It might be common sense, but i have enough friends who are continually struggling with their email accounts and spam. I am proud to say that i have not been having such problem for more than a year…
Everybody needs at least four email accounts:
1. personal – this is the email address that you give to all your ‘trusted’ friends, family and people you can trust…never ever give this to anyone you dont know or even disclose it online, in a mailing list, purchasing stuff online, putting it up in your blog, etc.
2. business/serious – you need this email for a more serious stuff like job application or your business dealings. You can use free email services, but choose email address that projects seriousness, not cutey email addresses like: snoopy84@hotmail.com or invin_07@yahoo.com. If possible, use a combination of your first and last name. Again, like your personal email addie, you must guard this email account. You can also use this for your uni email especially if you want to redirect your uni email accounts. Remember those class presentation that might be saved on your email, and you have the whole class looking at the subjects in your email account while you searched for the email you sent to yourself?? (it can be embarrasing, if you have an email with a subject line like “i miss you” 
, unless of course, you are a poser!)
3. purchase/mail-list – this is the email address you use to do your online purchases or for your regular mailing list or newsfeed. you should create at least two folders: one for purchases and the other one for the mailing list. you can easily set up filters to redirect all the incoming emails straight to those folders. If you are using gmail, you can even set up different labels that can put your receipts under ‘purchase’ label and (say) ‘ebay’ label.
4. junk – everything else goes here. yes, the one that u used to sign up for online forums, friendster accounts, online services, and your adult site subcriptions. Without a doubt you will start getting spam in this new address…. but thats the whole point. Gmail and Yahoo have great filter system for spams.. but when they become tooo annoying, its time for you to set up a new one….
You can combine some of these accounts into one like the personal and serious accounts. you must remember though to not use cutey nicknames if your personal one operates as your serious email accounts too! There is nothing more annoying for prospective employers or your colleagues to receive email from imcute@hotmail.com!
Oh and… if you decided to put your email address in your blog… dont put the email address as it is… modify it like mine: emailtedy (at) gmail (dot) com or emailtedy “@” gmail.com or variations thereof…. spammers use webpage scanning tools to actively search for email addresses lying around….
If you have only one email address so far, perhaps, its time for you to change the habit….
For me, i have 6 email addresses. A pain? not really… because i check them at different times… i know for example, i wont be expecting anything in my purchase account on certain days of the month…. so essentially, i only check around three email addresses per day.
So, how many email addresses do you have?
nice analysis.
love ya blog
Tedy I totally agree and I have . . 5 email addresses I think and all segregated out though some have managed to cross over a little
I find a better and perhaps simpler trick to use is to exploit the +emails that you get through gmail. For example, if my email was VKVK@gmail.com, anything with ***@gmail.com">VKVK+***@gmail.com with anything in *** will come to my email of VKVK@gmail.com. This way I can give my main email to everything, creating different subemails. I also use the filters to screen out everything that comes in say, VKVK+spam@gmail.com.
Enjoy.