Reducing Spam in Your Inbox

Even with spam filters and a well managed email system, often some of that annoying spam still manages to make its way into your inbox. Generally, just being careful with who you give your email address too or where you post it can greatly reduce the amount of spam that you receive.  But, here are a few simple tips to keep from getting more.

One of the primary ways of reducing spam is through the use of spam filters. Many servers have spam filters built in to their email programs. The large free mail services like gmail and yahoo mail have adaptive spam filters that will learn what you consider spam based off of a marking system. You can also set custom filters to get rid of messages from certain email addresses or messages that contain certain keywords, including foul language. The method of setting up filters varies by what email program you use but it can usually be found under settings or options in most. One thing to understand with email spam filters is that they can have trouble with foreign languages.  Also if you try to filter too much you could be blocking legitimate emails.

Another less direct way of reducing spam is being careful on who can get access to your email address.  Many websites ask for your email address. You should always be careful on which websites you give it to. Some sites use this information legitimately for targeted advertising or identification purposes while other malicious sites use it to collect addresses for building email lists for spammers. A good rule of thumb is to not give your email to a site if you cannot verify what company the site belongs.  Legitimate companies will often have an option on their sign-up forms and in the email they send to you to opt-out of email advertisements or newsletters. Choose this option if you are not interested in receiving further emails from the company. Sometimes these newsletters and promotions can be helpful or useful but too many of them can become unmanageable.

Forums and blog comments are often open to everyone so if you post your email address in your comment there is no telling who might get it. Forums that you can sign up for often already have your email address and some type of internal messaging system. People can contact you through the forum instead of having to list your email address.

Spammers often use programs called bots to find addresses to send their spam to. These are automated programs that search through the internet on public forums, blog comments and other places looking for email addresses. If your address is available in one of these places it is not hard for a spammer to get it.

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