Why am I receiving so many SPAM emails?

By Jeandre de Beer

Spam emails is a huge time waster. Spam is unsolicited emails that you receive – basically any email you receive that tries to sell you something that you did not sign up for.

You get to work on a Monday morning – already stressed out about the day’s tasks – you open your email client – and you see a mountain of mails waiting for you.

As you start to read through them you realize that most of the emails you received over the weekend is spam.

It takes forever to sort your email – deleting spam mails and moving legitimate emails to another folder. Before you realize it – you wasted an hour of your morning.

Is there any way to prevent spam?

Not really – you can minimize the amount of spam that you receive – but it’s not possible to prevent it. I use software that filters my emails and moves messages that is regarded as spam to another folder in my inbox.

This makes it possible for me to check the spam folder once a day – just to glance over it – to make sure that a legitimate message wasn’t mistakenly marked as spam. When I find an email in the spam folder that is not supposed to be there – I select it and mark it as “not spam”.

The software then learns from my selection – and after a few weeks of marking messages as spam / not spam the software accurately marks future emails correctly.

What steps can be taken to minimize the risk of your email address being added to a spam distribution list?

1.   Be selective when giving out your email address. Many websites require that you enter your email address to sign up for certain services. If it is not a well known website – rather do not use your primary email address.

2.  Create a free Gmail account that you only use for website sign ups.

3.  Another free service that I use is 10minutemail.com This website gives you a temporary web based email address. You then give the website that needs your details this temporary address which is valid for 10 minutes.

This way you can register for the services needed – without giving these unknown websites your primary email address.

Are you receiving many spam emails?

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