1: FRIENDS
Many friends like to send their "important mails" to all people they know, and
they repeat the same and forward these mails to all people they know ...
this way you reach fast a very large number of persons, with a large list of
e-mail addresses. Some Spammers may use this list as an excellent address
database for their purposes ...
To prevent this kind of SPAM you have to educate your friends
NOT to use the "To:" or "Cc:" function. For that purpose they should use
the "Bcc:" (blind carbon copy) function of the e-mail program.
The first address should be their own "To:" and all recipients of the mail
with the "Bcc:". In the first line of the body you may add:
"Sent to list with Bcc:"
This way the mail reaches all recipients, but the address of the recipients
is not visible in the mail.
If you send E-mail with CC: and one of the receiver of this mail is reached by
a mail-virus, then this virus is distributed to all recipients of the CC-list.  Nice?
Therefore: Use BCC: when sending mail to many receivers!

2. Electronic greeting cards
Everybody sending or receiving electronic greeting cards (E-cards)
is registered in address databases. These databases are sold and
interchanged between companies and lead to all kind of advertising mail
(SPAM) from all over the world.
If you don't like this, then you shall not use E-cards.
(Neither receive them, nor send them) and let your friends know,
that you do not read them.
You can write lovely mails with your e-mail program and insert
nice pictures with flowers etc. This even looks much better than
using the commercial cards!

3. Publishing your E-Mail address  (Update 20.3.2007) 
Give your E-mail address only where necessary.
Many companies ask for your address when signing a document, restrict it,
or indiacte your second E-mail address.

Who participates in internet forums, signing electronic guest books, or having
an own Homepage on the Internet should not publish his e-mail address in text form.
All these directories are excellent SPAM generators, as the robots scan these
directories.
Your e-mail address there should look like this e.g.:  "joesmithNIXSPAM@provider.com"
with the comment "remove NIXSPAM in the address",
(do not use "NOSPAM" or "joesmith(at)provider.com" as this is recognised by some
spampreparing programs),
or by indicating your e-mail address in form of a GIF- or JPG picture, instead of
text format to prevent automatic scanning by robots.

Some automatic systems have to know your correct address to mail back.
In that case open a second email address (e.g. at hotmail) and do not indicate
your official standard address.

4. SPAM protection programs
There exist some very efficient programs which recognize many SPAM mails
and delete them when reaching your input.
However, before using these programs, you should prevent the generation
of SPAM with the above mentioned points.
If you want to use one of these programs, I recommend you the very efficient
Mailwasher program (free download and use), available at
http://www.mailwasher.net/download.php
ATTENTION: Mailwasher.net is no longer distributing the free version, but
                          the free version is still avaliable at this address:
                          http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,20000,00.asp

5. Switch off option "read confirmation"
In your E-Mail program: Set the option to not send automatically a "read confirmation".
Either switch off "send read confirmation", or set "do not send read confirmation"
in oder to prevent, that the sender of Spam/Virus gets automatically a confirmation.

6. Answering SPAM
Here a further important suggestion:
Do never reply to SPAM.
If you reply a Spam mail to unsubscribe, then the contrary will happen,
because the sender knows, that the mail is red ... and you will receive
even more SPAM mail.