---SPAM---
No one likes it and it helps to add to the total number of emails sent every day...
Spam is the email you get from people or companies that you have never heard of or want to have anything to do with.
Spam rarely works...but it must work some of the time other wise it would die out.
Spammers can get your email from a number of sources. Online forms and competitions are one of the favourites as it can be included in the rules that you may recieve it.
Other sources can include bulk emailing every posible combination as happened to me recently on Hotmail.
Also companies can either sell or 'loose' entire databases of email addresses.
The big problem with spam is once it starts it can snowball. There are various ways to try and stop people from spamming you, but unfortunatly most of them do not work. One of the favourites is to send an email asking them to stop, infact alot of spam emails include an address for this to happen....While this may happen in most casses all you are doing is advertising that the email they are sending advertising to is indeed active..also they may stop but who else might they then tell about your active address?
The best, most effective way of preventing spam is to not enter your email address into any form ever, but this is silly and will get boring really fast. Another better solution is to setup an additional email address, one that you do not have to check all the time. A number of companies offer these services for free and the service tghey provide with them is pretty much the same wherever you go. Many of them even provide services for filtering out spam or unwanted email automatically. Links to sites that offer these services can be found on the links page.