Back in 1978 Gary Thuerk sent the first spam mail in history with an advertisement addressed to 400 users of the ARPANET service (the predecessor of the Internet). After all these years, despite the evolution of computers, smartphones and the expansion of communication on the Internet in general, the world is still looking for a solution to this increasingly frustrating problem. Unfortunately, very little is needed to end up in public lists for sending advertisements or newsletters that we didn't even remember how we got there. The problem is that many Internet services resell registration emails in order to make money, and very little is needed to end our email in these lists, so as to find ourselves full of spam.
Given that there is no definitive solution, let's see together how to block, or at least limit, spam emails, advertisements and all those unwanted messages .
How to block spam emails, advertisements and unwanted messages
Spam is one of the worst 5 telematic and cybercrimes.
Although it often does not cause harm because it can simply be ignored or deleted, it is one of the most irritating IT problems, especially for those who use email for work and want their email to remain uncluttered.
In some cases, spam emails contain phishing links or links where it is possible to download malware, therefore blocking or limiting them can safeguard the security of our PC, especially if the latter is corporate.
Why we receive spam emails
The reasons why a person receives more or less spam and unwanted messages are, briefly, four:
1) You subscribe to websites that require registration without first checking the reliability of the same or without reading the privacy policies or consent to the sending of third-party advertising to the email;
2) By exchanging emails with friends or colleagues, one of these is infected with viruses or malware that intercepts its entire address book, so as to send spam to everyone;
3) A friend or colleague writes email messages by sending them to several people without covering their addresses (putting them in CCN instead of CC) so as to be intercepted with great ease;
4) Even with all possible precautions, your email address can be found randomly by random generators who try different combinations of letters and automatically send spam indiscriminately.
READ ALSO: Unsubscribe from newsletters and email subscriptions on Gmail and Outlook.com
Online services to protect yourself from spam
To keep your e-mail address away from spam, the first thing to do is to use it as little as possible on the Internet, particularly if it is a personal or work email (the less people know it, the less risk of spam).
By sharing the email in public chats, on social networks or in site announcements, the scanners will have an easy game in capturing that address because it is visible on a public page. To leave your email on a forum or blog or any website, you have to write it down so that it is not possible for an automatic scanner to read it. The solutions are different and, for example, you can:
1) Write the email in a different way such as, for example, pomhey at yahoo.it which is different from writing
2) Hide the email address in an image with the online service Email icon generator that writes the address into an image that can be sent to people or sites safely.
3) Hide the address in a javascript code with Enkoder which allows you to customize the code in which to hide the emails as you wish.
4) To register on websites, forums or to use free programs, temporary email addresses become really useful; with these sites we can create from scratch another anonymous email account, which becomes inactive after a short time.
Among the services to create temporary email addresses I like to remember SpamGourmet which allows you to use a temporary email to register anonymously anywhere and forwarding up to a maximum of 3 emails to your real address: after the third email SpamGourmet will not send further emails to your inbox. literally "devouring" any other email sent to the temporary address provided.
Programs to block spam
To protect your email account from the wildest spam, you can use some programs that block unwanted messages .
The best free programs to block spam emails are:
1) Spamfence
Spamfence is a filter that allows you to use your own email address, the one where dozens of spam emails arrive, cleaning all unwanted messages and showing legitimate messages in a clean and new email box.
It forwards messages with a spam filter and allows you to create your own rules.
We can access the service and the program from here -> Spamfence .
2) Spamihilator
Spamihilator is the program that I reported in the article on spam protection and that we can download from here -> Spamihilator .
If you use Windows with an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird you can install the Spamihilator plugin and filter the emails by eliminating unwanted ones or with advertisements.
The program is easy to use and configure but needs some manual training to make it clear what is to be considered spam and what is not, otherwise you risk seeing important messages deleted.
3) MailWasher Free
MailWasher Free is the free version of a very famous and effective commercial anti-spam program, which we can download from here -> MailWasher Free .
It allows you to preview the number of incoming messages so you can decide first whether to download them or not.
Using a filter similar to that of Spamihilator, the program learns from user actions and respects the rules set.
The "Free" version is limited to a single mail account.
4) SpamTitan
Another very effective program to block spam emails, advertisements and unwanted messages is SpamTitan, downloadable from here -> SpamTitan .
The program is designed for business use so it may not be simple to configure, but allows you to filter over 99% of spam emails from any account. The program is free for 15 days, then you need to purchase a license to continue using it.
Configure spam filters for email services
Few people know it, but the Gmail, Outolook or Yahoo mail services also have a professional spam filter which they update daily, so that they can act from the beginning without having to install any additional programs. With Gmail and Yahoo it is difficult to see too much junk arriving in the inbox and spam is kept, for a certain period, in a protected folder.
The filters are automatically active and self-configured according to the rules created by the service and according to the preferences that we indicate personally for each suspicious email that escapes the filter. If we find an email to report as spam, just use the appropriate button at the top of the email service or using one of the specific items in the options menu.
Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail also give the possibility to create temporary aliases that can be used to register for other online services and that can be disabled whenever you want. Let's find out how to do it in the guides below.
READ ALSO -> Order incoming mail with filters and aliases in Gmail to manage received E-mails
READ ALSO -> Create aliases in Outlook and Yahoo Mail to not receive spam and protect your Email
