're employed or unemployed. It doesn't matter if you're a CEO of a multinational or if you're a work at home parent - spam affects us all.

There are dozens of porgams available for fighting spam. The major problem is that most of these programs cost money.
What I'm going to do is show you 5 different ways of combating spam - all free.


1. Don't give out your personal email address.
This is stating the obvious but it's the first big mistake people make. DO NOT use your personal email address for
sign up forms, competitions, surveys or any other nonsense that may result in you being spammed. It's much easier to prevent spam, by never giving out your personal email address, than it is to cure the problem once you're on 100's of junk email lists.



2. Use a free email account
Set yourself up with a Hotmail, Yahoo or any other free email account and use it as a spam holder account i.e. use it on all those popups or sign up forms that you *suspect* may try to spam you. You can then periodically check your free email account for both legitimate and spam email and
delete the rubbish you don't want. This single step can save you countless spam related headaches.


3. Use a disposable email address
You could also try a disposable e-mail address from www.spamgourmet.com. This is a brilliant idea. Once you've registered your forwarding email address (your personal
email address) with them you can then create
self-destructing email addresses that stop working after receiving a specific number of emails.


4. Use a free spam filter.
Unfortunately even when you follow all the correct steps you can still wind up getting junk email. There's only solution at that point - install a spam filter on your PC.
The best free spam filter I've come across so far is Mailwasher. An excellent
program that won't cost you a penny.



5. Newsgroups and forums
Spammers love newsgroups and forums. They especially love the way people post their personal email addresses there. It doesn't matter if it's a paid, private or free forum spammers have their harvester programs hunting for email addresses every minute of every day. If you have to post
your email address then use the following format:

username AT domain.com. If that doesn't make sense then what I mean is instead of posting as test@spam-site.com you'd
post as test AT spam-site.com.

Spammers can harvest 35,000 email addresses per hour from newsgroups and forums - don't let your email address become one of those.


There you have 5 simple, free solutions to drastically reduce the amount of spam you receive every single day. If you want to learn more about fighting spam then
drop by spam-site.com.

Viruses, software failures, power failures, human errors, hard drive failures are only a few examples of what could destroy the data on a hard drive, including all documents, pictures, emails and other files!
Most home computer users don't need an expensive backup solution; as they only need to burn the folders with important documents and pictures to a CD-RW from time to time; this ensuring that in case of a disaster they can easily get them back. Togeder with documents and pictures, it's a critical operation to save the emails, attachments, address book and other important data from within the email client; otherwise in case of a computer problem the user will find himself in the impossibility to get them back, and this can be a really unwanted situation especially for webmasters or people who rely on their emails.


Unfortunately many people actually start to do backup copies only after they lose data.
This article will explain how one can create a Outlook Express Backup copy ( as Outlook Express lacks a backup function ) This email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system and is probably among the most commonly used email programs today. While using Outlook Express is fairly easy, finding and backing up the emails can be a little more complicated. Since there are a large number of files and folders on a computer running Windows, the first problem is to find the files containing the emails. Outlook Express stores emails in .dbx files and there might be several different dbx files depending on how many email folders you have created in Outlook Express. If you are using Windows 98, you can probably locate your emails somewhere in the Windows directory. In Windows 2000 and XP, emails are usually stored somewhere in the user data or application data folder.
The easiest way to find out exactly where your emails are stored is to start Outlook Express, go to the Tools menu, and open the Options dialog box. In the Options dialog box, select the Maintenance page and click the Store Folder button. . Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails. To open the folder, copy the path and paste in the address field of the Windows File Manager. You should see a number of .dbx files and possibly some other files, too.
After locating the email folder, you can simply select all the files and press Ctrl-C. Then open the folder where you want to keep the backup copies (on another hard disk, a DVD or a network drive, for example) in Windows Explorer, and press Ctrl-V. To backup the Address Book, you can follow these steps:
a.. Select Tools | Address Book... from the menu in Outlook Express.
b.. Choose File | Export | Other Address Book...from the address book's menu.
c.. Select Text File (Comma Separated Values) as the export format.
d.. Click Export.
e.. Select the location you want to export your address book to using the Browse... button.
f.. Give your backup copy a meaningful name.
g.. Click Next.
h.. Select the fields you want to include in your backup.
i.. Finally, select Finish.
j.. Click OK.
k.. Click Close to end the process (successfully, Ihope).
Additionally, there are several email backup utilities which can make the backup operation much easier. Outlook Express Backup Genie is one piece of software that can offer peace of mind by creating compact backup copies of emails, attachments, address book, signatures, blockedlist, mail rules and settings periodically. The difference between using a automatic email backup utility and manual backups, is that the first can be scheduled to create backups quiet in the background at specified time intervals, and that it will include all email information ( signatures, blocked list, etc ) which otherwise would be more difficult to save. Also if ever the backup is needed, the application will ensure that the restore process is made smoothly. And, it works with top 9 popular email clients.
The downside of using a automatic email backup utility is that it costs money, usually about 20-30 USD as one time payment, while the manual backups are ofcourse, free.The conclusion is that either manual or automatic,backing up emails is a critical operation for every computer user that would regret losing them.

