To start, migrate your email to one of the big-name providers. Google Suite and Microsoft 365 work hard to filter out spam before it even gets to your mailbox. Google says its AI-enhanced spam blocks nearly 10 million spam emails every minute. Local internet service providers are unlikely to have that level of anti-spam sophistication.

READ MORE:  6 Reasons to Replace Your ISP Email

If you own your domain name, set up catchall email addresses to help filter messages. You might own joesmegashop.com. Instead of having everything go straight to joe@joesmegashop.com, you assign addresses for specific sites. For Facebook communications, you would set up facebook@joesmegashop.com as the address. You’ll still get the emails, but you’d know it’s from Facebook. Or you’d know Facebook sold your email address to someone else. You can still block any email you don’t want at facebook@joesmegashop.com.

Even if you don’t own your domain, you may still be able to use the catchall-address approach. Gmail is a popular service that allows you to put a plus after your email name. So, you could protect your joe@gmail.com address by using joe+facebook@gmail.com. Gmail ignores everything after the plus, so it’ll still go to joe@gmail.com. But now you’ll know who leaked your Joe+facebook address. You can block any emails going there if it becomes a problem.

READ MORE:  Hopedale Technologies Web Services

Blocking E-mails
To block a sender in Gmail, open the message and click on More in the top right. Click on “Block [sender]” in the dropdown. To do the same on Microsoft 365, right-click on the sender’s message and click “Junk” and “Block Sender.”

If you change your mind about any of your blocked senders in the future, you can unblock them on either platform.

More Ways to Limit Spam
Don’t list your email as plain text on your business website. You could use a contact form to avoid exposing your email address to anyone online. If you don’t want to add a hurdle for legitimate contacts, show your email address as an image instead of text. This stops website-scraping bots from reading and adding your email address to spam databases.

When you get a spam email, block that address and report the email as spam to your provider. This helps them to boost their filtering.

READ MORE:  Protect Yourself from Phishing

It’s also worth the few seconds it takes to unsubscribe from unwanted mailing lists. Look at the top and bottom of the email you’ve received for an “Unsubscribe” link. You should be a simple click away from one less mailing in your already crowded inbox.

If you do get a suspicious email, delete it. Don’t reply to an email asking you for personal or financial information, and don’t click on links in that message.

Need help corralling your inbox and strengthening your security? Hopedale Technologies can help protect your business from spam and malicious cyberattacks. We offer Hosted Email Exchange and Security and Office 365 for home and business.

So how can we deal with this overload? The first step is to reduce the number of emails you receive overall and there are a few ways to do this.

Restrict who you give you email address to.

It’s important to think carefully about who you give your email to. For example, if you enter a lot of contests, this often automatically subscribes you to several email campaigns. If you type your email into every popup box asking for it, these add up. Reduce who you give your email to.

Unsubscribe

Go through your inbox and unsubscribe to newsletters that you never read (hopefully not ours). If you haven’t opened one of their emails in months, chances that you’ll start to later are low. Turn off notifications from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. If you like emails from these networks, then at least adjust the settings so they email you highlights once a week or month rather than allowing them to spam your inbox several times per day.

Do you need that notification?

If you receive emails that contain information you can find elsewhere, switch those notifications off. For instance, you might run an e-commerce site that sends an email for every sale. If your website already has a record of this, you don’t need it in two places. Make sure not to use your email as a to-do list. When you need to remember to do something, put that on a list elsewhere to clear up your inbox. If this is a hard habit to break, at least make a folder for things you need to do and move emails there and out of your general inbox.

Change your email habits

Change your own email sending habits. If a topic is complex and will require a lot of back and forth conversation, consider discussing it in person or over the phone. Sending fewer emails will reduce how many you receive in return. Remember that you don’t need to respond to every email you receive. A response indicates a willingness to continue to conversation.

Resist the urge to send messages with a single word like “Thanks!” or “Ok” and you’ll notice others will stop sending you similar, unnecessary messages. When sending group emails, you can also remind others not to use “reply all” unless it’s information relevant to the entire group.

Start clearing out

Now you can start emptying out your inbox and getting rid of any old emails you don’t need to keep. Delete old calendar invites, advertisements, or any emails where the problem has already been resolved. Respond to any messages that can be answered within only a few minutes. File everything that is left until you have a completely empty inbox. Archive messages where you don’t need to take an action, but you think might be useful. You can search and find these later if necessary. Put other emails into folders based off of the type of email and the priority level.

From now on, all of this can be automated. You can have receipts automatically go into a receipt folder, calendar invites go into another, etc. A cluttered inbox leads to your mind feeling just as cluttered. Free up your inbox to free up your mind and create more time in your day-to-day life. Let email overload become something of the past.

Hopedale Technologies offers email services that can help prevent spam and phishing scams through basic email or enterprise plans hosted with Microsoft Exchange.