Junk email is a problem which seems to grow increasingly problematic as time goes on, and almost everyone I talk to is astonished at how much more junk mail they've been getting recently. Here are a few tips to try to minimize its impact on you.

Remove your email address from your website. If you have a "mailto:" link containing your email address on your website or any other public website, you're just asking for junk mail, and in short order. Even if you have a JavaScript that creates a "mailto:" link on the fly, this will not protect you - email harvesting programs can interpret JavaScript just like a web browser, so make sure to remove any html or JavaScript "mailto:" links from your website. It's very easy to create a web email form using php or some other server-side technology which completely hides your email address from harvesting programs. Talk to your webmaster about replacing "mailto:" links with such an email form. Also, try googling for your email address, and see if it shows up on any other websites or discussion lists. If it does, try emailing the webmaster of that site and tell them you want the link removed, or at least that you disapprove of their site displaying addresses in an unprotected way.

Make sure your email software does not automatically download linked images. Most email programs have the ability to display attached and linked image files "inline". That means that when you open the message, you see the attached (or hyperlinked) image files displayed in the message body. While this is a nice convenience, junk email senders have found an easy way to exploit this functionality and use it to harvest legitimate addresses. If the email message contains a hyperlink to an image, it's very easy for the sender to include a string in the URL which uniquely identifies you as the recipient. In other words, when you open a message containing a linked image, it can confirm to the sender that your email address is legitimate, and that you received and read the message. Once that happens, you can be sure to see a surge in the amount of junk mail you receive. To defend against this, check your email software settings for an option to "display attached images," or something similar, and make sure to turn the option off! Most of the popular webmail programs such as Yahoo and Hotmail have an option to turn this off also - be sure to check the settings and do so.

Use an alternate email account for purchases and mailing lists. Most of the major online shopping centers like Amazon.com have a privacy policy available online, which stipulates what they can and will do with your contact information, including your email address. When purchasing items, it's a good idea to be familiar with these policies, but if you really want to protect your primary email address from junk mailers, just set up a free alternate email account from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or some other free mail provider for this purpose, and then use it whenever you shop online. It's also a good idea to use such an alternate email address when you sign up for an email mailing list, like "Joke of the Day" or something similar. Even though the list owner may not give away or sell your email address, these lists often get archived on a public site, and this can result in your email address being harvested by a spammer from such an archive.

Never try to unsubscribe yourself from junk mail lists. Whenever you get a piece of junk mail, just delete it. Don't click on a link in the message to unsubscribe your email address from the list. When you do, you're potentially confirming (as above) that your email address worked. Even if the senders do remove your address from one list (which is unlinkely), they'll add it to many more.