How to avoid getting spam and junk email

Spam is a major problem in this world, occupying most email transactions and tormenting many Internet users.

Set up a secondary email account
This is the most important step. In many cases you are required to supply an email address to do thing on the Internet. Setting up a spare junk email account, is a good idea. This way you can use this email address when you need to confirm a registration, and not worry about additional crap later.


 * Sign up for a free email account
 * yahoo mail: http://www.yahoo.com
 * Gmail: http://gmail.google.com
 * etc.
 * remember the account name and password as you may need to check it on occasion for email confirmations.
 * Use this email address for any site or service that you don't trust
 * Remember that most sites offering free services will probably send you spam or sell your address
 * When in doubt use your secondary account

Don't post your email publicly

 * If your email address is shown on any website, a spammer will get you address and spam you to death
 * Spammers have scripts, aka bots, that search the entire web for email addresses, and they do it well

Techniques for posting your address (bot-proof)
Bad Techniques
 * normal: name@address.com
 * all text: name (at) address (dot) com
 * This is commonly used so spammers have or will figure it out

Good techniques
 * Web-Forms
 * make sure you email address is not in the html code for the form
 * have your email address hidden in the cgi, php, or perl script.
 * Email address in an image file
 * [[Image:Email example.png]]
 * Eventually spammers will figure this out so you may have to be creative

From HowTo Wiki, a Wikia wiki.