Are you getting too much spam? If your inbox inundated with spam? This is a very common complaint, especially if you have had your email address for a long time. We have used “Outlook Rules”, junk mail filters, spam blocking appliances, but it just keeps coming. At some point, sorting through your email for something legit becomes a daunting task, plus, in some cases you delete an important email because you “thought” it was spam.

Things you can do

  • What I have done for many years, and still continue to do, is surf the web using a different email address. Set yourself up with a free gmail or outlook account. Whenever you register, or sign up for something, use THAT email address and not your primary. No sense in using your primary email address to get coupons from Bed Bath & Beyond :)
  • Take precautions. Use a complicated username and email address. Software that traverses the internet is looking to pick up your email address. Spammers’ software will look for the easy and obvious addresses first, such as those with identifiable names like “john1977@hotmail.com,” as opposed to “sjk839@gmail.com.”
  • Preview messages before you open them. Sometimes when you click on an email, you just verified it is a legitimate email address. Outlook (and many other email clients) let you use a preview mode to peek at the contents of a message before you actually open it. To do this in Outlook, go to the View menu and select Reading Pane. Instead of double clicking a message, click it once to select it and you’ll see the message displayed in the Reading Pane.
  • Never replay to a spam message. Sometimes the “unsubscribe” is a confirmation of a valid email address. If you can tell from the subject that it is spam, just delete it. No sense in opening it.

Be Vigilant

Blocking spam is not just an IT function. It is the users responsibility as well. There are only so many things that can be done to protect you from spam. The rest you have to do yourself. Set up that fake email account. Don’t open email, and lastly, never confirm that you are you.