Everbody hates spam! I am sure spammers hate getting spam too, but they still continue to dish it out. Why? Because it is still effective. Believe it or not, many of us still click on the links or follow-up with the spam message. As long as we continue to do this, spam will exist. If everybody understood this and paid no attention to spam, the spammers will eventually give up because it costs them realy money to send out emails. It is hard to quantify what the cost of sending out one, two or fifty emails is, but 1 million or 5 million emails certainly has a cost that is not negligible. When the payback starts to get so small that the spammers cannot make a decent living, they will find something else to do. This day will come and I cannot wait for it to arrive.

In the meantime, what can we do about it. Well, I am not going to tell you that there is a perfect solution that will stop all spam, but what I will tell you is that there is a way to reduce the problem and manage it effectively using the 7 steps outlined below.


Step #1: Get Your Own Domain Name

Fighting spam effectively starts with getting your own domain name. For example if your name is Andy Williams, you would purchase a domain name called andywilliams.com, which is of course already owned by the famous singer. This has some unique advantages over using an ISP given domain name or a webmail service such as Hotmail or Gmail. It also has some minor disadvantages. Let's examine these.

One major advantage is that you control the entire email address. You could create emails addresses like andy@andywilliams.com, info@andywilliams.com, sales@andywilliams.com and so on. This is in stark contract to an ISP assigned name like andywilliams@comcast.net. If you wanted another one, you'd have to open up another account or pay extra for each additional ISP assigned address. If you ever decided to switch ISP's, you would lose that email address and have to start over using a new one, and inform everyone you communicated with about it - a very messy proposition.

Many get around this problem by getting a Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail account which you can access from anywhere as long as you have internet access. These types of email accounts definitely have a place in your email toolchest, but do not suffice as your primary personal email address. One reason is that you do not have access to your email messages and address books when you are not online, like during a long flight. Anotehr drawback is that they do not allow you to export the online address books making portability very tedious.

I prefer owning my own domain name which I call my permanent email address. I will always have this email address as long as I renew this domain name every year. The cost of registering a domain name varies from $4 to $8 per year for most common ones. This is a small price to pay for the advantages it brings you.

The one minor disadvantage of owning your own domain name is that you need to manage it yourself, or have someone do it for you. This in my opinion is far outweighed by the advantages mentioned above.

Step #2: Create Private Email Adresses

A private email address is one that nobody but your inner circle knows about. Every person that you give your personal email address to is someone that you trust and want to receive email from.

Setup one private email address for every person who is going to need to receive messages. This could be you and 5 other members of your family or 12 employees that work for you. This part is quite straightforward, you simply login to your email control panel and create new accounts for each email address that is going to be used to receive email.

