Updated 11/15/23:
Here are some of the best methods to reduce the amount of spam/junk email in your Inbox:
- Use an email service with good junk/spam email filtering. Gmail is our favorite free email service that does a pretty good job at segregating important email from spam, as well as promotional, social, and any other emails you want to filter out of you main Inbox.
- Unsubscribe from specific emails only after you’ve verified that they are from a legitimate sender.
- For any obvious junk/spam email that arrives in your Inbox, report it as spam/junk – but don’t unsubscribe if your email service offers a setting to do so.
- Don’t react to junk/spam email by clicking links or replying. Just delete it.
- Use different email addresses or aliases and/or different email services to segregate personal emails, email addresses you use for banks and financial institutions, travel confirmations, newsletters, etc. Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com all offer such features.
- Use a strong, unique password and enable 2-step verification for your email account so that hackers can’t access your account and steal your contacts list among other dangers.
- When addressing email to multiple recipients, use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) so that you’re not inadvertently sharing people’s private email addresses with others. Also, compose descriptive subjects so that spam filters and the recipient can tell whether or not your email is spam.
- Realize that you cannot prevent all junk email. The longer you have an email address and the more people and businesses that it is given to, the more junk email you will likely receive over time.