Step 1: Know the Causes

Getting on junk email mailing lists wastes your time and wastes Internet bandwidth. There are several things you can do to avoid getting on these lists.

Step 2: Don't Go There

One thing you can do to foil spammers is not to respond to their advertising. If they promise you "the hottest adult site" or "the absolute lowest long distance rate" or even "make $5000 overnight," just delete the message without visiting web sites, calling toll-free numbers, or anything else that wastes your time.

Step 3: Watch Usenet

One source of email addresses for "spam" lists is the "reply to" and "from" fields of posted Usenet newsgroup messages. If you use newsgroups, you may use some alternate text in these fields, or disguise your email address so a human can easily reply but a machine could not. This is also a good reason to read many newsgroup messages but post only a few.

Step 4: Inform the Email Provider

Internet Service Providers and email providers don't usually like their accounts and their equipment being used for spamming. If you receive an unsolicited advertisement email, it is a good idea to inform the provider that it is occurring. Be polite; it isn't the provider's fault that its customer is doing this. The appropriate email address is usually given on a website in the same domain as the mail's source. Mention the full email user name in your notification.

Step 5: Use a Filter

Though it won't help the bandwidth problem, it will cut down on your wasted time if you put some filters on your received mail so you don't have to look at it.