Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

[chopin1810]

What has happened to my Gmail account?? I had absolutely no spam yesterday, I just check it... 130 SPAM MESSAGES??? What happened?? I never got any spam before now... at least gmail recognized ALL of it and put it in the spam folder... good old gmail...
Is there a way I can report this to Google??

[netdaemon862]

set up some more filters and labels

[Roxoff]

Your own personal blog (here) carries your gmail email address. That is a sure-fire way to bring tons and tons of spam sailing your way.

[chopin1810]

Your own personal blog (here) carries your gmail email address. That is a sure-fire way to bring tons and tons of spam sailing your way.

Nope, I set that up after I got all the spam mailings... I don't know much about how these spammers think, but maybe they just chose my address randomly...

[a12ctic]

were you shopping online? i got a whole bunch of spam after i was shopping online

[Indefatigable]

I don't know how I've done it, but I've managed to avoid spam in my Gmail and Yahoo accounts almost completely. One of my Gmail accounts has two pieces of spam sitting in the junk box, and that's it. (As far as I know, no spam is being automatically rejected from ever getting into my account; anything that looks like spam gets delivered and put directly into the junk box.)

If you shop online or sign up for anything at all, there should be a privacy policy that you can read to find out what'll be done with personal information you submit. This goes for shopping, game sites, dating services, free webhosts, or anything else that wants your email address in order to sign you up. No matter how innocent the site looks, read the policy first.

Some of those privacy policies are sneaky-- you have to read between the lines and figure out what could be done with your information. I almost entered an online contest to win gift certificates for a local mall, but decided against it. Their privacy policy said that they would share email addresses with their partners (I think they meant companies that had stores in the mall) and wouldn't use the addresses for their own commercial purposes. Note that they didn't (and can't) promise anything about what their partners will do with the addresses.

The other thing is that any time you post your email address in a public place, whether it's a message board post, a blog, a profile that can be viewed by members or others, or on an actual webpage, spell it out in a way that address-finding software won't recognise as an email address (like "myname at mailhost dot com") and don't hyperlink it.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. They're just good habits to get into, and for as much time as I spend on the internet, they seem to be working for me.