Let’s face it… everyone has problems with spam (and I’m not talking digestive problems from the canned kind). In fact, I just finished deleting 250 spam comments from my blog. Its a growing issue, and just like any technical annoyance, the spammers are usually one step ahead of the spam blockers. So what can you do?

The best way to curb email spam is to prevent it in the first place. Many people have no idea how their email address gets on a spammer’s list, so if you are armed with a little knowledge, you may be able to stay one step ahead of the rest of humanity.

For starters, spammers collect your email address from all sorts of places on the internet. Do you ever post on forums or message boards? Do you have your website address posted on your website? Do you have your email address on your blog?

Spammers use programs that are called bots to crawl the internet looking through web pages for text in a standard email format (whatever@whatever). Once a bot finds what it thinks is an email address, it stores that email in a database which spam will be sent from later… and that’s how it happens most of the time. So here’s some tips on how to prevent it:

1. Set up a “spam only” email address through hotmail, gmail, yahoo email or one of the other free email servies, and use this email address for signing up for services online, posting to forums and message boards, anywhere on the internet that they ask you for an email address. Only give your primary email address to people you know directly and avoid putting it anywhere on the internet. This way all the spam will go to your special spam email that you never have to check.

2. Avoid posting your actual email address on your personal or business website. Instead use a contact form for people to get in touch with you by email. This way, spammers cannot get your business or personal email from your website, but your clients can still contact you through the email form.

3. Some emails that people consider “spam” are actually legitimate emails from a company or service that you may have inadvertently signed up for because you didn’t read a privacy policy, or you didn’t uncheck the “receive newsletter” box before you submitted your email address on their website. If you are getting several emails from the same website or company, check the bottom of the email for an unsubscribe link. You may be able to stop a good portion of the emails you get from legitimate companies by unsubscribing from their email lists. Just make sure the emails are legitimate newsletters or advertisements from a website you are familiar with before you hit the unsubscribe link.

4. Use an email client instead of webmail. Most email clients have built in spam and junk filters, so most of the time you will never have to be bothered by the spam that does get through. I recommend thunderbird as a free email client from mozilla. It has many great features, including a smart junk mail filter. It figures out which emails are junk based on the emails that you mark as spam when you first start using the software.

5. Do not reply to a spam message. This lets the spammer know that you have a legitimate working email address. You may also want to avoid using an autoresponder on your email account if you are getting a lot of spam, as it will send an autoreponse that you are away from the office to spammers as well as legitimate emailers, telling the spammers that your email address is working.

I doubt we will ever be able to completely stop spam from coming into our in-boxes once it has started, but these tips can help you prevent future spammers from getting a hold of your email address, and cut down on the current amount of spam you are getting.