I keep 2 email accounts, 1 is with my direct ISP(a canadian telco called Telus) they provide my highspeed DSL into my house, they provide their security service software that runs on my desktop.
The other account is with an online service like yahoo/hotmail(I use gmail) and use this account to sign up to many online services like linkedin, dave's garden, skype and yes thehotpepper - anytime someone adds me as a friend, my gmail gets the request. I also have to provide a valid adult email account when ever my kids want to sign up for an online game, like club penguin. My goal is to have gmail front end all the SPAM keeping my Telus account for business and personal contacts only.
Now you would think, with some of the services i have linked my gmail account to, that i would get bombarded with SPAM, nope, nothing. But, my Telus account, on occasion, lets some SPAM slip through and that's when I get offers of member enlargement, viagra, online degrees etc. Never got a call from Miss Sofia, perhaps it's too cold in Canada for her.(actually, I shouldn't say that for sure because I screen a lot of my emails from my blackberry before they even get to my desktop and i delete them using the BB). The SPAM that does get through is eventually caught by Telus and filtered as they update their security data.
Even with advance securtiy you still ahave to be aware of what websites you are visiting and sometimes that is difficult especially if you are a "googler". with all the links that are provided from a search, some could be hacked and you have to know how to back out gracefully so nothing is loaded onto your computer. I had 1 that said I had a virus and to click here to remove it, I knew I didn't have a virus but it wouldn't let me close explorer. I finally did <cntrl><alt><del> and blew it away through task manager. We had uniblue registry booster get loaded on the computer, the wife was doing something, i think looking for music and a site she was on said her computer was too slow to access it and somehow it ended up downloading itself on our system. She said she didn't tell it to download.