We call some emails "spam" or "junk" to indicated that they are mass-distributed and unsolicited often promoting get-rich-quick schemes, fraudulent offers etc. Junk is inevitable if you have an email address, but there are steps you can take to curtail it. To combat spam, it's important to know why your email address is being tracked down in the first place.

If your email address is visible on your website, social networking site, or displayed anywhere else publicly on the internet then this means Email Harvesting Robots can find your address. The majority of junk is sent by people who have made their email address public in some way. If you need to be contacted via your website, a contact form is a good alternative , that way you'll receive your communications in your inbox, just through a different medium. Or you could change your email address so it's understandable for humans but not software programmes. Here are a few examples of jumbled email addresses software programmes won't be able to understand:

johnREMOVETHISsmith@samplemail.com or johnsmith[at]samplemail[dot]com

When signing up for newsletters you'll of course want to be sent emails for whatever you are signing up for but always make sure you uncheck any boxes asking if you'd like to be sent third party emails and communications. ‘Third parties' will more than likely be spam emails from people or organisations that you have no interest in. You can also use ‘captcha' tests, which you've probably seen before. You are presented with slightly disfigured letters and/or numbers and you have to copy them in order to submit a form. Software programmes cannot figure these Captcha tests out. Another way to disguise your email address is to include it as an image rather than as text on a webpage, as harvesters cannot read the contents of images. You could design an eye catching email logo or just write as plain text and change that into an image.

Do not respond to spammers! If you do accidentally open up junk mail, possibly to unsubscribe, be very careful. Clicking ‘unsubscribe' could take you to a page to confirm your email address and then once it's confirmed, you'll be sent more spam.

Always use your junk filters; nowadays they are quite spam savvy and can detect spam mail a mile off. If you're sent junk mail in your inbox, put them in your list of blocked senders, or classify it as spam mail so you won't receive emails from them in the future. If you receive emails regularly from companies or newsletters you've signed up to, add them to the ‘safe sender's list' to avoid them going into your junk folder.

New to spam mail is the phishing scam – emails are sent in order to access your personal details. These spammers pretend to be from big corporations – usually banks. They suggest you have to click a link in the email to rectify whatever problem that they claim there may be. By clicking that link you are led to spoofed phishing websites that are set up to steal personal data from you.

Never make lists of email addresses and if you do want to send an email to many, as part of an email marketing campaign for example, people use the BCC (blind copy) so your hefty email list isn't shown.

Also consider using a number of different email accounts; one for personal emails, one for newsletters and one for online purchaces.

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