We all lead such busy lives (especially around the holiday season) that I thought you might appreciate this tip on how to cut down on spam e-mail. Who has time to wade through hundreds of junk e-mails searching for the ones from our friends and families that we actually want to read? This little trick can help keep your mailbox free of the unwanted clutter: Whenever you visit various websites on the Internet, your e-mail address often gets “recorded” automatically, and this is how many businesses build their target customer lists. Next thing you know, you are receiving e-mail advertisements left and right. What’s worse, many businesses sell their e-mail list to other marketers, and then you end up with all the spam e-mails as well. So, how can you stop this from happening? You can use spam filters, of course -- but then many e-mails you actually want don’t get through. I’ve found another solution, however, and it’s worked really well for me: Most Internet service providers allow you to have more than one screen name with your account, so I simply set up different screen names for different purposes. I use one screen name strictly for sending and receiving e-mail to people I actually know, and the only people who have this e-mail address are the people I have personally chosen to give it to. Since I never log onto websites from my private e-mail screen name, I do not get spam. I created a separate screen name that I use to visit websites on the ‘net, when doing research, or shopping online, etc. That e-mail box now fills up with more than 100 spam e-mails every day -- but I don’t care, because I don’t even bother looking at the e-mails sent to that screen name. So there you have it -- a simple way to avoid spam! (Note: I can assure you that my own website is not set up to “capture” the e-mail addresses of visitors -- only people who voluntarily choose to subscribe are placed on the mailing list. Also, I do not rent or sell my subscriber list to others. Just thought you’d like to know...)