As webmasters, we all have to put up with email worms and viruses, but just how much are you willing to put up with, and how much are you willing to give up to do away with some of it? Unbeknownst to many webmasters, many worms actually search through the browser's cache looking for emails, so the more infected computers' caches your email address appears in, the more worms you get. I've known webmasters who got over a gig of mail per day.

Most webmasters try turning to their providers to get rid of the worms, but that can be an infinite task for the providers and many won't even try it. They'll just tell you it is your email, so you have to put up with it. Even for providers that do filter some emails out, it is hard for them to get all of it without getting many legitimate ones, too. So, filtering is not always the best way to eliminate worms.

The simplest, most effective way to cut down on your spam is to cut down on the amount of times your email appears in surfers' caches. This can be easily accomplished by having a contact form instead of posting your email address directly on your site. Now, only the visitors who you reply to after they've filled out your form will have access to your email address.

I would also recommend avoiding the use of standard email addresses like webmaster@ and postmaster@... just bounce those messages. You won't miss anything, except worms and spams. You can also change it later to something else if too many worms start flowing in.

On the client side, the single best recommendation I can give you is to buy a virus scanner such as Norton or Eset Nod32 that will scan your incoming messages and remove worms.