Hi,
Thanks to brett, jonathon and jurgen for expounding their method for countering spammers which I will recount here for those that were not present or do not know it.
First get a domain name (ukreg.com do cheap ones w/ free mail forwarding) called www.mydomain.com, and setting up mail forwarding on the domain such that mail sent to anything@mydomain.com will be sent to your private mailbox.
Then, when you are giving your email address to a company or submit it to a mailing list, simply state it is companyOrMailingListName@yourdomain.com. Jurgen gave the example of giving ones e-mail address to Canon Cameras where you would give them canon@yourdomain.com. The idea being that you can identify which company has sold your e-mail address, and/or block e-mail based on the "To:" Field.
One question though, how can you counter those who send e-mails out to you via the "bcc:" field?
Cheers, Luke.