Many of us end up with our inboxes littered with annoying, unwanted emails from companies we either once upon a time gave our information to or who have somehow found our email addresses. Are you receiving spammy messages with clickbait in the subject line and wasting time going through to delete them every time you pull up your inbox? While spam is generally harmless (some messages do contain viruses meant to infect your computer and crash it or steal information), it is annoying, and some messages are full of bogus offers that solicit your money. Fortunately, there are ways to keep your email inbox clean, reduce the amount of spam messages you receive, and lower your chances of getting a virus or falling for a scam. Here are a few ways you can help reduce the amount of spam that enters your inbox:
- Sign out of your email addresses on public computers. When you use a public computer somewhere such as a library, technology lab, or more, make sure that you are signing out of your account. This will limit who has access to your email address and your password.
- Limit the amount of exposure your email address receives. Consider using two email addresses — one for basic communications and personal messaging and one for shopping, newsletters, coupons, and more. This allows you to have all offers, coupons, and so on in one place so that emails are less likely to get muddled between inboxes. You should also try not to post your email address anywhere public such as chat rooms or social networking, as spam harvesters canvas the internet for email addresses.
- Read privacy policies before checking boxes. In some privacy policies, there is a notice that the company can sell your email address to other companies to whom you have not given permission to access your information. Before you click “agree” on the terms and conditions, give the privacy policy a quick scan.