I use Gmail and have been for some time. I have 2 accounts, one for causal emails, newsletters, forums, etc. and one for more important things, banking, job, etc.

The casual account gets about 10-25 spam emails a day, and the other account gets none.

Is this because I am not giving my email out for newsletters and am keeping it only for online banking, personal friends, job etc?

Do spam messages only come from when someone types in their email to an un-trusted website? Or are the messages sent randomly by the spammer?

How do you know what websites will sell email address for money. Is there any real way to know if they are lying or not?

How about if you cancel a subscription with a website? Can they/do they give away your email then?

Now that I have those questions out, I’ll move to my real question...

Is there any way to stop the spam messages from being received? They are already being sent to my spam inbox, but sometimes a few legit emails get dumped there anyway. It is really hard to go through the massive amounts of emails and make sure I am not deleting something I want/need.

Is it possible to ban an IP address of the one sending the email/s? I just want to prevent the pointless emails from even coming into my spam box but am not sure of how to do it.

I am interested in other people’s opinions or experiences with this and any help or ideas you may have.

1) Same ideology as ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. You tell nobody an email address and its unlikely to get spammed.

2) Random mass-mailed.

3) You don't. This is why you are recommended to use throwaway addresses whenever possible. Then when there's too much spam coming to it, just abandon it and make a new one. Any decent site will have a Privacy Policy.

4) Depends on the site policy. Some T&Cs of using may give them carte blanche to do just that.

5) No. Typically once you're on a list its hard if not impossible to get off them again. Easiest solution is just change your email address.

6) The IP addresses are typically forged so you'll only end up blocking innocent people from certain providers anyway, plus in any case you'd have to maintain a list of half the internet and keep it up to date. No, far easier just delete the ones you don't want.

Hey! One thing that I've used is a CRS (challenge response system). You put the people that you want to get mail from on a 'whitelist' & everybody else gets a challenge email. By that I mean that when they email you, they get an automated response where they have to click a link, go to a site, and type in some numbers. After that, you get their email & they are approved. You can also choose to 'blacklist' certain emails, or entire domains. Two different ones that I've tried are ChoiceMail & Zaep. It cut my spam WAY down, so you may want to consider giving it a try. : ) Hope that is helpful..

**ShortGirl2**

Hi MuffinsCanFly, and welcome

It looks like a lot of bases were covered... The only thing I want to say right now is that if a website is going to "sell" your e-mail address, it should be listed in their privacy policy somewhere. Bear in mind that most newsletters, especially those from corporations, usually ask in their subscription form if you'd like to receive mail from their "sponsors or other third-party vendors". That would be one box to keep without a check mark.

As far as trying to tell if a site is telling a lie, that's rather hard to catch. Not sure how you could prove either standpoint on that one.

If you have more questions, don't be afraid to ask

Gmail lets you use a 'tag' system. When you sign up for a new website, instead of entering in your normal email address, enter in:

your_user_name+website_name@gmail.com

Gmail ignores everything after the +, but it still shows up in the email headers. Sign up for a site, if you get spam, check which website gave your email address to spammers, then stop using it. If you don't get any spam from the website, change your email address to your 'real' email address.

Some websites don't let you sign up with a plus in your email address, but it's worth a shot.

http://www.betadaily.com/2008/04/04/how-to...ss-to-spammers/