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If there's anything more loathsome than spicy, gelatinous, canned luncheon meat, it's junk e-mail. You know the drill: You fire up your in-box hoping to find your friend's promised photo, the latest budget report, or that long-overdue marriage proposal. Instead you get slapped upside the head with all kinds of ridiculous offers, from discount life insurance to refurbished sneaker insoles and red-hot you-know-what. And before you know it, your first e-mail task each day involves deleting dozens of unwanted messages.

But buck up: Although spam seems here to stay, you can reduce it to a minor annoyance. Here are the ten best ways to manage your mail and stamp out spam.

10. Never, ever bite. You should never respond to spam. Why? Well, if you do, you're simply letting the advertiser know that you are a prime target for even more spam. Advertisers who send spam in text format have no way of knowing whether or not you open and read their messages, unless you actually respond.

When you open a message in HTML format, however, the message pulls code from the spammer's server, indicating that your address is a live one. So to be safe, simply delete all junk messages in your in-box without opening them. If you use Outlook, Outlook Express, or Netscape, turn off the preview pane so you don't unwittingly pull code from HTML spam (in effect opening the message).

To deactivate the preview pane, if you use Outlook, go to the View drop-down menu and click Preview Pane. In Outlook Express, select View, Layout, and then uncheck Show Preview Pane. In Netscape, click either arrow on the pane itself and the preview portion will disappear.

9. The real Slim Shady. These days, you're not cool if you don't have at least three e-mail addresses. The trick is to use those extra addresses to keep spam out of your main in-box (more on this in Nom de Spam below). Most ISPs include five to seven free e-mail accounts with their basic service. Just sign up for extra addresses at your ISP's Web site, then tell your e-mail program to download the mail in all of your accounts at once.

For step-by-step instructions, see "Get All Your E-Mail in One Fell Swoop." If you use AOL, you can set up as many as seven different addresses. (Using the drop-down menu, go to keyword Screen Names and click Create a Screen Name.) If you're wasting your extra AOL or ISP addresses on those ungrateful family members of yours, set up a freebie Web-based account, such as Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.

8. Nom de Spam. Having extra addresses means you can keep your main address--the one you check several times each day and use for important correspondence--almost completely spam-free. Keep it close to the vest, sharing it only with people you know, such as friends, business associates, and your family. Never give out your main e-mail address to a Web site, a survey, a database, or a chat room. If you reserve your main address for personal and business correspondence, it's much less likely to fall into the hands of spammers.

You can sometimes reduce spam if your e-mail address has a combination of letters and numbers, such as "your98776name@hotmail.com." Adding numbers to your address can sometimes foil spammers who try to guess every combination of common names, like "Jim," "Jimmy," "James," "Jamie," and so on. Both Hotmail and Yahoo, for instance, let you manually customize your in-box and the addresses you receive in an attempt to block spam.

7. Variety is the spicy ham of life. If it's too late to restrict your main e-mail address to the chosen few--and your account is already smothered in spam--bite the bullet and ditch it for a new one. Okay, so you've got a really cool handle like IronLiver, and it breaks your heart to part with it. But, c'mon, dump it, get a new e-mail address, and inform your friends and colleagues--but make sure you keep it mum from others. While it's a minor hassle to change your address, it's probably smart to always regard your e-mail address as temporary. And that new, uncluttered in-box is a breath of fresh air.

6. If you can't beat it, eat it. Set up an address exclusively for spam. It sounds crazy at first, but there are some very fun and worthwhile activities online that are, unfortunately, total spam magnets--such as discussion boards. If you set up an address just for spam, you can then give out that address--instead of your main address--any time you expect spam to follow. Use it when you register at Web sites, enter a chat room, or post messages to discussion lists or newsgroups. If you faithfully keep this address only for junk mail, you'll only have to check the mail there occasionally, to delete all the spam (with glee).

