What is Sapm?

Email spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email (UBE), is a subset of electronic spam involving nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Clicking on links in spam email may send users to phishing web sites or sites that are hosting malware. Spam email may also include malware as scripts or other executable file attachments.

1. Create a temporary email address

One of the simplest measures that you can take to stop spam in your inbox is create a temporary email address (also called a fake, disposable, or alias email address).

96% of people sign up for online accounts with their real, primary email account. Of this same group, we found that on average users create 3.61 “junk email accounts” used to catch spam.

Save the hassle of logging in! Fake email addresses let you: receive a free email address (and associated inbox) for a limited amount of time [most helpful when clicking a link for verification/confirmation purposes], thus allowing you to click the verification/confirmation link to gain access to the applicable website and you never have to return or log in to the disposable email address again.

2. Encrypt a current email address

Another way to protect your email privacy is to use Thunderbird with Enigmail; Mac Mail with GPGTools; Outlook with GPG4Win. These tools allow you to encrypt a current email address and offer a suite of security enhancements to ensure that your data is being protected. Warning: these tools require some tech-savvy and can be tough to figure out.

3. Use a secure email provider

There are a number of email providers that have a model for providing top-notch security for free or for a nominal fee. The following tools provide a secure VPN for all internet browsing, a USB-key necessary email entry, and free email protection for your smartphone (iOS or Android) respectively: Unspyable, Countermail, and Shazzle.

4. Filter your spam

If you are one of the many email users who doesn’t enjoy having a full inbox, especially one chock full of spam, you can create various filters to put particular emails into different inboxes. In our survey, 39% of people say they set up filters in their email to automatically delete and stop spam.

This technique is not only helpful for keeping spam out, but also keeping track of important emails (like bills). Most times, the ability to create filters is located in your email client’s “settings” menu, and the filters can be created based on specific words, addresses, subject lines, groups of people, and many other criteria. This is a nice stop gap solution to stop spam from getting to your inbox.

5. Unsubscribe

Even if the techniques above seem like too much effort, at the very least, unsubscribe from the emails that simply stuff your inbox. Most marketing emails that you find are just sent far too frequently will have an option at the bottom saying something like “Unsubscribe” or “Remove Me.”

Clicking “Unsubscribe” usually takes you to an external website that lets you unsubscribe from receiving any further email from that particular sender. Make sure you click the option that completely removes you and doesn’t just limit emails.

Unsubscribing is one of the easiest ways to cut down the amount of spam entering your inbox on a daily basis, and over half of those we surveyed–51%–report unsubscribing to deal with spam.

Spam is unsolicited email sent to a list of people. Let’s say you just bought a list of email addresses from some local business organization. Seems like these are great prospects for your business, right? You want to send them an email with a relevant offer they can’t refuse. Well, it’s spam if you upload that list into MailChimp (or any other email service provider) and send that list an unsolicited email. It’s not spam if you take that list and write personal, one-to-one emails to each recipient, and the content is unique for each recipient.