If your email address is more than a year old, you are sure to have received offers to get rich quick, free vacations, and increasing or decreasing various parts of your anatomy, otherwise known as "spam," "junk mail," or "unsolicited commercial email." If you do not get them yet, it is just a matter of time. Here are some tips on how to manage junk mail from your mailbox.
Use spam-filtering mail programs
New versions of Eudora, Apple Mail, and Netscape/Mozilla offer Junk Mail Filtering. A feature which looks at certain keywords and puts mail which looks like spam out of your inbox to a special spam mailbox. You will have to check it regularly, though, since it occassionally tags your legitimate mail as junk mail and puts it in that folder. There are programs that also contact an Internet database and checks whether the incoming mail server is blacklisted for sending spam, and categorizes all incoming email from that server as junk. You can also sign up with web mail services that offer junk mail protection. Some services are better at blocking spam, so it helps to look around to see which one offers the best protection.
Use an ISP that has a spam filter
Some ISPs have spam filters--a program they install in their mail servers to block spam even before it reaches your inbox. They usually use this in conjunction with an anti-virus email scanner. Take note, though, that to detect spam or viruses, the email server has to check each and every email for it, so if you are not comfortable with their servers looking at your email, better look for a different ISP. ISPs that have this feature may also slow down incoming mail if there is a lot of junk mail activity. Another downside is if your colleague's email server gets blocked by your ISP's server, his mail to you will not reach your inbox.
Keep your email address private
Most spammers get email addresses from internet mailing lists or bulletin boards. Once you post your email address there, in public, an automated program that gathers all addresses adds your email to their database, and this list gets sent to spammers all over the world. Try to join only private mailing lists, or mailing lists with features that do not display your complete email address. Discussion boards also have an option to hide your email address so it cannot automatically be copied. It helps if you have an alternate email address for use in public.
Don't let them know you exist
If your email program displays HTML graphics, try to turn it off. Some junk mail have graphics that load from the spammer's server. If you open the junk email message and it loads the graphics, it lets the spammer know that you exist, and will pave the way to more spam! Do not click on "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of the spam message. It just lets the spammer know you exist and sends you more spam in return. Replying to the spam message will do the same thing, but most of the time the message will just bounce (so it is useless to send profane remarks to the sender). Spammers will usually deactivate the email address they use once the spam is sent out.
Keep your cool
One of the realities of the modern world is it is so easy to contact everyone, that there is junk everywhere, from your real mailbox, to your fax machine, to your telephone, even to your mobile phone SMS inbox. Even though programs get more advanced in detecting junk, spammers will always find a way to get it into your inbox. Do not forget there's always the Delete key to quickly wipe out the offending email.
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