Whenever you fill out Web registration forms, surveys and so on, avoid typing in your email address. If you are required to do so, look for a box that asks you if it is okay to send similar offers or information to you. Make sure you say no. The best technique if you don't for whatever reason have to supply your own actual real email address, is to use anything@example.com, or me@privacy.net . Note that the domain names "example.com", "example.net" and "example.org" are reserved, and guaranteed never to be allocated to anybody, so nobody else will get the spam if you use one of those domains.

List subscribers: If your list administrator allows it, anyone can effectively spam you by issuing a simple command via email to display nearly every address on the list. Send a request to the list administrator asking him or her to shield you from such postings.

For Newsgroup posters: Disable your easy-to-grab email address by inserting asterisks or words (for instance: you@NOSPAM.yourdomain.com, or you@yourdomain**.com). Then add a line at the end of your posting that gives your true email address.

For America Online users: Delete your member profile right now. All that personal information is a spammer's dream come true.

DO NOT supply your email address on product registration cards.

DO NOT supply your email address on any form provided by a business, even if the form asks for it.

Think twice before supplying your email address to a business.

Consider instructing your receptionist and other work colleagues not to give out your email address, and that anybody asking for your email address must ask for it from you directly.

If you find you must send email to a company, DO put a prominent notice in your signature file stating that "The email address used for sending this message is not to be added to any database, list or mailing list without my prior, explicit permission."

BCC: Blind Carbon Copy

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BCC is the method to employ when sending an e-mail to more than one recipient, or when forwarding an e-mail. There are a few good reasons why this is so:

1. It prevents the recipient knowing that you have sent the same message to a large number of recipients (good business)
2. You aren't publicising recipients e-mail addresses without their permission (good netiquette)
3. You are helping to minimise the possibility of spam e-mail (good for everyone!)

We all get them; e-mail forwards or e-mails with a multitude of recipients in the To: and / or CC: fields clear for all to see.

The problem with multiple recipients in the To: or CC: fields...
They expose all those recipients to the possibility of even more junk mail making its way into their inbox. How? Well consider this scenario. You get an e-mail with 50 other e-mail address on it, including yours. Well, obviously, these addresses are viewable by every recipient. See the problem? It's true that most friends / contacts of yours wouldn't think about stealing your e-mail address for other purposes than forwards and real e-mail, but one of those recipients could easily just take all the names on the forward (including yours) and toss it onto a mailing list for the Top 100 Porn Sites and Toys. Now while some may not see that as a bad thing, that list then gets passed on and before you know it your address is included on hundreds of mailing lists without you even knowing...and you wondered why you kept getting all that spam. Ah, but alas, there is an easy way to prevent this...

The solution...
The funny part is, the solution to this situation has been available in e-mail clients since nearly the beginning. The answer: the blind carbon copy, or BCC. If you notice, your e-mail client (such as Outlook or Outlook Express) has five headers - To:, From:, Subject:, CC:, and BCC: - To, From and Subject are self-explanatory. Carbon Copy, or CC, takes the current mail and sends it to those listed and shows their addresses, which is what is commonly done with forward address book listings. Blind Carbon Copy, or BCC sends the e-mail or forwarded e-mail to everyone as well, only it hides the list of addresses. So in working, rather than selecting your forward list as the To:, select it as the BCC:, this will send it to all 50 of your contacts without sending them a) 8-pages of names to scroll through before the actual message, and b) doesn't give out the names of your friends to spam-hungry people. Obviously, your name would be in the From: header. So how does this help? Well, if everyone (and if you suggest it to your contacts) uses the BCC to send mass e-mails or forwards then everyone would be safe. Safe from long scrolls and a little safer from spam. This won't end spam, but it will certainly help - not to mention make your contacts happier when they don't have to read 50 addresses of people they will probably never meet nor care about.

Hints for BCC...

Microsoft Outlook Express: In Outlook Express you have to open a new message, then click on View, then click All Headers, and you will see the BCC box. Once you do this the Bcc box will always be there in new messages.

Microsoft Outlook: In Outlook you have to open a new message, then click on View, then click BCC Field, and you will see the Bcc box. Once you do this the BCC box will always be there in new messages.

Some ISP's won't let you send only to BCC. If you try to send to only to BCC and your ISP bounces your email, you may need to put at least one address in the "To" field. Here is a trick: use your own address in the "To" field. You can either put your own address directly, or, if you want to be even more clever, create an address in your own address book to use.

For example, you could create an address in your address book called "My Friends" and give that entry your own address. Then when you want to use the BCC, put "My Friends" in the "To" field and the real addresses in the BCC field.

The email will show up addressed to "My Friends". The other addresses will be hidden.

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