The old saying goes "Feed a cold and starve a fever." Or, is that "Feed a fever and starve a cold?" I never was quite sure about that. What I am sure of is that the best course of action when it comes to spammers is starvation. Spammers need information. The less you give them, the better your life will be.

• Spammers like mailing lists: When using a mailing list or signing up for some online service, if possible don't provide an email address. If you have to give them something, either sign up for some "disposable" account somewhere such as Yahoo!, Hotmail, or some other free service, or make something up. Idontwantany@leavemealone.com, for example. Even if you think the company or service you're submitting your address to is on the level, spammers may sign up for those same lists just to see who else is on them.


• Spammers love forwarded messages: We've all been guilty of sending on the occasional inspiration chain letter, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sending them on with the dozens of other recipient's email addresses intact is. If you must forward a message, or send a letter to multiple recipients, trim out all the old headers and use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) function of your email client. That way the recipient of the messages sees only your address and theirs in the headers. That's just a matter of courtesy, really. No one wants their personal information flung around the globe indiscriminately.


• Never open spam: If you get a message that you suspect is spam, delete it unread. A common tactic of spammers today is to use "Web bugs" to track their messages. These are embedded, often invisible image in the body of the message that are unique to each user. The spammer can simply check his logs to see which of those images have been downloaded, and he knows he has a "real live" address. Some mail clients, such as Microsoft Outlook "preview" messages for you, before you even open them. If yours does that look for a way to turn that off. If the message is never read the spammer can't know which of the addresses in his file are legitimate. (Note: SquirrelMail, the web mail system we use here in Honey Grove, automatically disables images that the system considers suspicious, and replaces them with a "this image has been removed" message,)


• Never reply to a spam: If you're faithfully following the guidelines above this one won't even come into play, but I'm going to say it anyway. All bulk mail originating in the U.S. is required by law to have an opt-out option. Don't use it. First off, spammers don't care about the law anyway, but if one does honor his legal requirement to remove you from that particular spam list, he still has a known-good address to focus on for all of his other mailings. Not only does he know that it's a valid address, but he also knows that you read and are even willing to respond to a spam. That's a spammer's Holy Grail.


• Use the tools at your disposal: If you use a Web-based mail service such as Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail, use the included anti-spam measures. Those systems learn collectively. When you tell them that a message is spam, everyone else on that service benefits. Don't just roll your eyes and delete the message. Take the time to actually classify the message. It's for the greater good.


• Never, under any circumstances buy anything from a spam: This should be a given, but the fact remains that spam is a business. If no one ever bought anything from a spammer, they would have no reason to do what they do. Believe it or not, there are people out there who buy "GenE.r!c C!al-is" from email and look to their inbox to find The B3st Mort:g@ge Ratez." The reason you have spam in your mail box today is that someone bought something from that same email yesterday.