What used to be a problem just at home – getting junk e-mail for home mortgage refinancing … mail-order vitamins and herbal supplements … and lusty invitations to come see 19-year-old Tracy and her friends on her new web-cam, has now spilled over into the workplace as more and more of us surf the Web at work.

But the results of these actions aren’t good. Current findings show that controlling spam is costing U.S. businesses about $870 per employee annually, but many industry insiders say that figure is ridiculously low and should be more like $20 per employee per HOUR. One respected expert says that the lost productivity due to spam is like having 1 employee out of every 72 in your company come in each morning, lay their head down on their desk and sleep for the entire day.

Just a few years ago, “spam”, the term used to describe the unsolicited e-mail we receive (and NOT the processed meat in a can!) used to be a minor annoyance for most of us. The two or three spams we got every day took maybe 10 seconds to delete, and then we went happily on our way with our work (with some of us humming Monty Python’s “Spam” song in our heads! “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam ....”).

But in 2003, many experts, who get paid tons of money to know this stuff say that the deluge of spam that each one of gets buried under every day is threatening to “overwhelm the usefulness of e-mail.” And when you’re talking about BILLIONS of e-mails being sent out every DAY, you can see why this has become a costly headache for companies just like yours.

One sobering survey of Information Technology execs revealed that almost half of them struggle with a work e-mail load that is 50 to 80% Spam. Think about all the mail you receive in a single day … and now imagine that 8 out of every 10 e-mails are junk! You can begin to appreciate the problem that spam is creating in American businesses.

In just the past three years, dealing with and filtering out “spam” has become the single biggest nightmare for IT professionals around the world, whose job it is to make sure that YOUR computer works when and where you need it. A recent InfoWorld poll shows that twice as many IT professionals listed “Spam Overload” as their #1 concern — more than twice as much as the second-place answer and even ahead of viruses, vendor issues and other server problems.

But while the tech guys and gals are working 24/7 to solve your company’s spam problem, what can you do to help them out? The truth is, there’s not much that YOU can do except change some of your work behavior. But adopting the following three habits can save countless hours of work for your IT department. (Plus, these ideas will also work on your personal e-mail at home!)

Spam-Beater Point #1: Don’t leave your work e-mail address out on public web sites. Once your e-mail appears anywhere on a public Web site, you’re ripe to be plucked automatically by sophisticated spammer software and added to their database, which is then sold to one or more of the 200 bulk e-mail houses around the world. And once your e-mail address is in this database, you’ll likely never escape it no matter how many “Please Remove Me From Your Mailing List” e-mails you send out.

Spam-Beater Point #2: Stay out of Internet chat rooms — even if they’re business-related! Why you’d be in a chat room at work is hard to understand, but many people are addicted to this form of communication and sneak in “on their breaks,” which they think justifies this action. If your company doesn’t have the proper technology to block access to this type of Internet use, you’ve opened up yourself and your company to another avenue for spammers to strike!

Spam-Beater Point #3: Be careful when you register or buy things online with your work e-mail address. This is the hardest one to follow for most employees. There are thousands of work-related journals, e-newsletters and such that have legitimate uses within the realm of your profession (like CareerThink). Almost all of your legitimate business partners (like us) have a clearly-written Privacy Policy that will let you know exactly how your personal information will be used (like your e-mail address). Take a few moments and actually READ these policies before you submit any personal information.

If you don’t understand their policy (and trust us … some of these policies are harder to decipher than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics), or they don’t have a written privacy policy, you’d be better off getting one of those free e-mail addresses (like Hotmail) and subscribing or ordering through that address. Then, once your free e-mail address gets overrun by spammers, you can close it out and get a new free address. Your work e-mail will be available for what you need it for – work!

The best way to keep your work mailbox relatively free from spam is to not treat it the same way you do your personal mailbox at home.