Spam is everywhere. It's in your RL mailbox, on your fax machine, in your text messages, in all aspects of the internet, and even in my dreams. This is because the cost of sending spam is very low, as well as the cost to enter this market if you want to make a few bucks. It appears that spammers still benefit from this practice in one way or another, otherwise the entire concept would have died a long time ago. Wikipedia has a helpfull article on spam which explains more about the different kinds of spam and the different places spam is received.

So what can we do to get rid of spam? Not a whole lot. But what we can do is catch it in places where it does not bother us too much. Email spam filters are one well known example of this, but they are of course far from perfect. Often, spam still ends up in your inbox or worse, genuine email ends up in your spam folder. In order to be sure that you get all email, you would have to scan the subject lines of your spam folder after you are done with your regular inbox. Personally I do not do this, because I believe that anyone emailing me should have a certain level of intelligence, a level high enough to allow them to make sure any email they sent does not look like spam in one way or another. Not entering a subject line for example. Or all uppercase emails, or emails without punctiation. I am very thankful for my spam filter catching those, so that I do not have to deal with them.

The Whoohoonick method of catching spam is setting up places that attract spammers, but not actual people. I call these places spamcatchers. The theory is, any resources and time used by spammers on spamming spamcatchers, is time and resources they can not use on spamming actual people. Therefore I would like to encourage anyone to set up spamcatchers for themselvs if they can. Here are some examples.

This was not originally intended as a spamcatcher, but I made it into one. Once upon a time I was wondering whether any of the free ad-supported webhosts out there was powerful enough to run something that actually uses some more advanced php and mysql. Most of them would allow you to run some simple php scripts, but installing an actual cms would be asking for too much. So I tried a few, and ended up installing simple machines forum software on a tripod account. Tripod later became Lycos, and Lycos now became multimania. The forum is still here but I removed the boards. Still, now in 2010, the forum has 423 members, all of which are spammers. Spammers that would have used the time to sign up with an actual forum, if they would not had used it on signing up with this spamcatcher. If it wasn't for me, they may have been on your forum. You're welcome.

Some blogs allow you to post via email. You would get an email address for the blog only, which you then can email whatever you wish to post to, and then it will appear on your blog. If you were to supply this email address to a third party by accident, this third party would be able to post to your blog. If the email address becomes public, anyone can post. This is what I did. I set up a blog called "Public Blog" for which I published the email address. You can post to it too by simply emailing to publicblog.4242@20six.co.uk. Spammers will catch this email address as well, and send spam to it. Spam will be posted on a blog that nobody reads, and that is that. Any of the posts there, are email spam messages that could have ended up in your inbox otherwise. You are welcome.

A method I use for reducing my personal spam amount, is what I call devnull. Initially, i had my catch-all email(which means anything@hoohoonick.com) to end up in my inbox, in case someone would misspell my email address or something, or in case they would send it to an email address that they assumed exists, while it doesn't. This caused two annoyances:

1.Spam.
Spammers would guess email addresses that fit with my domainname (george@hoohoonick, john@hoohoonick, and so on) and that spam would end up in my inbox.

2. Responses to spam
Spammers will spoof email addresses from my domain sending emails to other internet users. They will for example spam you, making it look like the spam came from jesus@hoohoonick.com. If you or your email client would respond to this spam, this response would be sent to jesus@hoohoonick.com and end up in my inbox. Responses were vacation responses as well as anti-spam methods where I would be asked to verify the email address for the spammer's spam mail to come trough! This is a serious flaw in these antispam systems, as the user of such a system may not receive spam, but the owner of the spoofed email account get the unsollicited email to confirm that the spam is legit! I usually did confirm so that the user of theses systems would receive the spam after all, because if I have to receive junk because of them, I am doing it back. Eventually I thought of a more productive solution though.

devnull
devnull@hoohoonick.com is the email adress where all catchall now ends up. All vacation responses, antispam gimmicks, and actual spam ends up there. Just to have a mechanism there for genuine email sent to the wrong address, such as a type on my address, I set up a vacation responder, which sends back this to all emails received: 

Hi,

you receive this message because you have tried to send email to an
@hoohoonick.com email address that is non-existing!

If you did not send this email, don't worry - it probably means that
someone faked your email address in a junkmail sent to a wrong
address. This is something we have no control over, nor information
about.

If you feel you receive this message in error, please feel free to
contact [abuse]-[@]-[hoohoonick]-[dot]-[com] or
[postmaster]-[@]-[hoohoonick]-[dot]-[com]. IF YOU CONTACT ONE OF THESE
ADDRESSES READ CAREFULLY: By emailing to any @hoohoonick.com email
address, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all
obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED
agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, confidentiality,
non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS
AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with you or your employer, its
partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without
prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent
that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on
behalf of your employer.

IF YOUR EMAIL DOES NOT COMPLY WITH BASIC EMAIL ETIQUETTE IT WILL BE
DISCARDED WITH NO WARNING. OTHER CRITERIA MIGHT APPLY FOR DISCARDING
EMAIL, THIS TO THE DISCRETION OF HOOHOONICK.COM ADMINISTRATORS.

The beauty of this is that Google takes care of the abuse and postmaster email addresss, so i did not even have to put in my own email address there to deal with these tards. When a spammer guesses an email address on my domain that does not exist, they get this back. When you have a vacation responder on that respons to spoofed spam emails, I will not see your vacation response, but you will get this back. If you want to verify a spoofed email address, this is sent back, and though you will not see it, neither do i. If you are too incompetent to find my actual email and start guessing, good luck contacting google to find my actual address. You are not entitled to mail me if you can't figure out my actual address. I love my devnull address with responder. When life gives you lemons, set them up to give you peace in some way.