In light of the recent spam email that many of your received through your EmpowerLA email lists, we would like to help you figure out how to stop or reduce these types of spam emails being sent to you before you decide you’ve had enough of the internet for one day.
Actually, spam gets filtered from the very beginning! It all starts with the email client. Before an email is received, it has to pass through the email client’s own filter. This filters suspicious messages, spam, and harmful content. But contrary to some popular belief, humans are still able to outsmart robots and computers, and are able to get around these filters. Thankfully, there are things you can do to further filter spam from getting in your inbox.
One of the most effective ways to reduce the amount of spam you receive is to train your filter to recognize the tricks that people use to get around the built-in filters. When you receive spam in your main inbox, don’t just delete it! Select the message, and report it as spam. This helps your email client recognize all the little tricks that spammers use to get by the automatic filters. Over time, your email client will become smarter, recognize, and block more spam emails. But because spammers are finding new ways to sneak into your inbox, you need to keep up the reporting!
Along with reporting spam, you also need to train your email client about false positives. The email client isn’t perfect, so it may mark some traditional emails as spam. Once a day, go through your spam inbox and check for any message that shouldn’t have been marked spam, and mark it as such.
Another way to greatly reduce spam is to not respond to any of it! In fact, if you can automatically recognize that an email is spam, don’t even open it. If you happen to open one by mistake, DO NOT click on any of the links no matter how tempting it may be. That link will send the spammer a notification that your email address is a live address and they will continue to send spam to you. These links may also contain harmful material that could damage your device or plant ‘cookies’ in your browser that can track information such as the websites you visit, what you purchase, your location, and in some rare cases, your personal information. If you opened a spam email because it looked like it came from someone you knew, contact them immediately to inform them that their account may have been compromised.
Good luck!
