If, like me, you get lots of spam, here are a few key tips to cut it down, perhaps tips that are not very well-known.

First of all, search all web sites to make sure your email address is not listed anywhere. Marketers have Internet bots that constantly scan any web pages they can access, sweeping them for any email addresses people list. If your email address is on a page, the bots will find it, and you will find yourself on spam lists, fast. So get rid of those references.

If you absolutely need to have an email address posted on a web page, you might try to disguise it–for example, say name[at]domain.com, name@nospam-domain.com (with a note to delete the “nospam”), or something to that effect. However, net bots might be set to recognize these patterns as well. If you own your own domain (if you don’t, why not?), I would suggest setting up throwaway email accounts. These would be temporary junk accounts (like contactme@blogd.com, for example–not a real address, by the way). Then set these up so they forward all their mail to your real account. When spam starts getting into your box, trash the throwaway account and start a new one. Thus your real email address stays off the web pages, and you can select only people you want to hear from and give them the true address.

You should know that most spam is addressed to non-existent email addresses; some spammers even send email to millions of random combinations of letters and numbers hoping that a few will be real (this is called “dictionary spamming”). Spammers love to know if an email address is in use–that address will be far more valuable to them, especially for resale to other spammers. They have ways to trick you into revealing that you read their junk mail.

Do you get emails with images and text that look like web pages? If you do, then you’re probably telling spammers to send you more email, just by opening the messages. Email can contain links to images just like web pages. When you open the spam and see the image, that means your computer just sent a message to the spammer’s web site asking for the image. If the spammer set it up right, they can tell that the user at your email address opened the spam message. That means that they know you are reading their mail, which is a valuable thing to them.

How to avoid this? Check your preferences/options/settings for an option that mentions HTML images or graphics, and set it so the images are not downloaded. This will avoid tipping your hand to the spammers.

Even more insidious is the “opt out” gambit. At the end of most spam emails, they “kindly” give you the option to have your name “removed” from their email lists. They’re lying. You see, if you email them to “opt out,” this is just confirmation that (a) your email address is active, and (b) you open junk mail. That makes your address a valuable commodity to them, and you will be guaranteed even more spam. One way to see that it’s a ploy is to note when they say that “This is NOT unsolicited email. Please accept our apologies if you have been sent this email in error,” and yet the email was titled so as to trick you into opening it (for example, “order confirmation,” or even just “Hi!”). Or if the “opt out” message is worded strangely (to “discontinue,” “be extracted”) or disguised (“o*p*t – – o*u*t”), which means it’s trying to evade spam filters. These people have no shame. The idiots who actually buy from them have no pride, and are the only ones who really perpetuate this whole mess.

Other protection can include spam filters offered in most email programs nowadays, but unfortunately, sometimes it catches real email, so you have to wade through the spam mailbox every few days anyway. Also, much spam is designed to side-step the filters; some spam does not even have any text, but rather depends on graphics that spam filters can’t read.

Apple’s free Mail software has a neat feature that I am testing to see if it lessens the load. Their tool is a “bounce” option. If you get spam, you can choose to “bounce” the message; the Mail program will then send the spam back to the sender as if the email address was not valid. Unfortunately, this may not work as well as it sounds–as I mentioned, most spammers know that most of their messages will bounce. Some even go further and set up their spam so that if it bounces, it bounces back to an innocent third party, some sap who then gets zillions of bouncing spam clogging up their mailboxes. So I doubt that the spammers will get the bounce, much less take the trouble to revise their lists if they do. But still, there is visceral fun in hitting that bounce button. Take THAT, you spam devils!