5. The in-betweener. Okay, you've got your main e-mail address and your spam depository. The former you check several times per day, the latter you check once per month. Now you need an in-betweener. If you shop online or subscribe to e-mail newsletters, set up a third address for this purpose.

Well-behaved vendors and newsletter publishers won't send you solicitations unless you "opt in," but this kind of spam-lite can still be annoying. Besides, the separate address is great for storing e-mail receipts and confirmations from online shopping. Likewise, it's great to read and store your e-mail newsletters in a separate mailbox from your personal and business e-mail. Go there once or twice a week to check in. This might sound like a lot of addresses to keep track of, but having a system like this can help tackle spam.

4. Filter (Part 1): File and ignore. Now that you've got your slew of addresses set up, you need a system to manage them. AOL makes it easy. Simply log on under your various screen names to check your mail accounts. Toggle among them using the Switch Screen Name command on the Sign Off menu. Just ignore the spam account until curiosity gets the better of you.

If you use an ISP, the process is a little different. Instead of switching screen names, you set up folders for each of your ISP addresses. Then you can set your e-mail software to file your e-mail automatically according to addresses you specify. Direct the mail from your shopping and newsletter account, say, into one folder, and the mail from your spam account into another folder. After that, let the rest of your mail come to your in-box. Check (or ignore) the other folders at your leisure.

Even if you have only one e-mail address, you can still filter your messages the same way. AOL's Mail Controls let you accept e-mail from certain addresses but block all others (go to keyword Spam). For instructions on how to automatically file e-mail in Outlook, visit "Organize Outlook E-Mail"; Outlook Express users should check out "Get Organized." For steps to set up Netscape, visit "Organize Mail As It Arrives"; Eudora fans can follow the advice in "Got Spam? Here's How to Stop It."

3. Filter (Part 2): Create your rules. In addition to filing mail in folders according to the address it was sent to, you can set up other mail-handling rules to help you manage spam. For instance, you could set up a rule that automatically deletes mail from a certain troublesome address, or that automatically files e-mail that wasn't specifically addressed to you (visit "Create a Junk Mail Removal System").

You can ask your software to automatically file mail in a spam folder if the subject contains words like "medical breakthrough," "extra income," "XXX," or whatever you specify. Outlook 2002 lets you color-code messages in your in-box that it suspects are spam or adult content, so you can quickly scan the list for easy deletion. For more details, go to "Put the Kibosh on Spam" in "File Management, Excel Tabs, Junk E-Mail."

2. Snitch therapy. For most people, spam is mildly annoying, but to ISPs and network administrators, it's a major problem. All that spam hogs a tremendous amount of bandwidth, hardware resources, and people-hours. If you'd like to help stop spam at its source, you can take action in various ways.

First of all, report spammers to your ISP. AOL subscribers can forward all junk mail sent from an AOL address to screen name TOSEmail1. If the spam comes from a non-AOL account, forward the message to TOSSpam. (For more info, go to keyword Spam and select Report Junk Mail.)

Second, report the spammers to the ISP that generated the spam. To do this, you need to examine the junk mail's header information to determine the ISP domain name from which the spam originated. Then you should contact the postmaster and ask that the ISP restrict the spammer's access to its servers. For the nitty gritty, check out "Tracking Spammers."

Last, get in touch with organizations like the Mail Abuse Prevention System and SpamCop to forward your spam.

And finally, the Number One way to manage spam:

1. Don't let spam get you down. Stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Perhaps the single best way to deal with spam is to put it in perspective. By its nature, e-mail feels deeply personal; it's intrusive and irritating to get junk mail in your in-box. But when you compare spam with telemarketing, AM radio ads, junk postal mail, newspaper advertising, and TV advertising, e-mail spam seems less invasive. It doesn't require killing trees, you don't have to sit patiently while it screams at you until West Wing comes back on, and it doesn't interrupt your dinner. When it comes right down to it, spam probably isn't worth getting your blood pressure up.

Here's your mantra: Click. Delete.