We all receive spam, although it is interesting to see what constitutes “heaps” of spam amongst different people. For some, that might be 10 spam emails per day; for others, that might be 1000. Certainly, the longer your website has been around and the more popular it becomes, the more spam you will receive through email addresses referenced on the website, as well as email addresses that spammers guess based on your domain name.

Here are some tips for reducing and managing the spam you receive:

• Prevent a large amount of spam by never using your primary email address when signup up for websites, posting on discussion forums, etc. Create a second email account for this purpose; this way, you can easily filter those emails into a separate folder, or delete the account entirely.
• Only display generic email addresses, such as info@, on your website; reserve name-based email address, such as john@, to internal and direct communication. This helps reduce spam being sent to your day-to-day email address.
• Ask your web hosting company what spam prevention or tagging systems they have in place, and learn how to use them effectively. For example, you might be able to nominate a threshold at which suspicious emails are deleted, or have emails tagged as potential spam, or have suspicious emails forwarded to separate email account that you check less frequently.
• Learn how to use email filters (or rules) in your email program. If your web host uses software such as SpamAssassin, you can create an email filter that moves emails with a particular spam “score” to different folders. This allows you to keep your inbox clean, and you can check your spam folders once a day or once a week.
• Never respond to spam (by return email, by clicking a link, or by sending a read receipt.) A response tells the sender they have found a valid email address, and will simply send you more spam.

By understanding spam and utilising the tools available to you, spam can be transformed from a serious time waster to a mere annoyance.