Thanks to Mark Flanders for his great effort on organizing a review of good posts that may not be getting a ton of exposure.  This post was inspired by two posts I found (because of Mark's efforts) by Daniel Odio and Frank Llosa. Regarding email addresses (or addy's) and SPAM.  Be sure to read their posts.. WAIT!! after you read this one! ;^)

It was comforting to know that others deal with spam in creative ways. Why? because it makes me feel better about me. Why? Because I'm a little protective of my email addresses. Why?  Because I don't like to spend time wasted on deleting SPAM. Why? Boy you sure do ask a lot of questions! :)

I will address my own style of dealing with spam and email organization. You can read the other gentlemen's posts for some real good info and tips as well. So welcome, and enter my unique way to handle to unwanted emails OR email organization. On with it!!

Ok, so this requires one thing that many of you may not have.. but is quite simple to set up.
The cost is $9.95 a month... but this also hosts all my domains (websites) and all my email accounts.  I think its worth it for the email alone. It allows for unlimited aliases, accounts, filters, etc.

CATCHALL: Catch all is a feature that is available with many hosting services (also called the default address). This is what it means.. assuming your domain is called 'mydomain.com', you will receive anything@mydomain.com. So it could be appraiser@mydomain.com, theboogieman@mydomain.com , TLWshotoffmyTOE@mydomain.com and so on..  Catch all is cool. BUT.. you should block some common SPAM aliases like: sales, admin, info, contact, etc. What is an alias? read on.

ALIASES: An alias is just as you might think it sounds. Its an A.K.A. (also known as). Aliases can be used when you have the 'catch-all' feature above, without actually creating email accounts or email boxes.  So, you can use an alias for every little different thing. EXAMPLE, 1234MapleStreet@mydomain.com for the listing on Maple Street. Bellsouth@mydomain for Bellsouth to contact you. customername@ " for your customers.. and etc. Aliases are cool.. read on to see why.  I use an alias for each listing in the MLS. It's incredible to see how fast the spam makes it to my inbox, normally 2 days. (MLS is selling it or people are harvesting emails from the MLS). As soon as that listing is done, the alias or address is blocked. No more junk, please!

FORWARDING:  Aliases can be forwarded to 1 or more email accounts. So  appointment@mydomain.com can forward to 3 emails, to make sure someone gets a call back quick! It can also be forwarded to your cell as a text message if you know how!  Also, forwarding allows for another option,.. not to forward. This can be done in two ways:

1. 'bounce'- which means it will be returned to sender with a notice that the email does not exist. 
2.  'fail'- which simply means that it never reaches your box and does NOT bounce back! (aka as the blackhole)

POP ACCOUNTS: These are actualy email accounts or boxes that you check via web or programs like Outlook. They actually hold your messages and are the emails that are used to send or reply to messages. I use a 'temp' account for returning emails. This is NOT my mail account. That one you will never see! Email accounts should be guarded to avoid spam. Read Franks article, as he presents all the facts.

FILTERING: Filtering can be done with programs like Outlook or via the hosting service where suspected spam is sent to a SPAM box, or done in a rudimentary way by blocking FORWARDING aliases. I do the latter. Once I get junk at an alias, consider it blocked. You can always reach me via my contact form on one of my sites or here on AR. Frank and Daniel discuss filters in their true sense, so I wont expound on it. (NOTE: I use the word filter in a very lose sense. A filter is actually something you can program to act a certain way for an email's content. I may use the term filter by manually blocking Aliases to bounce or fail)

TRACKING: I use aliases to track the origin of any email. HOW? Glad you asked. Well, if your name is MarkFlanders, then your email to contact me is Mark@mydomain.com.  A better example would be if you place an ad online at Craigslists, then 1234Maplecraig@mydomain.com will instantly let me know that the person saw my ad on Craiglists. 1234MapleMLS  is for the MLS, and so on.   So you know if you ever get some spam sent to Mark@mydomain.com, then you know who to 'blame'. :)   Now Mark gets a warning, the alias 'Mark' is blocked and now its Mark2007 or MarkF for the next round.

ORGANIZING / FINDING: So you need to find all emails from bellsouth? In Outlook, do a search for any email that have bellsouth in the "TO" field. Voila!! this is easy to do as long as you are downloading all your email. Web based email should be only for when you're on the road and dont have a laptop. IMHO
When using Outlook (whether it's Outlook Express or Outlook) you can create Mail Rule Messages. Meaning that you can filter any email by any of the 'fields' like the TO, FROM, a word in the SUBJECT, etc. So naturally, any email that hits my Outlook with Mark@mydomain.com goes to the MARK folder, and etc.

*BONUS**  HAVE I-COURTESY: Here is a bonus on internet courtesy. Dont email 50 people with all their addresses in the TO field! If each one forwards that cute email with the kitty-cat picture to 5 people, it could potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people in a day. Its called exponential growth..   THE COURTEOUS thing to do is to EMAIL YOURSELF in the TO field, and BCC (blind carbon copy) everyone else.. SO that all the email addy's are hidden! (NOTE: Outlook allows you to just put everyone in the BCC field with the TO filed empty)

So this is my little sharing session on emails and my creative way of using them.

If you do decide to buy a domain at GoDaddy (recommended) and set it up with an outside host (contact me for my provider), then make sure to pay extra for the Private registration when you buy the domain (like $6). I have found that when you leave the catch-all option open AND you've registered it Private, then you get almost 0 (zero) spam from email harvesting (from domain registrations). and DUH!! dont use your regular email as the email contact in the registration if you choose not to make it private. Use some junk email account that you have just for that!!

BTW, how great is it to tell your client or friend.. "Bill, you can email me at Bill@mydomain.com" 
-What, its Bill? your email is Bill?  
-Yes Bill, your emails are so important to me that I gave you your own address!! :))

Here is a little chart to show how it all works... kinda.