When the number gets to 15 a day, that's unacceptable. The senders had to
get your address from somewhere. You either used your real email address
when posting to a news group, and it was harvested. Or, filled it in at a
form at an internet site, or someone whom you know got a worm or virus that
went through the address book on that infected system, replicated itself and
mailed itself to all entries in the address book, or someone included your
address on the CC line of an email sent to others whose system got infected
by the above mentioned type worm or virus, or you signed up to be on a
mailing list. Before I learned the importance of keeping my email address
private, I was getting about a hundred SPAM messages (some with
viruses/worms) a day. Since the problem already exists for you, here's what
I'd do:
1. Change your email address (some ISPs charge a minimal fee to change the
primary email address for an account)
2. Notify personal contacts of your new email address, and the reason for
it. Explain nicely that you would appreciate that they not give your email
address to anyone, or include your email address in any messages sent to
others unless they use BCC (which unlike CC, doesn't put your address in the
code of the messages received by others), or send you internet greeting
cards or internet post cards (although the sender thinks the cards are free,
the real price is that both the sender's and the recipient's email addresses
are harvested and usually end up on spam lists). Don't give your new email
address to someone you know doesn't use safe email practices.
3. Get a free hotmail email account. Use the hotmail address when posting
to news groups, filling out web forms, registering software. Also use that
address when emailing personal contacts whom you know don't use safe email
practices, and people you don't personally know.
4. Think about changing to an ISP that filters email for viruses and spam
when they reach the server. Mine does, and many others do too.
