With a single Gmail email address, you can create an unlimited number of alias accounts to help sort and track incoming mail. Your email aliases can be created either by adding dots to your address or by tacking on a “+” phrase. For example, if your email address is myname@gmail.com, you can also use my.name@gmail.com or m.y.name@gmail.com, and so on. The plus used after your name can be used to track mail from specific sources. For example myname+somesite.com@gmail.com could be used when requesting information from “somesite.com.” For more, read these articles from Consuming Experience or MakeUseOf.

In addition to being an excellent choice for web-based email, Google’s Gmail can also be used as a spam-filtering front end to your existing email client. For two slightly different approaches on how to do this, read Dylan at Mboffin or John Zeratsky.

As spam instant messages (IM) become more and more prevalent, it’s a good practice to configure your IM software to only accept messages from people you know. In AIM, click on Edit, Settings, and then click on the Privacy settings, and then choose “Only Allow Users on my Buddy List.” For instructions on how to set this option on other popular IM clients, read Ask Leo.

In addition to the sheer annoyance of receiving forwarded emails with hundreds of email addresses visible in the body of the message, warning you about something or another (and urging you to email all your friends), there is a high probability that the message itself is simply not true. Next time you get one, instead of forwarding it on, look it up at Snopes.com to determine its validity. The most widely spread urban legends are summarized here.

In recent months, e-card spam infected with a virulent computer worm has increased. How do you tell the difference between a valid e-card and a virus? Never open a greeting card sent from an unnamed friend, neighbor, classmate, schoolmate, partner or family member. Two things to look for are whether you know the sender, and the kind of link they are asking you to click. Learn more about the Storm Worm at Information Week and this Chris Pirillo Video .

Recent increases in spam mail can be traced to botnets. According to Leo Notenboom, “a botnet is a networked collection of computers infected with software that can be remotely controlled to awaken and perform some task. Typically that task is to send email. Lots of email. Lots of spam.” You can protect yourself from getting infected by running anti-spyware and anti-virus software, and keeping it updated. Learn more from Ask Leo.

If your inbox is overrun with spam, and your ISP (or corporate mail server) does not offer a spam solution that works for you, you can try using Google’s free email service Gmail as a front-end spam filter. Read more in this article from Jeremy Zawodny: Using Gmail as My Spam Filter.

Posting your email address on a web page in a machine readable format is simply asking for trouble because thousands of robots crawl the Web looking for email addresses to add to spam mailing lists. One way to avoid this is not use text or HTML (which is machine readable) but instead put your email address in a graphic that can only be read by a human being.E-Mail Sigs is a free tool that creates graphics for nine of the most popular email services, including Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, MSN and Yahoo!

Coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, email users around the world have found their email boxes stuffed with German Neo-Nazi propaganda. In what appears to be the first time spam has been used to promote a political viewpoint, the Sober Q worm replicates itself on infected machines and sends mail in both English and German with titles such as “Dresden 1945″ and “Schily ueber Deutschland.” For the latest news summaries, read http://www.surfnetkids.com/news.php?t=Sober+Q+Spam .

Ever wonder why so many websites ask you to enter squiggly, distorted pass codes? They are using captcha to verify your humanity. A captcha is an automated test that humans can pass, but computers can not. To learn more, read the definitions from Webopedia or Wikipedia. Or dive into Carnegie Mellon’s Captcha Project.