If you have an email address, the odds of you encountering spam emails on a regular basis are pretty high. These spam emails are annoying, clutters up the inbox, and worst of all, they can be dangerous. But there are effective ways to reduce spam emails.
Reducing the number of spam emails reaching your inbox doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive. Here are 8 simple and clever ways to reduce spam emails for good.
1. Do Not Reveal Your Email Address
Your email address is a piece of private information, and you should treat it that way. Try to keep it confidential and only share it with people you trust. Be careful about posting your email address on public websites such as chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups, Facebook posts etc. Whenever you list or link your email address, you increase the chances of being spammed.
2. Find Out If Your Email Address Already Exists on The Web
Spammers usually buy email addresses from special providers in bulk to add to their mailing list. If your email address is already exposed on the internet, you’ll notice an increase in the number of spam emails. Therefore, you should take the initiative to find out whether your email address exists on the internet. To check your current status, go to Sniff Email — an online platform dedicated to finding out if your email address exists on the internet. Enter your email address in the search field and click fetch to find out if your email address exists on the internet within a few seconds. Based on the results, you can take appropriate action to remove it.
3. Take Action to Remove Your Email Address from Spam Lists
If your email address is exposed on the internet, you need to take action to remove it. There are third-party providers to remove your email address from spam lists. Keep in mind that most global spam removing or address removing services are scams run by spammers. However, you can remove your email address from different commercial mailing lists individually. For example, you can use –
- OptOutPrescreen.com website for prescreened credit card and insurance offers
- Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Mail Preference Service (MPS) opt-out program for many national direct marketing companies
4. Use A Disposable Email Account
If you have to use an email address on a website but don’t want to risk getting email spam, do not use your actual email address. There are many temporary online providers offering both free and paid temporary email addresses that you can use to keep your primary email/inbox spam-free.
5. Set Up Spam Filters
Most email clients offer spam filters based on subject lines or addresses. Check your client’s user guide to set up an intelligent filtering system to prevent email spam from finding its way into your inbox. If you repeatedly receive spam messages from the same address, you can add their address to your block list to prevent further spamming. Additionally, you need to look out for false positives. Go through your spam folder once a day. If you find a message that doesn’t belong there, tell your client that it made a mistake.
6. Do Not Interact with A Spam Email
Never interact with a spam email in any possible way — including replying, forwarding, opening attachments, or clicking on links. 94% of malware is spread using spam emails that you can unknowingly expose to your devices by downloading the attachments or clicking on any links attached to the email. Do not reply to the email even if it is to unsubscribe because it will only convey the message to the spammer that your email address is an active one.
7. Do Not Forward Chain Email Messages
Forwarding chain email messages increase email spamming in two ways. Firstly, it furthers the hoax and helps the spammers gain access to more email addresses. Secondly, you also risk exposing your email address to more email spammers.
8. Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists (BUT only when you trust the sender)
Most companies add an unsubscribe button at the bottom of their marketing email that you can use to opt out of their marketing campaign. This button will redirect you to a different page where you can find the procedure necessary to complete the process. If you cannot find the unsubscribe option, hit Control + F (Windows) or Command + F (Mac) and type “Unsubscribe” in the search field. Click on the search result to stop receiving emails from that individual company. Do not click on Unsubscribe from unknown sources as this can be a method scammers use to confirm your email is real – spammers, hackers and scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated, and this is a fine example of it.
