The most important tip ever for fighting spam

The rate of spam email sent these days is enormous! Over 95 percent of all messages sent is spam while the legitimate email represents about 5 percent. Unbelievable isn't it?

But one often forgotten fact is that spammers are actually businesses. Yes, the businesses that have incredibly low response rates - about 15 responses on about a million of sent emails but obviously worth the effort to them. Do not mistake them for legitimate email newsletter businesses - the difference is that you never opted in for the spammer's email - in other words - you never left your email address for them to use - they started using it without you being aware of it.

The laws do not help much either. Since 2003 and the legislation of the CAN-SPAM act there has been no significant move in the direction of protecting people from receiving spam email. The government looks at spammers as the "struggling businessmen trying to make a living in the great Free Enterprise System". The only real requirement of CAN-SPAM was to place opt-out link somewhere near the bottom - which spammers started putting as well. But don't mistake that for real opt-out link either, this one is used to identify if your email address is being read and therefore if it is - they will send you even more spam now that they have confirmed you are reading it.

Again, it is important that you note the difference between the two. Real opt-out link is useful for unsubscribing the newsletter, spammer's so called opt-out link will only get you more spam to that email address if you click it.

So now when you know how to recognize them - how to drive spammers out of business? As easy as it sounds - not buying from them is the the best thing you can do. Whenever you recognize something that is advertised by spam email do not buy from them. Even if you need such product they advertise (usually you don't because such products wouldn't be advertised through spam emails), do not buy it from them directly. Rather, go to local store and buy it that way instead of going to the website of the spammer. As for those emails you opted in - they are OK.

As long as email response rates continue to decline, fewer and fewer spam businesses will find it worthwhile to continue using this marketing strategy to drive business to themselves. Hopefully, with more people being aware of the above facts we'll be able to start using email once more as it was intended to in the beginning - as the form of personalized communication.