The best way to avoid spam is not getting on spammers' lists in the first place. Find out how to use disposable addresses, obfuscation and your watchful eye to steer clear of spam altogether.
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1. Stop Spam with Disposable Email Addresses
You've read it here, and you know it well: using your real, primary email address anywhere on the Web puts it at risk of being picked up by spammers. And once an email address is in the hands of one spammer, your Inbox is sure to be filled with lots of not-so-delicious spam every day. But what should you use instead of a real email address? Use...
2. Watch Out for Those Checkboxes
When you sign up for something on the Web, there is often some innocent-looking text at the end of the form saying something like: "YES, I want to be contacted by select third parties concerning products I might be interested in." Quite often, the checkbox next to that text is already checked and your email address will be given to you don't know who. To avoid that...
3. Disguise Your Email Address in Newsgroups, Forums, Blog Comments, Chat
Spammers use special programs that extract email addresses from Web sites and Usenet postings. To avoid ending on a spammer's mailing list when you post to a Web forum or a newsgroup, you can...
4. How Long, Complicated Email Addresses Beat Spammers
Spam will, eventually, make it to any mailbox. Any? Here's how to make it hard for spammers to guess your address.
5. Use Disposable Email Addresses at Your Web Site
Using disposable email addresses in forms on the Web and for mailing lists is a great way to stop spam. But with a little effort you can even use them on your home page, too, and allow legitimate mail from unknown senders while keeping out spam...
6. Domain Owners: Set up Throwaway Addresses to Fight Spam
If you own a domain name, you have a great anti-spam tool at hand: your mail server. All mail to a address at your domain that does not already exist (such as "quaxidudel@example.com") is forwarded to your main account by default. You can use this feature to...
Source: http://email.about.com/od/spamandgettingridofit/tp/most_effective.htm