What to do if you’re receiving spam emails and how to stop them

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.

1. Open Gmail.
2. In the search box at the top, click the Down arrow .
3. Enter your search criteria e.g. ‘Coupons Daily’
4. At the bottom of the search window, click Create filter with this search.
5. Choose what you’d like the filter to do.
6. Click Create filter.

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.

1. You can adjust the Junk Email Filter settings in the Junk E-mail Options dialog box.
2. On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Junk, and then click Junk E-mail Options.
3. On the Options tab, select the level of protection that you want.
   • No Automatic Filtering  – messages are still evaluated by using the domain names and email addresses in your Blocked Senders List.
   • Low – If you don’t receive many junk messages, or want to filter only the messages that are the most obvious junk, select this option.
   • High – If you receive lots of junk messages, but don’t want to restrict messages from senders on your safe lists, select this option.
   • Safe Lists Only – This is the most restrictive option. Any message that is sent neither from someone on your Safe Senders List nor to a mailing list on your Safe Recipients List, is classified as junk.

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.

Tell us, do you receive spam email?