Spam email wastes valuable time, whether you’re using email for personal or business use. The couple of seconds you spend opening, reading and deleting spam email could end up at a couple of hours over the course of a year. The spam you receive could also be part of a dangerous phishing scam, designed to steal your personal information and use it against you.
By following these guidelines and putting in a couple of minutes of work now, you’ll be able to cut down on the amount of spam emails you receive. You’ll start to see results in just a few weeks!
Adjust spam filtering
To adjust your email account’s built-in spam filtering service, you’ll need to visit your email provider. Most popular email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo offer a free spam filtering service which you can tweak to your own requirements. Many providers let you choose the degree of filtering as well as what action should be taken with the emails.
Be careful when signing up to newsletters
Take extra care when signing up for accounts at online stores and other websites. You’ll notice at the end of the registration form, you’ll have the opportunity to “opt-in” to their marketing emails/letters/SMSs with a tick of a box. Make sure the form isn’t set up to opt you in by default and make sure you read what the text next to the box actually says so you don’t end up subscribing to something you don’t want!
Stop opening spam emails
The senders of spam email will be able to tell whether you’ve read their emails or not. If they can tell that the email has been read, they’ll know the email went to an “active” account and not a dormant account that hasn’t been checked for years. By deleting the email before it’s read, the sender won’t know whether it’s been read or not and won’t be encouraged to send you any more.
Unsubscribe periodically
Many websites and online stores will offer to sign you up to their . these won’t necessarily be spam but could be emails you no longer want. Start an “unsubscribe” folder, add emails you don’t want any more and once a fortnight (or month, depending on how much you get!), go through your folder and unsubscribe from them. Keep emails in this folder so you can follow up against them in a couple of weeks to make sure you’ve been unsubscribed. Bare in mind that unsubscribing will take a couple of days up to 2 weeks.