You can also munge your address in places like Newsgroups. To Munge is to add easily recognized extra characters to your address along with the accompanying phrase remove xyz to obtain address . The only trouble is that address harvesting software can be programmed to strip out obvious strings like nospam. Whatever you do, don t fall for the Click here to be removed from this mailing list ploy. Sending a reply that way shows the Spammer that you are alive and reading your mail, and you will get even more Spam.
Some people retaliate against offending mail by filing abuse reports.
Unfortunately, Spammers go to great lengths to hide the actual origin of the mail and many apparent addresses are phony. The real address is buried somewhere in the e-mail header. They provide a free service as well as a subscription service. Both of these sites contain a variety of useful information on Spam. The format of the Web adaption of this article differs slightly from the print version.