Got a piece of unwanted email? Tempted to fire off a flame or a complaint to the sender's Internet service provider? Before you get someone in trouble or make an enemy, ask yourself the following questions:

Did you sign up and forget?

If you're like me, you visit many Web sites and are frequently asked to provide your email address and other personal information. It's possible that the email you have received came from a Web site registration, a warranty card, a visit to a trade show booth, or some other source that you have simply forgotten about.

Examine the email a little more carefully. Be willing to give the sender the benefit of the doubt. Do they provide a legitimate reply address, contact information, and unsubscribe instructions? If so, they'll probably respond to a polite "remove" request. No need for a tirade!

Did a friend sign you up?

This is poor etiquette, but it happens sometimes. A friend receives an email offer or newsletter. Thinking you would appreciate it, he or she signs you up without asking first.

Although it's hard to tell if this is what has happened, it's another reason not to blow a gasket when you receive an unrequested email message. It's one of the many possible sources of commercial email.

Is it mistaken identity?

I get many spam complaints because of the activities of a company that has a domain name similar to my EmailResults.com domain. Recipients make the mistake of sending their complaints to me, even though I had absolutely nothing to do with the mailing. Some of these complaints are angry, obscene, and threatening. How do you think I feel when I receive one of these rants?

So before launching a complaint -- and perhaps getting some innocent party in trouble with their ISP -- consider whether you might have the wrong target in your sights!

Have you assumed too much?

I belong to a number of online discussion groups and have published many email newsletters over the past several years. One complaint that has come up frequently goes something like this:

"I recently signed up for this email list, and now I'm getting a lot of spam. You sold my email address, you skunks!"

I've often heard the same contention with regard to Web sites. A user starts getting a new batch of spam and assumes that this is a result of a recent registration at a Web site.

The fact is that spammers are always at work, vacuuming up email addresses and buying, selling, and trading databases. You can get on a new email list and start receiving spam at almost any time. Just because it happens after you've signed up for a newsletter or registered at a Web site does not mean that the owner of that resource has betrayed you. In all likelihood it truly is a coincidence.

The vast majority of email list and Web site owners are people of integrity and dislike spam as much as you do. So if you are concerned about whether they have abused your personal information, at least send them a polite personal note, rather than automatically raking them over the coals or complaining about them to others.

Was somebody framed?

Spammers often use forged headers in their email messages. So just because a spam message appears to have come from a certain address, that doesn't mean that the owner of the address is the one who spammed you.

For example, some users have the idea that "a lot of spam" comes from a particular provider, such as Hotmail or AOL, but that's just because spammers often use fake email addresses from those domains.

But the big providers like AOL are not the only ones who get framed. Sometimes a spammer will use the address or domain of a small business or an individual user, who will then have to wade through large volumes of complaints from angry spam victims who fell for this spammer's trick.

Did somebody get taken for a ride?

That is, in a spammer's email message? Sometimes an innocent Web site's address might appear in the body of a spam message, or in a message that looks like spam. This has happened to me before, and sometimes an offended recipient will jump all over me for appearing in a spam.

The obvious problem is that I can't help it if a spammer wanted to mention one of my Web sites in a spam. So if a URL appears in a spam message, check closely: Is this URL really being advertised, or is it just being mentioned, perhaps as a resource?

Is this person just a convenient target?

Every once in awhile, I get an indignant email from a user who demands that I remove them from all email lists immediately or face prosecution. Problem is, I don't own any email lists, except for my tiny Email Marketing Results newsletter.

More than likely, these complainers are just frustrated from receiving so much unwanted email and are desperately seeking relief wherever they can find it. They see that I have a Web site about email marketing, so they send me their complaints. Maybe they think they've found the source of all unsolicited email!

This might be a problem that's unique to someone who runs a Web site about email marketing, but it does illustrate the general point I've been trying to make throughout this article: Don't jump to conclusions about spam. You could be hurting an innocent person and just contributing to the overall spam problem yourself, by sending someone an abusive email.

There's nothing wrong with trying to reduce the level of spam you receive. But if you decide to shoot down a spammer, take the time first to make sure that you aren't setting your cross hairs on an innocent bystander.

Al Bredenberg is publisher of EmailResults.com (http://www.emailresults.com) and the Marketers' Market (http://www.marketersmarket.com), the online marketplace for email lists and marketing services.