No matter how good your spam filter is some is going to get through and land right in your inbox. While no one can completely eliminate SPAM there are some things you can do to keep it to a minimum. First I’ll start off by telling you how the spammers work then I’ll get into some practical ways to combat this electronic refuse.

How the heck do they get my address in the first place?

That’s an excellent question here are several ways they do it:

• Off of your personal web page
• Off your company’s contact information
• Off your MySpace or other publicly available social networking site
• They have a dictionary program that systematically generates all possible combinations of email address.
• You sign up for a mailing list from a company you trust and the cheeky bastards sell your address
• and the list goes on….

Mostly, these Spammers will harvest names using programs that crawl the web. As soon as their spider finds an address it adds you to their list. Pretty nasty eh? So once they have your address they will send you an e-mail asking you to buy anything from Iphones to Viagra. Now these guys/gals are pretty crafty. Remember, they got past all those smart people who made the SPAM filter. Not every name that is on their list is going to be valid and being a busy spammer they only want to send their e-mails to valid address. These impolite marketers have devised a way to find out if an address is good or bad and I hate to say it, but more than likely, you’ve fallen for their trick and not even known it.

Usually at the bottom of their e-mail will be a link that reads something like: “If you no longer wish to received e-mails from us, click this link to be removed”. That is the trap! By clicking that link you have told them that a real person actually got this mail so it’s time to blast them with more junk. The link isn’t the only way they verify your address. Sometimes you’ll get SPAM that is written in HTML. Essentially these e-mails are made the same way people make web pages. When you open the e-mail, that mail will download a little image from the internet and BAM now you have let them know your address is valid. I told you they were crafty.

So what can you do to reduce SPAM?

1. Get your e-mail address off of publicly available web pages.

Use a contact form instead of a direct link to your e-mail address.If you can’t use a contact form at least write out your address out long hand i.e. MyEmailAddress A-T MyDomain D-O-T com .

2. Never open e-mail from an address that you suspect is SPAM

This can be tough especially if you get mail from a lot of different people. What you can do is turn off your internet connection before you open a suspicious e-mail. I use my firewall to turn off all internet traffic. You can download a free firewall from Zone Labs Here.

3. Never Ever click an “Unsubscribe Link” from an untested sender

If you had signed up for a newsletter or mailing from a reputable company then by all means use the unsubscribe link. An honest company will be more than happy to honor your request since they have a reputation to uphold.

4. Use free e-mail accounts from places like Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo when you sign up for newsletters, coupons, or any site that may try to send you junk in the future.

It’s better to have the spammer sending junk to your Hotmail account that you can dump then your real one that all your friends, family, and coworkers know.

5. ADVANCED Tip: Use e-mail forwards to identify compromised e-mails

If you have your own web site you probably have the ability to set up an e-mail forwarder. Essentially, you create a fake address. All the mail sent to the fake address gets forwarded to your real address. Make the address easy to identify like: CompanyName@YourDomain.com. That way when you get a SPAM message you can see who sent it to you and all you have to do is delete the forwarder. Now, there is no way that spamming company can send you any more stuff since the forwarder is gone and they never knew your real e-mail.

So there you have it 5 ways to help reduce the amount of junk email floating around your inbox.

There are a lot of companies out there looking to sell you all sorts of programs to protect your computer. I’m a tin-foil-hat wearing paranoid so it should come as no surprise that I’m a big fan of computer security. Keep in mind that computer security does more than keep nasty hackers out, it can help improve the performance of your computer as well. By running a firewall, a virus scanner, and a spyware scanner you put up a pretty good line of defense on your personal PC. If you are like me you’re cost conscious (most people call me cheap) so I found three great programs that you can download and use for free! Just the sound of that makes my cheapskate heart sing. So with out further ado here are three downloads to keep your computer safe as well as a little explanation on what they do.

1) Firewall.

When you’re on a network information goes in and out of your computer. A firewall is like a bouncer at a club. So when your VIP information like the latest Diamondback score comes cruising up to the velvet rope of your I/O port it gets let in right away. But, when some grungy program comes up and says “Hey man let me in” the firewall bounces them, keeping them out of your super exclusive club that we’ll call your PC.

You can download a free firewall from ZoneLabs: http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp . Look for the button that says “I only want basic ZoneAlarm protection”. Or just click here to get the program.

2) Anti-Virus

Viruses are little programs that people write to do all sorts of things to your computer. They range from annoying to down right nasty. An anti-virus program will help keep your computer from getting infected in the first place and remove anything that should happen to slip by. Please remember that you should run a scan regularly. And when I say regularly, I mean a full scan at least once a week

You can get an excellent free Anti Virus program from AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/

3) Spyware

Spyware is kind of like a virus but more annoying than anything else. This is probably on your computer already and you don’t even know it. Often it gets installed when you install another program. Spyware watches what you do hence the name. It will see where you go online and then pop up an ad. What makes this even naughtier is that it is running in the background using your computer’s resources. That means your computer runs slower. How rude!

To exorcize these annoying programs grab a copy of Spybot http://www.spybot.com/ . Just make sure to update it regularly and like the virus scanner, run it regularly.

So there you go, 3 handy programs that will keep your computer safe and clean and all for free. Most places like GeekSquad charge over $100 for this service plus the cost of software. Now you can use that $100 for something else like buying me a beer, or several.

P.S. I actually have the utmost respect for hackers. They are the smart people who figure out the flaws with software and make it better. Think of it like getting sick. Yes it’s a miserable experience but afterwards your body has a stronger immune system.