As soon as you go on-line to conduct business and open your first E-mail address you will start to receive unwanted E-mail called SPAM. How did these people get your mailing address, you wonder, and why are they bothering you? Whether they are advertising unwanted products to you or enticing you to participate in a scheme, SPAM Web sites are generally not worth your time.

Whenever you post your address on-line (a bulletin board, an AOL chat room, a Internet news article via Dejanews, chances are some enterprising individual will snarf (retrieve without permission) the address for their own direct-mail needs. It's not that difficult to do, actually - products like Anawave Websnake, and others found here make it supremely easy to do so.

Unfortunately, the big problem with the above softwares is that they don't differentiate between a targeted audience and the person who designed or hosted the site. Thus, folks who opt to use said software often will send unsolicited SPAM to the wrong people, and suffer major complaints about them to their ISP.

After E-mail addresses are gathered, they are often sold as direct mailing lists. Thus, your address begins a CyberJourney that could result in SPAM about golfclub balls, toner cartridges, make- money-with-chain-letters(although it's illegal,) and more.

Someone in your home or office may also inadvertantly cause your E-mail address to find its way to places you don't want. If you have charming teenagers at home who surf when you are not online, make darned sure they don't casually visit porno sites and other places where you wouldn't want your professional address bandied. Most often, such sites will have software in place that steals your email address when you visit the site. Once that happens, it will be almost impossible to stop the future flood of sex-related SPAM.

Many SPAMs will put in their E-mail, "send us a response that says REMOVE if you don't want to receive any more." DON'T DO THIS! All it accomplishes is that it shows the sender your E-mail address is active. Active people make active purchases, so your address will continue to be used on direct marketing lists.

Another big time-waster on the Internet are the many scams and frauds that are floating about. In 1994, David Rhodes started his chain letter of sending five dollars to people on his list. Nowadays, 10 years later, said pyramid scam is still quite active (you can see one of the first incarnations here. Amusingly enough, keeping in sync with inflation, current incarnations of this scam now opt for $7).

If you receive email that seems too good to be true, check out the Internet ScamBusters. This site lists a great many of the known scams drifting lazily about the Internet, and how not to get taken in.

Have you received E-mail stating that large companies will send money to individuals, and all you have to do is forward the E-mail to all of your friends? Or that a dying child or someone named Craig Shergold wants to receive as many postcards as possible? Have you been seized with an insane desire to forward these E-mails to all of your friends, to help the cause?

In a word, don't.

The Internet is brimming with urban legends. Urban legends, while amusing to read, take up valuable time, time you could use in promoting your business instead. Check out http://urbanlegends.minigco.com or http://www.urbanlegends.com should you ever wonder if rather odd-sounding received E-mail is legit. Chances are, it's not.

Here are some suggestions on how you can outwit SPAM: