Guide to Finding Out Who is Spamming You (and protecting yourself)

Buy a domain

Get yourself a domain. If you're a small business, you should already have one anyway. Nowadays, it's cheap and easy. For 8 bucks a year you can have the domain you want.

I recommend: MyDomain.com - you can search for availability and purchase your domain on the spot.

Protect your WHOIS email address.

If you've ever purchased a domain, you have a WHOIS email address. The company where you purchased your domain should have whois/spam protection which masks the email address displayed in the WHOIS record for your domain. Any email going to that masked email is filtered and forwarded on to your real email address.

I recommend: MyDomain.com - for free, they provide the email spam protection.

Protect your WHOIS postal address

If you've ever purchased a domain, you have a WHOIS email address. These typically need to be valid addresses in order to prove you truly own the domain. The company where you purchased your domain should have this functionality. What happens is the comapny provides their information in the WHOIS database, rather than yours. No more sales phone calls, junk mail or SPAM due to your domain registrations ever again.

I recommend: MyDomain.com - for $2.99/year, they provide WHOIS protection.

Create email forwarding with your domain company

Your domain hosting provider should have a "catch all" email function. What this does is basically give you millions of email address with 1 domain.

I recommend: MyDomain.com

Don't use your real email

Well, kind of... When giving out your email address, use this technique. Make up a new email address everytime you need to give it out. For example, Let's say you own the domain isellchocolate.com. If I need to give my email address to cnn.com, I'll use the email "cnndotcom@mail.isellchocolate.com". Do this everytime you need to give out your email.

I recommend: MyDomain.com

Find out who is spamming you

You can determine who gives out your email address by looking at the "To:" field of your incoming email. For example, you receive an email and it's to "cnndotcom@mail.isellchocolate.com". You look at the from address and it's not from cnn.com, you know that cnn.com is the one who is selling your email. FYI, I've never had an issue with cnn.com.

I recommend: MyDomain.com