You may have hundreds, even thousands of emails in your inbox – including a load of spam messages. Spam wastes your time and we hope these few tips can help keep your inbox clear of spam messages.
If you use your ISP for email or a small provider, move to one of the big-name providers, ie Google Suite (Gmail) or Microsoft 365 (M365). Both these providers work hard to filter out spam before it even gets to your mailbox and it is hard for a small provider to have this level of anti-spam sophistication. Google says its AI-enhanced spam blocks nearly 10 million spam emails every minute.
If you own your domain name (eg mybusiness.com), set up catchall email addresses to help filter messages. Instead of having everything go straight to
yo******@my********.com
, you can assign addresses for certain sites. For Facebook, you could set up
fa******@my********.com
as the address. You will still get the emails, but you now know it’s from Facebook or if Facebook sold your email address to someone else. You can also still block any email that you didn’t want at
fa******@my********.com
.
Both Gmail and M365 also allow the use of “plus” addresses. For example, you could protect your
jo*@gm***.com
address by using joe+
fa******@gm***.com
. Gmail ignores everything after the plus, so it will still go to
jo*@gm***.com
. But, now you’ll know who leaked your joe+facebook address. You can also block any emails going there if it becomes a problem.
Blocking E-mails
To block a sender in Gmail, open the message and click on More (3 dots) in the top right, then click on Block “senders name” in the dropdown. To do the same on Microsoft 365, right-click on the sender’s message and click “Junk” and “Block Sender.”
If you change your mind about your blocked senders, you are able to unblock them on both platforms at a later stage.
More Ways to Limit Spam
On your business website, do not list your email as plain text, this is to avoid exposing your email address to anyone online. Add a contact form or show your email address as an image instead of text. This will stop website-scraping bots from reading and adding your email address to spam databases.
When you do get a spam email, block that address and report the email as spam to your email provider. This helps them to boost their filtering and stop similar emails getting through to other users.
It is also worth unsubscribing from unwanted mailing lists. Look at the top and bottom of the email you’ve received for an “Unsubscribe” link. Click it and you should be one less future email in your already full inbox.
Suspicious Emails
If you get a suspicious email, report it and then immediately delete it. Do not click on any links and do not reply to an email that asks you for personal, financial information or other confidential information.
Do you need help maintaining your inbox and strengthening your security? At DP Computing, our IT experts can help protect your business from spam and malicious cyberattacks. If you are in Australia (we have office in Sydney and Adelaide) contact us today for a free no obligation meeting.