15 Steps to Spam Free Email

Spam email. Who of us has not opened our inbox to find unwanted (and sometimes offensive) emails from sources we’ve never heard of? They are distracting and annoying. Did you know that recent studies have shown that 90 percent of all emails are considered spam? It’s true. And not only are spam emails annoying, but they can be a huge drain on productivity. Spam emails are estimated to cost between $10 billion and $90 billion per year in direct costs and productivity loss! And it is said that 90 percent of all computer viruses originate through email attachments. So not only do they drain productivity, but they have the potential to cause damage to your files and your computer.

There are steps you can take to put a stop to spam emails. In many cases, stopping most spam is as easy as properly setting up your spam filters. But spammers are becoming very sophisticated at figuring out how to trick these filters and get emails past them. We wanted to make you aware of a number of other steps you can use to defend yourself against spam.

1. Keep your email address hidden
One of the most common ways that spammers collect email addresses is through special bots that scour the web for email addresses. They can pickup your email address from contact pages, message boards, social networks and anywhere else they might be found. To control this, you need to be very careful about where you post your email address and how. To avoid being picked up by one of these bots, you should consider posting your email address as an image or writing the whole thing out like this: email at gmail dot com. If you list your email address on your own website or blog, consider setting up a contact form instead of listing your email address.

2. Think twice before providing your email address
Before you signup for that newsletter you just stumbled across, take a moment to do some research to make sure the company is legitimate. A lot of these newsletters are setup for the purpose of adding more emails to spam lists. There are also a number of people that will sell their email lists to spammers. Next time you are tempted to signup for that new beta account or newsletter, take a minute to make sure you’re not handing your email address over to a spammer.

3. Register a throwaway email address
Sometimes it is very hard to determine if someone is a spammer before handing over your email address. So what I like to do is register an email address that is used only for newsletters and beta signups. Keep this separate from your personal email address, that way the spam doesn’t become as much of an annoyance.

If your mail service allows you to create ‘Alias’ email addresses this is a perfect way to set up a secondary address. If your address is address at email dot com then create an Alias of junkaddress at email dot com and set a filter to send all email from that address to your junk folder.

4. Don’t reply to spam
One way that spammers verify active email accounts is from those that reply to their emails. If they tell you to reply to be removed from the list don’t fall for it, chances are they will just send you more spam in the future.

5. Don’t open spam
Try to avoid opening spam emails. Sometimes you can’t avoid it but when possible you definitely should. Spam email will often include a snippet of code that once opened will ping their server to tell them it’s an active email address. Try to delete as much spam as possible without opening it.

6. Register a fresh email address (or create a new Alias)
The longer you have your email address the more likely it is that spam has been accumulating in it. At this point it’s a good idea to just register a fresh email address because the problem will just keep getting worse, not better. This isn’t always easy with personal email accounts so consider using both email addresses while all your old contacts migrate over. Don’t forget to backup any important emails and update any other websites where you have an account.

7. Don’t participate in chain emails
Taking part in email chains is a great way to forward jokes and other interesting information to all your contacts. But recipients of the email are listed in the body of the email for as long as the email remains active. If a spammer gets a hold of this email every one of those addresses will be added to their spam list. It’s not hard for spammers to end up with these emails either. All it takes is one person to forward to all their contacts and accidentally include a spammer.

8. Don’t open phishing emails
Although it is a nice thought, you haven’t won the lottery, Microsoft isn’t going to pay you $1000 dollars for every person you email, and that nice guy in Africa really isn’t going to give you $50 million. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Don’t open these emails and don’t respond to them if you do.

9. Properly use spam filters
As mentioned earlier, one of the best ways to eliminate spam is to properly use your spam filter. Most email accounts will let you simply mark spam email as such. Make sure you use this feature. By doing so, it will make sure that any spam emails gets added to your blacklist. The problem with this is that sometimes spammers will just use a unique email address for every blast. One defense against this is to look at the domain the email is being sent from. If it is a spam domain or one that you don’t recognize you can just block the whole domain.

In addition to blocking email addresses and domains you can also set most spam filters to block emails based on keywords appearing in the title or body of the email. Watch for keywords that are common with spam but aren’t likely to be used by a friend. When you spot those add them to your spam filter.

10. Frequently scan your spam folder
Spam filters are not perfect and many times perfectly legitimate emails will often end up there. Make it a habit to regularly scan your spam folder and make sure any real emails that you find in there are marked as “not spam”.

11. Uncheck offer boxes
When you signup for any account online or make purchases there are usually little boxes that ask if you want to receive additional offers. Usually these are checked by default. Make sure when you signup for new accounts that these boxes are not checked otherwise you may start receiving offers from their partners.

12. Eliminate catchall accounts
If you own your own domain name, you probably have email included in part of your hosting service. Many hosting accounts offer catchall accounts which means any email address at your domain dot com will be forwarded to you. Spammers will often crawl the web and add domain name they come across. Instead of looking for specific emails they will automatically address them to something like; info at your domain dot com. If you have catchall setup, it doesn’t matter what exact email address they use, you’ll get spam.

13. Ignore return to sender emails
Another trick that spammers will use to get you to open their emails is to send fake delivery failure emails. If you see one of these it’s best just to ignore it, otherwise you’re asking for more spam or even worse, a worm.

14. Avoid emails not addressed to you
There’s a great chance that if you receive an email that is not addressed to you then it is spam. It’s best to avoid opening these altogether and instead just adding them to your spam filter.

15. Report spam
In North America there is a CAN-SPAM act that is designed to help with spam violations. Although reporting spam usually doesn’t do much to stop the spammers it does help. Here are some places that you can report spam to: ISPs, email hosts, domain registrars, blacklists, SpamCop, FTC or the National Fraud Information Center.

Here at BlueTie, we use industry-leading anti-spam and anti-phishing techniques to protect every account. Users are also allowed to generate their own “safe” and “block” lists. Even so, this doesn’t always prevent spammers from emailing you, so it’s best to take the necessary steps to avoid it altogether.  If you're a BlueTie user, you can find out more about BlueTie’s Junk Mail Controls in Help . BlueTie also offers a Catch-All Email Address feature and unlimited aliases. Finally, BlueTie has several Rules & Restrictions governing email that thwart spammers and can save you time and help protect you from spam by decreasing the amount of spam coming into the system.