As you have probably figured out, once a spammer gets your e-mail address, there is little that you can do to get them to stop sending messages to you. It is very unlikely that they will honor any requests you make to be removed from their lists and any such requests will almost certainly assure that you will receive even more spam. If they were reputable marketers, they would not have spammed you in the first place.

So what can you do to stop spammers from getting your address? One step is to make sure that you do not give out your address online. Many sites request that you give them an e-mail address in order to log in. On reputable sites, this is an innocent means to get your contact information for purely legitimate purposes, but some sites may use this tactic to harvest addresses to use for spamming or to sell to spammers.

To avoid giving your address to potential spammers, it is a good idea to use an e-mail address other than your personal address when you fill out forms online. You can do this by creating a new GoBigWest e-mail address just for this purpose. That way, if the new address becomes a target for spammers, you can simply rename it and start over without losing your primary address and without having to notify your contacts of the change. To set up a new e-mail address, go to https://accounting.gobigwest.com:9070/members/login.cgi, sign in using your GoBigWest username and password, and click on the link labeled My E-Mail. Then click on the Add button, enter the desired username and password, and click the Submitbutton.

It will take approximately 15 minutes for the account to be created. After that time, you will be able to access the account using the GoBigWest homepage. In order to access the account using a mail program such as Outlook Express or Eudora, you will need to add the new account settings to your mail program. Instructions to do this are provided in the help section on the homepage or you can contact a customer service representative at 866-335-0006 for assistance.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 9:48 am and is filed under GoBigWest User Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.