Make the start of your hotmail address long, and strange. I have been through two hotmail addresses over a period of at least 7 years. The old one had 18 characters and the new one has 22. They both used strange phrases and/or nonsense words, and to date I have not had a single piece of spam delivered to either one. No idea why, but saved me a hell of a lot of grief.

I know, I know, I shouldn't use hotmail in the first place - but I need MSN and now everyone I know uses my MSN email because they know it from there.