Spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam and spam

Hands up who's fed up of being sold things they don't want in their inbox every day! It's even more irritating than being served in a greasy spoon cafe packed with chanting Vikings.

There is no easy answer, but these tips should stem the flow of spam - aka unwanted email.

Preventative measures

• If you have to give your email address to a website, use a different one to your regular account. We have several different email accounts for this purpose. If some unscrupulous marketer should then add it to their list, you can cancel the account with little harm done.
  
  
• Try not to get into the habit of using cc: in the headers of emails to forward virus warnings or other spurious chain emails to large groups of friends. They may look helpful but are often sent out by spammers who want to harvest email addresses. Two websites which will help you check to see if what you're about to forward is really true are listed below. We really recommend you use them before selecting everybody in your address book.
  Break The Chain
  Snopes (actually a very entertaining site and worth a look whether you're researching a spurious email or not - it even debunks the myth that Coca-cola decided which colours Santa Claus would wear)
  
  
• Some cheeky spammers use software that collects email addresses from websites. There are ways to hide your address from such software using Javascript. Get in touch if you need any more help spam-proofing your site.

Cures

• Rechord's anti-spam system of choice is ClearMyMail. This service does not rely on filters to get rid of spam - so none will ever slip through the net. When you set it up, you identify senders that you want to receive mail from; newsletters you are subscribed to, for instance, or friends and colleagues. When email comes into your inbox, ClearMyMail acts as a sentry, letting through the emails from your approved senders, and rejecting blocked ones. The clever bit happens when ClearMyMail gets email from somebody you've not explicitly approved. It will send you an email telling you the email addresses of the senders, and you just tell it which ones you want.
  The link below will take you to their 30-day free trial.
  ClearMyMail
  
  
• If you want to join the throngs of spam vigilantes, register with Spam Cop and report any naughty emails to them. They will investigate and report the originator to the relevant authorities so that they can't plague us any more.
  SpamCop
  
  
• There is also a project on the boil called Okopipi which aims to turn the tables on the spammers by sending the companies advertised by spam an email for every junk mail they send out. All perfectly legal, but vengeful enough to be rather satisfying.
  Okopipi