image courtesy of JithOnline
Spam emails is defined as emails that is sent in illogical frequency, contains almost redundant content. Almost all sites require some degree of sign-up to make action like join membership, comment on a post or download a freebie. This makes your email all cluttered with unwanted emails. Spammy emails may also contain malware or suspicious links we want to avoid. Although US government has laws on email spam from American websites, we should also do our own de-cluterring since other sites have no rules on spam governing them.
1. Keep a separate email addresses for personal & professional mails. Use personal emails to receive candid/chain mails from friends, as well as to sign-up memberships in other sites. This will keep your professional email inbox clean.
2. There are instance in the registration page in which you see a little checkbox, which asks you if you want to receive newsletters & updates in you mail. We call it “opt-in” . Check this only if you are interested in receiving such updates. It is entirely okay to leave it out as well.
3. Go to your social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and edit your notification settings.
- Facebook: Account> Account Settings > Notifications> Go through the check boxes on which notifications you want to receive on you email.
- Twitter: Settings> Notices> Not much to uncheck, but can opt-out of their newsletter.
4. Create mail filter right in your mailbox. Yahoo! Mail & GMail has options for you to manage messages from specified email addresses. Just select the emails then follow-though the process on how to filter them. You can choose to give them a label, sent it to Junk Folder, block or automatically delete them.
5. Go through all your spammy mails and look for the unsubscribe link. It is usually found at the bottom of the email. You can do this once per sender.
6. There are instances that you have to sign-up in a mailing list to get a freebie like a free ebook report, or an access to a application but no intention to receive other emails from them. You can sign-up, get the ebook and unsubscribe right-away.
We also have to understand that it is possible that you gave some “authorization” for these sites to automatically sign-you up with all their sites as well. You just failed to read the “fine print” terms and conditions prior to registration. You can avert this by reading the TOS of the sites you are joining as well do the procedures above. For us, emails are just accounts we use to receive mails. But in the internet world, email addresses are considered customer leads, precious to online businesses.