Spam is Net-speak for junk email. Unsolicited promotional messages sent in bulk to the unsuspecting. The most notorious spammer is the infamous Cyber Promotions, which has tangled with CompuServe and America Online in legal battles.

Here are a few practical ways to cut down your intake of Spam

1. If you voluntarily give personal information on a website, click on the check box that says, "please do not send me more information."
2. Ask the spammer to remove you from the list. Simply click on "reply" and type remove in the subject box. Don't bother writing something like, "Please stop sending me unwanted email." Chances are that the entire process has been automated and typing remove is all that will be required. Note that many spammers use fake reply-to addresses, but this seems to work at least 50% of the time.
3. Don't post your user profile on AOL. Spammers mine this AOL feature for personal data about you. Chat rooms, Instant Messenger and ICQ are other programs that Spammers use to mine email addresses. Free email addresses and free Internet services often times sell your personal information to advertisers. Nothing is really free, folks.
4. If you post your email on newsgroups, you might try fooling the spiders that mine the Internet for email addresses by adding something to your email address, like: bob@nospamfdt.net (remove nospam to reply).
5. Report Spammers to abuse@fdt.net. We will do our best to thwart them.
6. Turn off the cookies feature on your browser. You will find this buried in Properties or Internet Options, usually under Advanced Options on the Tools heading of your browser's toolbar. Uncheck the Accept Cookies option. Note that you will not be able to use some features on the Internet, such as e-commerce site unless you accept cookies.
7. Download Luckman's Anonymous Cookie for Internet Privacy .