How to fight spam and protect your email address from misuse

Since email addresses become a part of an individual’s or organization’s identity, having a single email address helps establish the identity. By looking at the emails, it is possible to recognize the sender instantly, and using the name or the initials in the email address is the norm for all email users. However, the only exception to the norm is the email addresses of spammers who, instead of revealing their identity, want to conceal it by using some cryptic email address.

Therefore, if you receive unwanted and irrelevant emails from such cryptic email addresses, be alert and avoid clicking on them as there is every possibility that it is spam. Spams are unavoidable, and email users must learn to deal with them effectively by preventing them from reaching the inbox.  Treating spam as a professional hazard should help to deal with it firmly.

Why should you deal firmly with spam?

Spams can make your life difficult as you would struggle to keep your inbox free from them. Since most people are hard pressed for time, no one has the luxury of cleaning the inbox regularly by spotting spam and deleting it instantly. The speed of spam generation is so high that it is impossible to prevent it from crowding the inbox.  But it is vital to deal with spam firmly because it can harm you in many ways.   Since spams are a tool for stealing personal information, you must take the proper steps to nip spam in the bud by identifying it correctly.

Be careful about invitations from unknown entities that lead you to some websites and ask to share your details. Despite your best efforts to weed out such emails, there are chances of being caught off-guard, and you could fall into the trap of identity theft.  To avoid such problems, you should use some free temporary email addresses during such transactions.

What are temporary email addresses?

Since your email address is often shared because every service provider or seller would ask for it, the chances of spam flowing to your inbox increase many more times. Since spam control is a difficult task, you can use your email address selectively. For less important uses like subscribing to some newsletter or logging on to some unknown websites, which might be unreliable too, you can use some temporary email address available free. Also known as disposable email addresses, these have short validity, and you can use them for unimportant interactions when the use of information is for the moment only.

However, this does not ensure that your inbox would be spam free. The flow of spam would reduce, but you must remain vigilant in fighting spam to protect your identity and personal information.

Minimize sharing of your email address publicly

Although spammers have various means of collecting email addresses, you should never divulge your address to suspicious entities. Use your email address with some discretion so that you do not share with one and all but only with trusted entities. It is the best that you can do because leaking of your email address can happen in so many ways that you do not have any control over it. It will minimize the public exposure of your email address and reduce the chances of it falling into the wrong hands.

Besides business and official use of your email address, do not use it for other online activities like participating in some competitions or offering special deals because it raises the risks of public exposure of your email address.

Have a close look at the emails from unknown senders

The email service providers lessen the burden of spam by filtering out suspicious emails and directing them to the spam folder. But since the types of spam are infinite, the filter is only partially effective to weed out spam. Some spam would still make its way into the inbox and need scrutiny before discarding. From the cryptic email address to the subject line, review the aspects to understand the relevance of the email and its worth. If it does not appear convincing, then just do not hesitate to mark it as spam. The email system equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) quickly understand the user’s choices and, in the future, would include all such emails in the spam list.

Do not click on spam messages

Resist your curiosity to see what is inside spam emails because many of these are traps for collecting personal data surreptitiously. Scammers create spam and present it as the most attractive manner to lure people and entice them to open the email. The moment they click on the mail, the sender gets access to all personal data, and it is a known practice in identity theft.

The more restricted the use of your email address, the lesser the flow of spam to your inbox.