Step #3: Create Public Email Addresses As Aliases

A public email address is generally known to the public. It can be specific like andyw@andywilliams.com or generic like receptionist@andywilliams.com.

A public email address is created as an email alias. An email alias is not a real email address, but an address that gets redirected to a real email address. For example, you setup receptionist@andywilliams.com as an alias that redirects to mary@andywilliams.com. Whenever some sends an email to receptionist@andywilliams.com, it will end up in Mary's inbox. If you change receptionists, you simple modify the redirect for a very elegant solution. You can then publish this public email address on a website, in a brochure, on print advertising, business cards etc. without giving away your personal email address and without having to make much changes if Mary leaves and a new receptionist is hired. This is a huge benefit and maintains your privacy as well as those of others you have created email adresses for.

How does this help with spam, you ask? By using email aliases in a smart fashion, you could very easily shut down any spam that starts coming in. Let's examine how this can be done.

Step #4: Setup the Default or Catch-all Email Address

Your email control panel will have something called a "default address" or it is also sometimes called a "catch-all address". This is a valid email address that all unresolved emails go to. If you set this up to be your personal email address for example, then you will receive all emails that are addressed to "anything"@andywilliams.com, this includes sales@andywilliams.com, joe@andywilliams.com, andrew@andywilliams.com etc. Herein lies the secret to combat spam.

Step #5: Create Specific Named Public Email Addresses As And When Required

When you are forced to register on a website where you want to get some information from, you are usually asked for a valid email address. Well guess what, you now have an unlimited supply of valid email adresses. I usually use a specific format when registering at websites - it is "websitename"@andywilliams.com. So if I am registering at a website called www.get-rich-quick.com, I would use the address get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com as my valid email address. When the site sends me an email, it gets redirected to my personal email or whatever the default or catch-all address is.

Step #6: Send Spam Back To Where It Came From, If Possible

Here comes the real bonus, if you subsequently start receiving spam addressed to none other than get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com, you simple create an email alias for get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com and redirect the email back to exactly where it came from, for example georg-bush@get-rick-quick.com. You will then never get another email from anyone using that email address ever again. This is cool and is my favourite part. Bear in mind that spammers usually send email from an address that is not their own, so if you see an address like noreply@get-rick-quick.com, then you would redirect it somewhere else, for example a Hotmail address that you setup just for redirection purposes. Please exercise some discretion here because spammers often use the email addresses of real people and we don't want these innocent people getting redirected email.

Step #7: Be Diligent In The Ongoing Management Of Your Domain

If you do this diligently for each website where you register by identifying the website name, you will very quickly know which websites are selling email addresses and which ones honor their promise not to share your information. ALl this while, nobody by your personal inner circle knows your private email address.

A real-life example in my case: I use a specific email alias for my Paypal account which nobody but Paypal knows. I have never ever received spam on this address, but I have received hundreds of spam messages on other email aliases that I have created. All of these emails supposedly come from Paypal and address me as "Dear Valued Paypal Member" or something similar, warning me that my account is going to be closed or suspended unless I click on their link and update my credit card information.

I hope that I have given you some food for thought on how to manage the ever growing spam problem by protecting yourself by taking some initiative and getting your own domain name. The added benefit is that you now have a permanent email address no matter where you choose to live or which ISP you use to connect to the internet.

There are many other ways to fight spam which I will perhaps address future articles.

Nothing makes me angrier than opening my email in-box to
find over 150 messages, wading through them all, and
discovering that 135 of the messages rate as nothing more
than junk.

The problem with junk email or "spam" (the popular slang
for unsolicited commercial email) only seems to get worse
with each passing day.

Luckily, we can fight back in ways that will actually cut
down significantly on the amount of spam we receive on a
daily basis.

Try these tips and see if they can't cut the spam you
receive down by at least half.


** Don't Respond

Much of the spam you receive contains an "unsubscribe" link
saying something like "To unsubscribe, click here." Do NOT
click that link.

Clicking it lets spammers know they've got a live email
address!

