Five tips for blocking spam from your inbox

June 6, 2018

1. Use a spam filter

Typically, most email clients include some form of spam detection. Your provider may automatically red-flag messages that seem worthless or fraudulent and move them to a special folder where you can view them later. These filters will be more efficient if you review these messages and mark them as spam or not spam. Over time your spam filter will have a better understanding of what is spam and what is not

2. Unsubscribe from unwanted emails

Newsletters, coupons, special offer emails may be referred to as spam. The goal of these emails is to make you aware of the products and services they have to offer but over time these emails can add up quickly and fill up your inbox with unwanted emails. Rather than deleting them, in large quantities many times, click the unsubscribe link in the email. This link usually can be found at the bottom of the email and is in very tiny font. This is because they really do not want you to unsubscribe. If you do take the time to find these links, they will direct you to a page that asks you to confirm your decision to unsubscribe. After you do this, it may take a few days to weeks to stop receiving emails.

3. Alternative email addresses

Have you ever ordered a product online and then suddenly you receive emails from companies you never heard of? This is because the company you ordered your product from shared your contact information with an advertiser. A workaround for this problem is creating a secondary email address. You can use this for online shopping or hotel booking and keep your primary email address free from all the clutter.

4. Protect your email address

Aim to keep your primary email address as secret as possible. Many email marketing tools can use tracking tools to figure out which email addresses are valid. What they will do is send email messages to a variety of addresses and as soon as you click on the email, the sender will receive a confirmation that the address is in use. To keep your contact information private avoid opening messages you know are spam. Just delete them. Also, hid this email from your social media profiles such as Facebook and Twitter.

5. Change your email address

If you had tried all these tips and are still seeing spam in your inbox, you may want to consider changing your email address. You will need to remember to inform your legitimate contacts of your new email address and probably keep both addresses for a few months. Starting over with a new email address will allow you to be rid of spam but remember to keep these tips in mind or you will be right back where you started.

Source: StopSpam.org