What can I do to keep spammers from getting my email address?

Since spammers do not usually get your email address directly from you, but rather indirectly via the web or other service, there is no truly direct way to keep a spammer from getting your email address. However, there are many steps you can take to make it difficult for a spammer to find your email address on the web: Don't publish your email on the web:

• The only way to keep your email address truly private is to not publish it on the web in any form. This is usually not a very feasible option, because many of us would like people who want to access your email address for legitimate reasons find it. Once one spammer gets your email address, it is usually resold hundreds of times over on a convenient cd as you have probably already seen advertised through spammers -- your email address is on that cd if you got the advertisement. Note: If you must include your email address on your website or use it to sign up for services, use only one email address. Otherwise, you are signing up for spam email for each email address you expose.
• Be conservative with who you give your information to: Many websites and online services these days will ask you for your email address when you register or visit their site. If you do sign up with any of these services, make sure that they have a privacy statement that will ensure that your email address is not given out to anyone that you don't want it to be given out to. Note: Do not believe it. Trust nobody. Chances are that your email address is shared with other companies and some of those companies will resell your email address to spammers.
• DO NOT reply to spam emails: Although it may sometimes be tempting to reply out of anger or frustration to an unsolicited email attacking the sender, it can sometimes lead to more serious problems. First, your email address may be sent to other spammers using the same email account, causing your email address to appear on more lists, and give you more spam mail. Also, if the account name that the spammer is using is actually someone else's (this is easy to do), you may be sending an unsuspecting computer user an unnecessary email. Spammers don't want spam either and they could care less if you are offended.

1. MindSpring's page explaining how to get an email's headers
http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/extended.htm

2. The spam FAQ, maintained by Ken Hollis.
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html

3. Julian Haight's Spam Cop page. http://spamcop.net/

4. Fight Spam on the Internet! http://spam.abuse.net/

5. The Spam Recycling Center http://www.spamrecycle.com/

6. The Coalition Against Usolicited Commerical E-mail. http://www.cauce.org/