Best Way of Stopping Spam
The best way to deal with spam is by filtering messages. If you use a decent email provider, like Google or Outlook, their spam filters catch 95% of the spam. The rest of the messages that sneak through can be deleted.
If you are using a legacy email address, for example, the one given to you by your Internet Service Provider, you will have to deal with a lot more emails than you like! Those free email accounts don’t really do a good job filtering spam, and we recommend switching to better email service.
Yes, it could be painful as you have to tell all your friends, colleagues, and companies you do business with, your new email address. However, if you don’t want to miss something important that might still be sent to your old email address, you can set up automatic forwarding of emails.
How To Report a Spammer?
If you want to do something proactive to get the spammers off the Internet, you can report them to the Department of Internal Affairs. You can forward a spam message to scam@reportspam.co.nz.
Whether this is effective or not, is debatable! For every spammer you report, hundreds of others will remain unreported. The majority of email spam gets sent from computers that have been hacked or infected with malware, and you can waste a lot of time reporting those random accounts!
How about unsubscribing?
Be careful when you click the Unsubscribe button. If the company that sent the email is a legitimate business, they will usually honour your request. Unsubscribing works great when you receive brochures, promotions, special deals, and newsletters, or notifications from social networks like Facebook.
When you use Gmail, these usually end up in the Promotions or Social tabs. Your Primary tab is reserved for emails that you are likely to read, like those from your contact list. It will also show what Google considers essential – like messages from your banks, utility providers, bills, and so on.
However, don’t ever click on the Unsubscribe button is a spammy email. Most emails sent by spammers have a unique tracking code. When you click on any link in the email (including unsubscribe), they will know that there is someone who opens these emails! They can add you to even more spam lists, which is the opposite of what you want!
