It's like a clog in your plumbing...

Every day you open up your email browser and every day there they are. Pharmaceuticals. ED aids. Make money from home. Come chat with me because I'm bored. The list goes on and on.

Sound familiar? It should, because I'm talking about something everyone hates--SPAM!

It's like a plague that spreads throughout the net and gets nastier and nastier with each passing day. And there's no end in sight.

I know of a guy who works for a mid-sized company as the IT Director, and he once told me he deletes literally thousands of spam emails from their filters every day. EVERY DAY.

Yes, there is the Can Spam Act, and yes, you hear about a spammer getting sent to the slammer once in a blue moon. But for every one that goes away, it seems like a few more pop up in his place.

So what's an internet user to do?

Well, there's several things we all know of. There's some great software online (much of it free) that you can use to help cut down on the amount of spam you receive. Just do a search for anti spam software or spam blocker reviews and you'll find a lot of choices.

But if you do set up a spam catch-all, make sure and check it every once in a while. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a legitimate email will wind up among all the spam. So it's always good to surf through your spam folder every now and then.

One other thing you can do--and this is amazingly easy, yet so few people do it--is to be more careful about how and where you type in your email address.

See. spammers have automated systems that harvest email addresses that are publicly listed on the net. They cruise places like forums and bulletin boards, looking for the telltale signs, such as the "@" symbol, and suck up these unsuspecting addresses into their spam databases.

Chances are you've put your email address out there at one time or another. And chances are, that's why you're getting a ton of spam these days.

But that's where you can help stop them...

Next time you post your email address anywhere, instead of using the "@" symbol, just type in the word AT. Anybody who has been using email for a while will know they you don't really mean for them to use the word "AT" in your email address, and that the word needs to be replaced by the symbol.

But the automated robots don't know that. When they see "John AT domain.com" it means nothing. So they pass it up. But if it says "John@domain.com", then they see it as an email address and scoop it up.

See how easy that is?

Try this from now on and see if your spam load decreases. My guess is, with time, you'll see much less spam than you used to.