Unwanted emails can clog up an email inbox and sometimes even scam you out of money. Websites, stores, even competitions and newsletters can become spam and annoy you when all you want to do is read your emails in peace.
There are ways to stop spam from taking over your email, and you don’t have to resort to deleting them one by one every day.
1. Create an email address for spam emails only
Next time you’re asked for an email address and you don’t really want to give it – use one you’ve created specifically for spam. That way you can stop spam emails from going to your main inbox. All you need to do is sign up again and not sign into it! After all, it’ll be filled with junk. Just make sure after you have made a spam email that you use it and only sign up to emails you truly want in your real inbox.
2. Unsubscribe
At the bottom of every spam newsletter/marketing email should be a button that says something like “Unsubscribe” or “Remove Me From List”
Clicking “Unsubscribe” usually takes you to an external website that lets you unsubscribe from receiving any further email from that sender. Make sure you click the option that completely removes you and doesn’t just limit emails from them.
3. Try to avoid opening spam emails and clicking on links in spam messages
Sometimes the reason you’re receiving spam emails is because you’ve clicked on an irresistible offer or promotion. To make sure you don’t continue to receive emails from unwanted senders, avoid entering any competitions, signing up to winning money or a gift, or clicking on anything that promises instant cash or a reward. Sometimes you can even sign up to emails knowingly, but in the fine print they sign you up to multiple emails, so be careful and think carefully whenever someone requests your email address.
4. Spam filters
Gmail
You enable spam filtering and adjust how aggressively you want to filter by clicking Spam Filtering.
Note: Messages from approved senders or messages that contain approved content bypass all spam filtering.
This will send any emails with those words in it to spam.
Hotmail/Live
The Junk Email Filter evaluates each incoming message to assess whether it might be spam. By default, the Junk Email Filter is turned on and the protection level is set to Low. This level catches only the most obvious spam.
NOTE: The Outlook Junk Email Filter doesn’t stop delivery of junk email messages, but moves suspected spam to the Junk E-mail folder.
5. Sign up for Gmail
Gmail works to reduce the unwanted email that appears in your inbox without you needing to do anything. It identifies companies that spam and send frequent messages and puts them into the “Promotions” folder. They also have spam filters and a junk mail box too. The only issue is that the number of emails in your promotions folders will show as overall emails i.e. if you have 10 emails in your inbox to read, and 300 in your promotions folder, it’ll say you have 310 unread emails.