Susan Tenby: Rest assured that there are steps you can take to reduce the amount of junk flooding your inbox.

1. Never, ever reply to a spam message.
2. Don’t click any links in a spam e-mail.
3. Disguise your e-mail addy.
4. Don’t forward an e-mail from someone you don’t know to a list of people.
5. If you have your own domain, don't use your regular e-mail address when you register at Web sites.
6. Create disposable e-mail addresses.
7. Don’t use your home or business e-mail address when you register on a Web site or in a group.
8. Before you join a list , make sure the list owner or Web master will not sell your address.
9. Preview your messages before you open them.
10. View a message's headers to see if a sender's e-mail address is valid.
11. Don't use Hotmail/AOL/MSN as your primary mail provider.
12. Use complicated e-mail addresses.
13. Use a spam filter.
14. If you work in an office, forward spam to your IT department so they can adjust the filters.
15. Read all your messages as text.
16. Use a Web-posting form on your Web site to allow users to contact you.
17. Make sure your privacy settings are set so you don't receive marketing from other sites in your AOL and Yahoo profiles.
18. Never use your e-mail address as your screen name in chat rooms.
19. Throw in a little HTML or spacing that is undetectable to crawlers , when posting your e-mail address on a Web site.
20. Don’t give your real address to a Web site for registration.

http://www.techsoup.org/howto/articles/internet/page1586.cfm

Randy: I regularly violate all 20. That might account for the 11 thousand SPAM I get monthly.