How to Reduce Spam in Your Inbox

By Ruth Barringham

One of the difficult things to deal with when you work online is spam.

My inbox sometimes gets inundated with it.

It’s not only annoying to see my inbox fill up with junk every morning, it takes time to deal with them.

So I’ll tell you what I do to reduce it, and maybe it will help you too.

The first thing I do is report it.

When I had a Windows computer I used a service called SpamBully to deal with my spam.

But now I have a Mac Book Pro.

So now I use a service called SpamCop.
http://spamcop.net

All I have to do is copy and paste the raw source of each emil into the text box on the SpamCop website and click ‘process spam.’

The built-in software works out where the spam is coming from, including the ISPs of the website links in the body of the email, and prepares to send complaints to all of them.

I then click ‘send’ and it’s done.

The only problem is that it’s time consuming to do this with every spam email.

To simplify the process, if I keep receiving spam from the same sender, I set up automatic reporting (using the ISP address provided by SpamCop) and automatic deleting. That way I never have to see spam emails from the same sender over and over again.

I also have automatic reporting and deleting for emails that contain certain words or phrases such as ‘casino,’ ‘earn money for every email you send,’ ‘viagra’ (and all the various spellings of it), ‘Bank of Nigeria’ and ‘want to lose weight?’

These emails are automatically forwarded as spam complaints to spam@uce.gov.

And I never EVER click on any links in these emails.

Many of these spammers earn money sending emails. They are paid ‘per click’ so the more clicks they get, the more they make.

Also clicking on their links confirms that yours is an active email address (which they’ll sell to other spammers) and the link could lead to a website that contains malware.

And I also never reply to their emails, not even to say “stop spamming me!”.

Using these few tactics has reduced my spam problem from 1,700 spam emails a day (those were the really, really bad old days) to less than half a dozen a day.

I hope this information helps you.