Spam can hit our inboxes throughout the day, creating annoying distractions that force us to have to scan it and delete it, where time could be better spent elsewhere.

According to statistics reported on page 6 of Singapore’s TODAY paper on August 13, 2007:

• 6 trillion business email messages were sent worldwide last year
• 49 minutes is spent on email each day by the average worker
• 4 hours is spent on email each day by the senior management worker
• 80 percent of email sent is actually spam
• 62 percent of workers check their business email at home or on holiday
• 10 points is the fall in IQ experienced by workers distracted by email (more than twice that found in cannabis studies)

You’ve checked out the stats, so would it be worth exploring how you could get a handle on your email? Here are two tricks that we have already started to use to help guard us from spam and spammer attacks:

(1) Turn Your Email Address Into An Image: When you need to display your email address on your website, you can protect it from being added to a bulk email list by displaying that email address as an image. Use Safe Mail that turns it into an image that looks like text, or check out Email Cover that turns your email address into a CAPTCHA image. These are both free services, and something that we’ll be using on ALL of our websites that display our email addresses.

(2) Use A Spam Blocker: If your email address is already trapped on bulk email lists, there are cool services that you can subscribe to that block out ALL emails that aren’t by known senders. All those messages by unknown sources that fall into your spam folder can be checked occasionally in case a genuine email arrives there, so don’t worry – new contacts can still reach you. This saves you tonnes of time by keeping your attention on those emails that consistently deserve your attention. The spam blocking service we use and highly recommend is Spam Arrest.