Email Abuse?

I recently "stumbled accross a great site at http://www.emailabuse.org/
Because of the growing age of computer users, not everyone knows how to avoid and combat spam. Spam can be as silly as an advertisment, or as serious as someone posing as your bank requesting sensitive information. Not everyone knows how to handle these attacks, adn this site seems to be really informative!
It describes email abuse as " The use of electronic mail to advertise unethically, harass, annoy, or cause harm to the email recipient. Abuse can take the form of bulk email, threatening email, email sent with the intent to slow productivity of, or cause damage to, the recipient's system. It is a world wide problem and anyone with an email address is vulnerable. "

That just about sums it up! But what do you do in an age where it seems the only option is to impose high security levels on your inbox that prevent new friends and important emails you have requested if you happen to forget to add the address to your contact list!

There are a few tips I know if that help me:
1. Create a "fake" email address, if you are using it online to sign up for anything, or have to give it out for any reason, use that one. Go through it about once a week and clear out the spam. Reserve your REAL email address for friends and contacts, that way you don't have to build an iron wall around your inbox.

2. Never never give out sensitive information through email, any reputable company will not contact you this way, its not secure. If you have your doubts, contact the company directly to ask why they are sending you this email, chances are its a scam.

3. No one ever wins anything over email, they will call you, if you don't remember the name or company, contact over the phone and never release information

4. MY BIGGEST BEEF of all is FORWARDS! There are people out there in the business of collecting email addresses, and you and your friends forward along these tear jerker, cute pics, pleas for help (which are fake) and suburban warnings... after a few round abouts someone has a really extensive list of email addresses they can spam. Lets not forget some peoples emails also include personal work signatures with phone numbers ect. How dangerous is that? If you MUST pass on a forward PLEASE deleate all unrelevant information from the email and send it to one person, asking that they do not forward your email address on again. Sorry, big BEEF of mine!

5. If your email client has a spam blocker use it, if you see a spam message, mark it as spam, the domain name won't return.

I reccommend GMAIL as it has a great spam filter, catches %90 percent before it hit my inbox, and has an easy spam marker too, thunderbird makes a great Pop3 client also, you can download it from Mozilla.org, and it acts the same way as outlook or outlook express, only alot better :P

Last but not least, never hesitate to contact your ISP (internet service provider) or email provider (EX.GMAIL) they are always eager to help and can find out whos really behind these issues, and block their usage if necessary!