** Use Mailwahser

Get a program like "Mailwasher" from Mailwasher.net that
allows you to view the email you receive before you
download it.

The program makes it simple to delete dozens of emails,
including viruses, before they reach your computer.

** Use Your Filters

Your email program most likely contains filters you can use
to weed out emails containing the usual spam words like
"opportunity, $$$, sex, viagra" and a host of others.

You can set the filters to delete messages containing these
words before ever downloading them to your computer.

** Use An "Assassin"

Spam "killer" services offer users high-powered filtering,
often requiring a sender to prove their identity before an
email gets sent to the recipient.

One such service, SpamArrest.com, forces email senders to
go to a website and type in a random word before their
email gets delivered. This service has gained a lot of
popularity lately and seems reasonably effective.

** Use a Temporary Email

Maintain a public and private email address and never give
your private email to anyone other than family and friends.

Go sign up for a free email account with Hotmail.com or
mail.yahoo.com to use whenever you subscribe to a
newsletter or request a free report. That way, if the spam
ever gets too bad, you can simply abandon the free account
and open another.

Your private email address should remain safe because
nobody will know it except the people you trust.

** Never Post Your Email

Never post your private email address in forums, guest
books, news groups or on a website. Spammers use little
robots that comb the Internet looking for email addresses
they can collect and sell to others.

Always use a free account or set it up so you can shut off
the exposed email address once the spam gets too bad.

** Abandon Ship

Shut down your current account and just start over! This
may seem a drastic move, but it may represent the best
course of action if your sanity or your email box can't
handle another offer for sexual enhancements, a great
business opportunity, or a free cruise.

Notify everyone you want to know your new email address and
get on with life.

Despite the fact that Federal legislation (the CANSPAM act) made it illegal, harvesting email addresses from the web using automated robots remains alive and well.

Spammers who need fresh email addresses release software spider programs that comb the Internet and suck email addresses off Web pages, guest books, and anywhere else you might post your email address.

Once they get your email address, spammers will trade it around like 5th graders with a new pack of Pokemon cards at recess and you can expect the avalanche of email to begin flooding your inbox.

In order to combat this still rampant practice of stealing email addresses from websites and sending people email they don't want, the following tips should help protect you.



** Break It Up **

Obviously the best way to avoid getting picked up by an email harvester is not to post your email anywhere on anyone's website (including your own).

If the only way someone can get your email is if you give it to them, that creates a similar situation to operating with an unlisted phone number.

If telemarketers can't get your phone number, they can't call.

If you must post your email address, post it in a way that a robot won't recognize it as an email address. Instead of posting YOURNAME@YOURDOMAIN.COM, you can put YOURNAME (AT) YOURDOMAIN.COM and then, in parenthesis, put (replace AT with @ to email me).

Though it seems like an extra step for legitimate email, you'll find it a very effective technique.


** Use An Image **

Currently, online spiders (ANY spider, including search engines) cannot read text that appears in a graphic or picture. If you must display an email address on a page, then do it by typing your email address into your favorite graphics program and saving the image as a .gif or .jpg. Then post the image onto your web page so people can see the email, but spiders cannot. This too creates an extra step for people because they must type in your email address, but it's an effective solution if you must display an email address on your own website.

** Use An Email Form **

Another way to cut down on spam originating from your own website is simply not to display an email at all.

Instead, allow customers and prospects to contact you through a form where they fill in fields, click a button, and your website emails you their message.

A note of caution: make sure the form script you use does not keep your email address visible in the form code.

If the form code contains the email address, spam robots can find it even though you don't see it on the page.


** Make It Hard To Guess **

Sometimes you'll get unsolicited email because a spammer guessed your email address.

It's not a far stretch to imagine that someone probably has the email Jim@yourdomain.com, so spammers will do a "dictionary" attack on common usernames.

One way to defeat this is to place a "dot" (.) in your email address, such as Jim.Edwards@yourdomain.com. The dot makes it virtually impossible for spammers to guess your email address.