At our seminar this past Saturday, one of the subjects we discussed was ways to fight spam email, a.k.a. junk email. As I mentioned then, you will not eliminate spam but you can fight it and lower the number of junk emails you receive in your Inbox. In this post, I’m going to review the primary way of fighting back which we discussed. However, I’m also going to add a way I didn’t mention at the seminar. So, even if you attended, keep reading!

First, never unsubscribe to an email list if you never subscribed to it in the first place. This is one of the big tricks of spammers. These time-wasters will buy lists of email addresses and then send to everyone on the list. They have no idea whether an email address on the list is valid or not. After all, people change email addresses from time to time. When these emails are sent, they often include the option to unsubscribe from the list. Unfortunately, when you click the unsubscribe link, you have now told the spammer that your email address is valid. Instead of getting less spam email, you’ll now get more.

What should you do? Instead of unsubscribing, mark the email as spam (if it’s in your Inbox) or, if it’s in your spam/junk folder, simply delete it.

By the way, if you know you subscribed to a list or you know the company is legitimate, it’s okay to use the unsubscribe link. As an example, if you are receiving emails from Macy’s and you decide you don’t want them anymore, it’s okay to unsubscribe. Why? Because Macy’s is a legitimate company and they don’t spam people. You either purchased something from them or you originally signed up for their email list.

Another way to fight spam is to use throwaway, i.e. disposable, email addresses. (This is what I didn’t discuss at the seminar.) By using throwaway addresses, you never give out your real email address. If your throwaway address starts receiving spam, you just delete the address.

If you search in Bing or Google for throwaway email addresses, you’ll find lots of services that offer them. I use a service called Burner Emails. It’s an extension that works in Google Chrome and also in Firefox. The free version allows you five burner addresses. The paid version, which is not expensive at all, allows unlimited plus a lot of other options. (FYI: we’re not associated with this company and get no funds if you buy it. I’m simply recommending what I use.)

If you want to know how it works, please click HERE.