How to Stop Spam Emails

Why should someone send you emails for marketing products, when you have not subscribed to any such service? Why is someone sitting in some part of Nigeria or may be some other far off place, willing to deposit a huge amount of money into your account? Do you know that a person sending you a spam email, as per the cyber law is entitled to pay a huge amount of fine for every such mail that he sends? This article has been thus written to make you aware of all such facts and also present to you some effective methods on how to stop spam emails.

However, what is more important is that you need to understand, why do we need to stop spam/junk mail. In other words, we need to understand, why are spam emails a threat.

Why are Spam Emails a Threat?

Let us first take a look at what are the threats produced by the spam emails. Spam emails are a source or means by which identity theft takes place. Clicking on link present in a junk email, may cause the sender of the email to gain access to a lot of important data in your computer, which comprises your Social Security Number, you license number, your account details etc. All these information can be used by the person on the other side for identity theft. Another problem that these spam emails cause is that of malware, spyware, etc.

Simple clicking on any of the links present in the spam email that you have received, may trigger the download of some malicious software into your computer. Last but not the least, why the hell should you spend any more of your valuable time in figuring out which are the important emails and which are the spam ones. You have not subscribed to any of these services, so why should you receive any such emails. With this information, we are now pretty sure about the fact, that spam emails pose a lot of threat to our privacy.

How to Stop Junk Email

Well most of the email service providers take up a lot of measures for blocking spam emails. Yes, you must have noticed the spam folder in your email account, where most of the spam emails are automatically diverted. But still, you do receive some of the spam emails. You can take certain measures which can help you in stopping these spam emails. These steps are not something very technical, but rather easy ones. Let us go through these measures that you can take.

Never Respond to a Spam Email
Agreed, you are intelligent enough and you never respond to a spam email or click any link present in these junk emails. But, you may however feel like replying to a spam email and ask them in a hard language not to send you any more spam emails. However, this is not an intelligent idea. It is just a way of letting the person who is sending the spam email, know that yours is an active email. Spam email senders are always on the lookout for active email addresses. Similarly, clicking on a button like 'Unsubscribe' present in the email is also a way for the spam email sender to find out that your email address is active. Besides, why do you need to unsubscribe from a service that you did not subscribe to?

Use Different Email Ids
Using different email addresses for different purposes is an intelligent idea. If you are someone who likes online shopping, use a different email address for all such transactions over the Internet. The email address that you use for business or personal use, should not be used for such transactions. Whenever you make an online donation, mention in bold letters that you don't want your email address to be sold.

In general, credit card companies sell information about your email addresses. Go through the documentation of your credit card service provider carefully to find out, how you can ask them, not to sell your data to any other company. Whenever you get a call from someone who wants to sell you a product or service, simply request them to put you in a list which says 'Do not disturb'. This will cause them to stop from sending any other unwanted email.

Use Spam Filters
Spam filters provided by your email service provider are another effective way for reducing spam emails. Though these spam filters automatically remove some of the spam emails that you receive, you can take up your own initiative by marking any such email that still reaches your inbox as spam. Simply select that particular email and mark it as spam.

This was a little information on how to stop spam emails. Besides all these measures, as a responsible citizen you must report about any such spamming agencies to proper authorities. In the United States of America, the CAN-SPAM act is what governs all such proceedings against spam agencies. Go through the website of the Federal Trade Commission, to find out, how can you report spam.