How to Tame Junk Mail

The enormous amount of junk mail that comes to an e-mail address can really put a damper on your online experience.

If you have an e-mail address and you use it, you will get junk mail. It's a fact of life. There are programs designed to extract e-mail addresses from pages and servers for the express purpose of spamming advertisement. Opt-in lists (like newsletters) are usually pretty safe, but if you sign up for or use a free service or program in exchange for advertisement, your e-mail address will most likely be sold or rented for other purposes and may be tracked. Everyone hates spam, but there are ways to cut down on and practically eliminate most spam.

1) Get a free mailbox from Hotmail, Yahoo or another service to use as a junk filter. Many times you have to give an e-mail address when you sign up for something you really want, but you don't have to use your primary e-mail address for everything.

2) Use the 'message rules' on your Outlook or Outlook Express to eliminate or delete mail on the server before it reaches you, using words you specify in the rule. Be careful when selecting words to filter so you don't eliminate possible good mail from coming through.

3) Use a separate e-mail account for each newsgroup, free service or subscription. It will help you monitor where the bulk of your junk mail is coming from.

4) Never post your primary e-mail address on the internet or someone else's page. This is a good rule if you join web rings, chat, participate in newsgroups, advertise or exchange links with other sites.

5) Be aware of free 'spyware' programs that broadcast your e-mail address to other servers. Most free programs are great, but some of them track your every move on the internet. Don't give them your primary e-mail address.

6) Only give your primary e-mail address to close family and friends. Even the most casual mail to an 'internet' friend could get your e-mail address forwarded without your knowledge to hundreds of other recipients.

7) Change your settings on your e-mail program not to accept or display HTML e-mail. HTML e-mails can contain 'beacons' that gather information about your e-mail addresses, programs and your computer. Beacons are 1x1 pixel transparent images that you cannot see in the HTML e-mail, but contain a script that runs on your computer when you open it and gathers information about you, then transmits it back to the sender or another server.

What about your privacy and security at webworksite.com?

Your e-mail address when you subscribe to our newsletter is not stored on any server, remote or local, e-mail program or address book on any computer. It cannot be extracted by any program or used for any other purpose than to send you our newsletter issue once a month. It is immediately added to a flat-file database and archived on a removable storage drive until you unsubscribe. Once your e-mail address is recorded in the text file, the drive is removed and the information is permanently deleted from our server. For the short time your information is on our server, it is in a protected file that is inaccessible from the internet.