Before we can tame the beast we need to understand what it is, where it comes from and how it is generated. Much of it you can control, funnel away or stop, by expending a little energy (and I mean only a little) day to day.
Unsolicited email generally comes from sites that we have signed up to and “of course” we read the Terms & Conditions when we agreed to them.
You know it is unsolicited because it is almost useful (maybe sometimes?) but generally gets a reaction of “I never signed up for that?!?”. Been to a trade show recently? Signed up for a new account?
Unsolicited mail can usually be handled by using the unsubscribe button. Particularly if the email is sent via a reputable email handler eg Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor or Aweber for example.
True spam – obtaining your contact details and contacting you without explicit permission generally comes from:
- other services getting hacked (Facebook, Yahoo, BT to name but a few)
- leaked databases
- the email you display on your website (Robots grabbing it)
- funny/public service announcement chain emails (the chain is valuable)
This is harder to handle as you do not want to hit unsubscribe on this – you only end up confirming the email is accurate and have much more spam!
Adding this to your “junk” folder is a start but won’t cure it. By the way, don’t empty your junk folder too regularly – generally email servers use this to learn from but they aren’t quick.
Don’t perpetuate it yourself, funny emails or forwarding stuff to many is not cool – keep it to WhatsApp.
We’ll tackle how to handle spam and un-cooperative unsolicited email in my other blog posts here on tackling spam
Is spam actually a problem for you or are you simply numb to it?