The consequences of Spam can’t be underestimated. Spam consumes enormous amounts of capacity on the Internet making it more expensive for everyone. Even more serious is that spam can be very annoying for so many people and the enormous amounts of hours wasted with deleting spam messages. Spammers are criminals who don’t care if they bother 1.000.000 people to make one sale. If they send enough messages the make still big profits.

1. Not all unsolicited email is Spam
In general Spam is defined as unsolicited "bulk" email. Spam email is that which has been sent to thousands of email addresses indiscriminately and mostly anonymously. Unsolicited email can also be in the form of direct email that is personal and targeted (one-to-one). This is not regarded as Spam. Advertising by email can be a useful tool like advertising by post or TV. Take a moment to assess the email to ensure you're not unnecessarily blacklisting a legitimate company who may well be able to provide you with a good service.

2. Never respond to Spam
Oh sure, they say they’ll take your name off the list, but they’re lying. What they really want to do is confirm that they’ve got a live address. Also, if you respond, they’ll sell your address to every other spammer on the planet meaning you’ll soon be flooded with even more spam.

3. Do not open spam-messages
Some spam-messages are edited in html. Only opening of the message can be enough to send automatically a confirmation that your address is valid. A good anti-spam filter can be useful in this case.

4. Don’t rely only on a Anti Spam filter
The Anti Spam filter are useful but can only do their work for a part. Spammers are always looking for methods to hide themselves, for example putting the message in an image. Also a filter can recognize a message as spam which no is spam and you loose it. It is necessary to check always the bulk or spam folder if not accidentally a real message was sent that way.

5. Don't publish an e-mail address without precaution
Take precaution in how you advertise your email address. When you publish your email address on the web, you are taking the chance that it will be picked up by Spam operators. It is important to take proper precautions. Use a contact-form or our service at Protect E-mail

6. Don't use info@withyourdomain.com
If you have your own domain don’t use names like info, service, mail, postmaster, sales etc. etc. for your email address. These are standard names which the spammers always try with your domain name with a good chance of success.

7. But I already get a lot of Spam
Then you have a problem. The only real solution is the remove the email address and create a new one.

8. Use a second or forward email address
In case you like to use services like guest books and forums then your address can be published before you know it. Also when you subscribe yourself for a website you don’t really trust. In this case you can use a second, less important e-mail address which you can remove easily without having to inform all your serious contacts. If you have your own domain this is often very easy with a "forward address". The forward-address automatically resends every mail to your real e-mail address. If you after some time receive too much spam on the forward address you can easily delete it and create another one. Your real email address will be untouched.

9. Never buy something offered in Spam
That’s seems logical but apparently are there many people who do this with the result that the spammers make a lot of money and will go on with their illegal practices.

10. Never send back an e-mail bomb
Don’t try by sending back big numbers of e-mails to the spammer getting back as revenge. Real spammers you will not harm like that. Also there is a chance that you will bother an innocent e-mail user who’s e-mail address the spammer is using. Also you take the risk you will be blacklisted for sending spam.

11. Careful with messages from banks
Be extra alert with messages, which seems to be sent from banks or other financial institutions. Lately more and more criminals use spam to try to discover your passwords etc. If you have any doubt don’t follow the instructions in the message.

12. Do not participate with forward-chains hoaxes.
This kind of chains are another source of e-mail address because many people do not take care and with the forward they send large lists with addresses. Besides that a forward message like that we can consider as Spam-message because we didn’t asked for it.

It is incredible but there are still people who believe those messages and forward them to all their contacts. For sure you know the most famous one like. "Bill Gates who going to give away his fortune", "Hotmail will be closed", "Some new most dangerous virus" or "A child with serious disease who they claim could be helped with forwarding the message". All those chain hoaxes are a lie. Don’t forward that kind of messages. Send them back to the sender and explain why forwarding is not a good idea.
If you like you can give this page as reference.
http://www.antispamweb.com/i-hate-spam.htm#hoax

13. Do not use "send e-mail back" services.
There do exists websites which (sometimes with payment) collect all mail (spam or no spam) which will be send to your e-mail address and afterwards an e-mail back to the sender sends. In that mail the sender has to go to a website where he has to confirm with a code and sometimes personal information like name etc. After this information is entered the e-mail will be resent to the receiver. This idea is not that bad but AntiSpamWeb does not recommend to use that kind of service.

Reasons:

A. The principle to put the problem on the side of the innocent sender is not correct. That is simple moving the problem but not solving. Still there will be lost much time but like this it will be the innocent sender and not the receiver.

B. If you offer services on the Internet it is not professional to bother your customers with your problem and for sure you will loss an important number of customers who will not take the time to confirm an e-mail.

C. Delay. It is very good possible that the sender will not read the confirmation mail immediately thinking he/she did sent a message.

D. It is possible that the confirmation mail also will be recognized my anti-spam filters because it was send automatically. For that reason it is possible the confirmation mail will not arrive. Besides that if members of 2 different kinds of these services will be sending mail to each other a message it is possible it will never arrive because service 1 is waiting for service 2 and service 2 is waiting for the confirmation of service 1.

E. There are many websites which send automatically e-mail to people who subscribed themselves for that. That is no spam. For example it can be a password or other useful information. We can’t expect from an owner of a big website that he/she will be confirming manually big numbers of mails every day and in practice this will not be done.

If someone using this kind of service please explain why this not should be used. If you like you can use this page as reference:
http://www.antispamweb.com/i-hate-spam.htm#mail