All people who use email daily at work have suffered from getting spam or junk messages which make our mailboxes overwhelmed and messy. These spam emails are not only irritating but also distracting us from our work and reduce productivity. Although the email clients many of us regularly use are already equipped with several email management tools to filter and block spam, they are not 100% accurate and reliable. So we have compiled the best tips and recommendations on how to protect our mailboxes from spam:
- Customize Your Spam Filter: Whenever you find any spam in your inbox do not delete it at once and instead mark it as spam and let your email client know about it. In this way, your email client or email service provider will identify this message as spam along with its sender and all future junk emails from this sender will be either blocked or diverted into your spam folder automatically. This is known as training your spam filter because it is learning from your behavior about new spam emails and will apply actions to such email messages automatically from the next time.
- Never Reply to Spam Emails: If you ever suspect any email as spam do not open it and if you have already opened it then close it immediately. Do not ever click on any link in that email or download any file from any suspected spam email as this can be potentially harmful and dangerous. This could even lead to your account being hacked and flood your mailbox with more junk messages. Moreover, it could lead to an automatic sending of spam messages to all your contacts and can be frustrating. Last but not the least, if you get spam emails from anyone you know then inform him or her immediately as the email account could have been compromised.
- Don’t Reveal Your Email To Everyone: The more you disclose your email address the more chances you have to get spam and advertising messages. Share your email where it is necessary and avoid publishing it on the internet. If it is required to make your email public use a different one so that you can monitor it easily and they do not get mixed up with important emails. You can also use a disposable email address if you are not comfortable with sharing your real email address with everyone. You can use Mailshell or Spamex for this purpose. Several other extensions are available for different web browsers as well.
- Use Third-Party Spam Filter: Although your email client is equipped with spam filters, a third-party spam filter can come to be handy in certain circumstances. Third-party spam filters are specialized software and they have a higher detection capacity. Moreover, they can get integrated with your mailbox seamlessly. Therefore, you can always go for third-party anti-spam software to protect your mailbox from getting junk stuff.
- Unsubscribe from Annoying Marketing Newsletters: Promotional content and marketing newsletters can’t be exactly named as spam, however, if you continue to sign up for more and more newsletters, your mailbox may become messy and overwhelmed with advertising very soon. Instead, choose which newsletters you want to read and opt-out from all other advertising stuff. You can unsubscribe from each email manually or use and automated email unsubscribe tool like clean.email to do this for you without much effort.
To conclude we can say that spam emails are really distracting and even harmful so we should avoid them at all possible cost. Use the techniques mentioned above and keep your mailbox organized and spam-free.