How to Avoid Spam and Free Up Your Time.

Spam is one of the few things that everyone can agree we receive too much of these days. It is one thing to receive lots of email from family or business contacts, but when you include spam, it can start to feel entirely overwhelming.

We can broadly define spam as any messages sent over the internet that are either irrelevant or inappropriate. They’re usually trying to sell something, give you a virus, or con you into something. Processing all these messages, and deciding which ones are relevant can be a tedious draw on your time.

Three useful tips to avoid spam from entering your life:

• Be extremely careful about what websites you give your email address to

The key here is to make sure you aren’t constantly giving out your email address to companies, especially the suspicious ones. Not only will some legitimate companies bombard you with unwanted messages, but the more nefarious ones will sell your information to other companies who will email you junk.

Unless you specifically want to receive frequent emails from companies, you should always remember to untick the opt-in box that gives them permission to send you marketing messages.

• Get a spam blocker or junk filter

Most adware suites or email clients come with some sort of a spam solution. These are usually worthwhile and will automatically sort the spam out of your life and into a junk mail folder. The downside is that these functions aren’t always accurate and you could possibly miss out on an email that was meant for you.

This means you should still check your spam folder every few weeks to see if anything important that somehow got filtered there due to a big attachment or outbound link.

• Use a separate email for any potential spam

Rather than having just a personal email and business email, create a spam email as well. This is something you check a little less regularly, and when you do, you do it with a mindset focused on aggressive deletion of irrelevant emails.

If you’re operating on Gmail, there is a great tip available that allows you sign up for an additional email under your own name, just by putting a “+” sign at the end of your name. For example, if your original email was “john.nospam@gmail.com”, you could create another email “john.nospam+spamfolder@gmail.com”, and then filter your junk mail to there.

Between these three tips, you should be well on your way to fighting spam and eliminating the annoyances from your life. Most of the time, it just comes down to constantly opting out of the mailing lists and being vigilant about who you give your details to. Employing tools like spam filters, even though they are by no means perfect, will help to further eliminate nuisance emails.