Spam emails have become a regular occurrence with many of our mailboxes.  Spam is almost as old as the invention of email itself, but they have only gotten more frustrating.  Not only is spam annoying to deal with, but it can also be dangerous, leading to infection, ransomware, and fraud.

What can you do about spam messages, especially if you notice you’re receiving a lot of spam in your inbox?  Without cutting yourself off from the internet entirely, there are some methods and practices you can take to lessen the amount of spam you receive.  Natural Networks is a managed IT services company and premium email provider; We recommend taking the following steps to clear spam in your inbox.

Train your filter

Most mail clients include a spam button: this is a specific button that is meant to indicate a particular email was marked spam. When spam comes to your inbox, don’t just delete it but instead highlight it and mark it as spam by pressing the spam button in your mail client.

By marking messages as spam, you are training the filter to identify similar messages to also be spam. Eventually all messages that share similarities with the original spam message will begin to get automatically filtered into your spam box.  You can also search in your spam box to check for any messages that may have been a false-positive, and mark those as “not spam” in your mail client.

Never Reply to Spam Email

If you notice a message in your inbox that is spam, it’s best to not open it at all, simply mark it as spam and move on.  If you do open a message and later find that it’s spam, simply close the message and then mark it as spam.  Never click any links, buttons, images, or download any attached files from a message if you suspect that it’s spam.

If you received a spam message that appeared to come from a legitimate source, you should take time to inspect the email header, that is the message’s “to:” and “from:” fields to ensure that the email address is from who they claim they are.  Spam messages often come from sources that try to mask their identities as a more legitimate organization or person, but upon careful inspection you can see where the email is coming from.

If a spam message has been sent out from someone you recognize, you should contact them directly outside of the email platform and let them know their account may have been compromised.

Be Careful With Where You Provide Your Email Address

So many companies and organization today ask for your email address to obtain a certain service, or product.  However, it’s impossible to know for certain how secure these companies will be with your email information.  The services you sign up for using your email could be networked to other companies and organizations who will inundate you with spam emails with additional offers and services.

To help prevent these companies from sending spam messages to your email, it’s recommended that you setup what’s known as a “throw-away account”.  A throw-away email account can be any simple valid email account such as a free Gmail account you can provide to companies that require an email to provide you a simple service.  This is an email account that you intend to give out when a company or organization requires it to sign up for a service, or register for something like a demonstration.

Use An Anti-Spam Filter

This is for companies or organizations who have several email accounts and want to prevent spam from reaching their team members altogether.  Spam filtering services can take a more aggressive and active role in identifying and stopping spam.  An email spam filter will act as an additional layer of protection.

Natural Networks provides premium spam filtering services for many of our clients, and it goes a long way in flagging and preventing viruses, malware, spam, and other potentially harmful messages from reaching the users inbox.  Spam filtering services use several methods and protocols to quickly identify and delete spam messages.  Spam filters can also rely on a dictionary of known spam messages and accounts, which helps to immediately identify and deny these types of emails from getting through.

By following the above recommendations, you can start diminishing the amount of spam messages you get in your inbox every day.  If you’re interested in learning more about how a spam filtering service from Natural Networks can do to help stop the amount of spam your company gets, give us a call today!