Last week I promised a spam-stopping trick, and here it is: RSS. It stands for “Really Simple Syndication” but it also “Really Stops Spam,” and only about 25% of the world knows anything about it.

This technology isn’t about filtering spam out of your inbox — it’s about reducing the amount of stuff that even attempts to get into your inbox. If you learn to use RSS, you can actually unsubscribe from a whole bunch of stuff that you’re currently deleting, filing away, or just feeling guilty about not reading as it clogs your inbox — because RSS doesn’t involve email at all.

RSS documents (called “feeds”) are readable by web browsers, and by web-based services called “feed readers.” Several outstanding feed readers are freely available; I’ve heard great things about Google Reader, and I currently use Bloglines. You can set up a free account with these services in minutes. Here are a couple of video tutorials:

• Google Reader Tutorial (this video starts automatically!) by the fabulous Andy Wibbels, professional blogger and tech expert with a reassuringly human ability to explain things.
• RSS in Plain English is exactly what it sounds like.
• Oddly, I couldn’t find a current (newer than 2006) video tutorial for Bloglines, but here’s their FAQ file.

Once you have an account, you can use your reader to “subscribe” to a feed, without ever disclosing your email address at all. Then you use your reader to organize and read your feeds. You have complete control over how and when you see the feeds, instead of awaiting (or dreading) the delivery of email newsletters or announcements on someone else’s schedule.

Almost all blogs (including this very blog ) and newsletters are available in RSS format. Just look for the universal “feed icon” (the orange square with stylized white radio waves, which I’ve reproduced in multiple colors above) and click on it to use your web-based reader to subscribe. Every time a new post or issue is added to a blog or newsletter, a new RSS entry is automatically created and made available in your feed reader.

Now you can save your email inbox for actual communication that you want to respond to, and keep your newsletter and blog subscriptions in your feed reader. RSS subscriptions are also available for lots of special functions, like weather updates, product (and recall) announcements, flight status, sports scores, and stock price tickers. Most readers offer handy tools for saving, filing, and emailing individual posts/items, and creating folders and labels for various categories of feeds. And it’s all free!

This week’s heart of the matter: Give RSS a try, and see how many of your current newsletters and email lists have an RSS feed. If your inbox is crowded, you should be able to immediately ease the pressure with RSS. Let me know how it goes!