Updated December 5, 2007

No matter how well the spam filters are, email users cannot be fully protected from spam these days, but we can still take some precautions to protect ourselves from these attacks. Here are a few precautions that you can take to control spam:

1. Firstly, make sure that you give your email addresses to trusted sites, and only to close family members and friends who would not misuse your email address.
2. A simple rule of thumb is that if you don't know the person who is sending you an email, be very careful about opening the email and any file attached to it. If you receive a suspicious email, the best thing to do is to delete the entire message, including any attachment. Even if you do know the person sending you the email, you should exercise caution if the message is strange and unexpected, particularly if it contains unusual hyperlinks.
3. Looking at all the spam in mail boxes everybody is frustrated these days, but, no matter how frustrated you are, do NOT click the links like "Click to unsubscribe, remove your address from the list" and do NOT reply them with emails having subjects like "Remove", "Unsubscribe" etc. These will verify your email address and will only make your address receive more of them.
4. Some sites may want email addresses for registration. These are potential spammers. If you have to use an email address for registration, always use a temporary address.
   Suggestion:Get yourself a free webmail (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) and use that always, because, not all sites that require registration are spammers. Sometimes you may need further follow-up from them. In such cases you will have a valid email address. But, make sure you do not use the mail account that you give your friends and relations.
5. Never write your e-mail on the web. Some robots are scanning the web for email adresses. If you need to give your address, write it like : myaccount "AT" myprovider "Dot" com.
6. When you are sending emails to multiple recipients, always use BCC. Why? If you type the addresses in the CC or To line, all the recipient addresses appear in the mail content when those emails are forwarded. If the forwarded mails reach the spam senders in some way, all these addresses are added to their spam lists.
7. Never buy any product or use any service that you learn about through unsolicited email.
8. Please do not forget that these are only precautions that you can take against spam individually and will not stop spam completely, but at least it will help in keeping spam away from you.