Most people were dealing with junk mail long before the Internet. Your mailbox is sometimes stuffed with flyers advertising everything from window washers to companies that want to sell you a weld-seal joint strap. So, it's not a surprise that as soon as people moved from sending things in the mail to sending them online that junk mail soon came with it. Most people refer to those messages in your inbox as spam.

When you open a new email account you will find that you're not getting a whole lot of messages asking you to try a new skin care product or pretending to be from someone you knew when you were working as a manufacturer of wire rope sheaves. This is because advertisers usually buy lists of emails from other companies. And it will take a while before your address registers on those lists.

You should think about this every time you're signing up to be part of a mailing list or otherwise giving out your email address online. Most people only give out their personal email address and this is why you will find more spam in that account than you will when you're checking your mail at work. If you're giving out your information to look at the listing for St Lawrence Market condos or when you're doing some online shopping online you should check to see if they're asking permission to release your email to other services. This is usually a box that is automatically checked for you on one of the forms. Most people will just scroll past it without a thought.

There are two types of spam emails that you might find in your mail. The first is for those sites that are trying to sell you something, like diet pills or software to learn to speak English. These are more annoying than anything else and really do nothing more than clog up your inbox on a daily basis. Then there are emails that contain viruses, pull information from your computer, or send out a chain reaction email to all those in your address book. You might find out one day that you have been promoting a brand of diapers to all of your friends online without your knowledge. These are dangerous and could hurt your computer.

There are many ways of battling spam emails. Some choose to filter their mail through a junk folder and only allow messages from known senders to go through to the inbox. The issue with this is that something might end up in junk mail that shouldn't. Others set up a separate account that is just for times when you need to give out your email. They then reserve their real address for people and sites that they know will not abuse it.