Dealing with spam takes up a huge amount of time; time that could be better spent doing other things...any other thing. We all have some sort of ritual for removing spam from our computers, deleting it, junking it, blacklisting it or any combination of these. But many of us don't take the extra step, a step that can actually help to rid the world of spam. The key to permanently destroying spam is to report it.

The best thing that you can do is to send the a copy of the spam that you have received directly to the FTC, at spam@uce.gov. These emails are stored and analyzed, so those responsible can be held accountable for the laws they have broken. When you send a copy of the email, be sure to send the entire email, including the from address, the subject line and the entire contents. You can also forward the spam to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and they will add the email to their own database, to help protect their other customers.

Be sure that you are reporting the true offenders, those sending you pharmaceutical and dating offers. You do not want to report the marketer who's newsletter you once actively read, who you have fell out of favor with or a company who you have purchased products from. For the latter, request to be unsubscribed from their list, it is not fair to report someone for spamming when you have requested information from them.

You can also do your part to avoid spam by setting your email security high and if you have your own web site, you can add special html code on your site to prevent email farming robots from stealing email addresses from your web site. If you actively use your email address for online shopping, newsletters or other registration forms, you should consider signing up for a second email address, to protect your original email address from generating spam. Then you can use the second email address for any blogs, boards and public mailing lists that you sign up for.

Also, be sure not to become a spammer yourself. Never send an email promoting products to anyone who has not request it. Avoid marketing with "safe lists" and ad blasters. Create your own email lists and use an autoresponder service that requires double-optin for subscribers, this will protect you.

Do your part to combat spam and we will all get a little time back in our day.