How to Remove Spam

Do not publish your email address online. “Robots” (programs written to extract email addresses from websites) can quickly collect thousands of email addresses at a time from websites where the email addresses are public. At the same time, people sometimes use email on websites to sign up for free items (iPods, Ringtones, TVs, etc.). ^[2]

Make sure your email address is not scannable. Where contact information is required, do so creatively (me [ace] yahoo [dot] com). There are many ways to represent email addresses that still make it difficult for automated spam bots to take advantage of them, including using images for emails or using Java code that implements the dynamic display structure of email addresses. ..

Do not set the login name as the email address. The username is almost always public, and in that case, identifying your email is as simple as identifying the correct email service to add the latter part of the email. This is even easier with services like Yahoo! Chat when every user has an email of the form @yahoo.com. Avoid using chat rooms tied to your email address.

Use multiple email replacements to identify and eliminate spam sources. Set up a main account, then create multiple accounts for different purposes (one for friends, one for entertainment sites, one for financial services, …).

• In gmail, you can add a “+” to an address. For example, you can sign up for news email as Ten+tintuc@gmail.com if your email address is Ten@gmail.com.
• Set forwarding to your main account for all of the above. Thanks to that, you don’t need to spend time checking multiple email accounts.
• If you start receiving spam from one of the alternate accounts, you can determine where it came from and resolve it simply by canceling the account.

Never reply to spam. Replying to or clicking the “Unsubscribe” link will cause you to receive more spam, as your email address is now confirmed to be active. The best way is to report spam and delete them using the steps below. ^[3]

Block and report spam in Gmail. Most spam is automatically detected and moved to the Spam folder, where it is deleted after 30 days. If you believe there is spam in your mailbox, check the box next to it and click the “Report Spam” button in the upper toolbar.

• If you accidentally report spam, you can click the Undo link at the top of the page to restore it.
• Each time you report spam, Gmail’s automatic mail filtering is improved.
• If there is a valid email in your Spam folder, select and click the “Not spam” button. Only do it when you are sure about the email.

Block and report spam in Yahoo! Mail . Yahoo! has a very strong spam filter and almost any spam will automatically be moved to the Spam folder. If you believe your inbox contains spam, select the dialog box next to the message and select the “Spam” button in the upper toolbar.

• You can add senders and domains to the Blocked list. However, this may not be of much help as spammers frequently change addresses or use only temporary domains.

Block spam in Outlook. Outlook provides a Junk Filter that is set to Low protection by default. This only helps to block most messages with a high probability of being spam and move them to the Junk (Spam) folder. You can increase the filter’s protection level by selecting the Home tab and clicking Junk. Select “Junk E-mail Options”. Select the Options tab and set the filter to your desired level. ^[4]

• Each filter protection level is explained. The High level can move even valid emails to the Junk folder, so you need to check the Junk often.
• Install a third-party spam blocker. There are many options for spam filtering utilities for Outlook provided by third parties. These add-ons provide advanced filtering and anti-spam information updates. Some popular utilities include: DesktopOne, SpamAid, and Spam Reader ( ^[5] ).