ANNOYING, IRRITATING and MISGUIDING, all in caps is perhaps the best way to describe the menace of spam or junk emails. Open your mail app or sign in to your mail account and you’d see dozens of junk emails. While email clients such as Google have tried solving this problem by filtering your messages in different folders (Primary, Social, Promotions etc.) you still receive dozens of junk mails every single day. From ones promising you million dollars of estate left behind by someone to those promising you a free ride to the moon on a NASA spaceship, you will have to appreciate the creativity among spammers!
Jokes apart, you will have to take proactive steps to deal with the menace of junk emails. While there is no full proof way of stopping junk emails you can definitely reduce the amount of annoyance every time you open your mail box. Let us now take you through some effective ways to deal with the problem of junk emails.
Have Two Email Ids
‘Prevention is better than cure’ and hence you should try and avoid the problem rather than solving it. Emails have evolved from being a mere platform of exchanging messages to sort of an authentication tool. Think of subscribing to an online streaming site or a shopping on ecommerce, from sports betting to casual download of a research paper, you will have to share your email address with hundreds of companies and organization every year. Hence, it is advisable for you to have two separate email ids, one for official purpose and the other can be used for all your casual and one-off online activities. This will ensure your primary email id would have less of spam to deal with.
Do Not Publish Your Email Id
As a business or a professional you always have the urge to share your email address to generate new leads. However, this is often the biggest source of junk emails as spammers use scraping tools to compile list of email addresses. Instead you can make use of Online Forms for your potential customers to get in touch with you.If at all you must publish your email address you can camouflage it in the following format – name [at] domain [dot] com. For instance if your email address is abc@xyz.com you can publish it as abc[at]xyz [dot] com
Optimize the Spam Filter
Every email client provides you with a spam filter and whenever you receive a spam email you need to mark it as SPAM. In Gmail for instance you can report Spam after you have opened the email or simply by right clicking mail in your inbox. This ensures that all emails from the said email id would directly land in the Spam folder henceforth. If you have marked dozens of emails this way there is always a chance of false positives where important mails might end up in the Spam folder and this is where you need to scan through your Spam folder occasionally to ensure none of your important mails land there. If you find one, make sure you mark it as Not Spam and it would be moved to your Inbox.
Set up Filter
If you wish to block all emails coming from a particular domain you can create a filter. In Gmail you need to go Setting > Filters and Blocked Addresses and Create a New filter where you specify the domain and ensure all incoming mails from this domain is sent directly to your Spam folder. However, you need to bear in mind that you will no longer be able to receive emails from this particular domain.
Do Not Open Junk Emails
Avoid opening junk emails irrespective of the subject mentioned. Most spammers use tracking emails to ensure the address is genuine and active. When you open such emails embedded trackers instantly alert the spammers and your email address is likely to be shared in the larger spammer community and this can open floodgate of junk emails. If you have already opened such an email make sure you do not click on any of the links or images within the body of the email.
Use Opt-out Option
You may be receiving newsletters and regular updates on the products and services from a company that you do business with. In such case you can opt-out of their promotional emails by simply clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ option at the bottom of the page. If such an option isn’t available you should get in touch with the company over email or call and ask them to remove your email id from their list. Don’t hesitate using this option as you will continue to receive all important communication from the company even if you aren’t subscribing to their newsletter.
To sum up, these are some of the most effective ways in which you can deal with the menace of spam emails. As we have mentioned earlier there is no full-proof way of stopping junk emails but these steps would definitely help you reduce the problem.
Summary: In this write-up we look at effective ways that can help you stop junk emails and how you can easily do it.
