7 steps to take control of your inbox and spam

Everyone hates spam! I am sure spammers also hate receiving spam, but they still distribute it. Why? Because it is still effective. Believe it or not, many of us still click on the links or continue with the spam message. As long as we continue to do this, there will be spam. If everyone understood this and did not pay attention to spam, spammers will finally give up because they have a hard time sending emails. It is difficult to quantify the cost of sending one, two or fifty emails, but 1 million or 5 million emails certainly have a cost that is not insignificant. When the investment recovery begins to be so small that spammers cannot earn a decent living, they will find something else to do. This day will come and I can't wait for it to arrive.

Meanwhile, what can we do about it? a way to reduce the problem and manage it effectively using the 7 steps described below.

Step # 1: Get your own domain name

The fight against spam begins effectively with obtaining your own domain name. For example, if his name is Andy Williams, he would buy a domain name called andywilliams.com, which of course is already owned by the famous singer. This has some unique advantages over the use of a domain name given by an ISP or a webmail service such as Hotmail or Gmail. It also has some minor disadvantages. Let's examine these.

An important advantage is that you control the entire email address. You can create email addresses such as andy@andywilliams.com, info@andywilliams.com, sales@andywilliams.com, etc. This is in clear contract with an assigned ISP name like andywilliams@comcast.net. If I wanted another, I would have to open another account or pay more for each address assigned by the additional ISP. If I ever decided to change ISP, I would lose that email address and would have to start over using a new one and inform everyone who contacted about it, a very messy proposal.

Many solve this problem by obtaining a Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail account that you can access from anywhere whenever you have access to the Internet. These types of email accounts definitely have a place in your email toolbox, but they are not enough as your primary personal email address. One reason is that you do not have access to your emails and address books when you are not online, such as during a long flight. The disadvantage of Anotehr is that they do not allow you to export address books online, which makes portability very tedious.

I prefer to have my own domain name that I call my permanent email address. I will always have this email address whenever I renew this domain name every year. The cost of registering a domain name varies from $ 4 to $ 8 per year for the most common. This is a small price to pay for the advantages it offers.

The only minor disadvantage of owning your own domain name is that you must manage it yourself or have someone do it for you. In my opinion, this is overcome by the advantages mentioned above.

Step # 2: Create private email addresses

A private email address is one that no one but your intimate circle knows. Each person to whom you give your personal email address is someone you trust and from whom you wish to receive email.

Set up a private email address for each person who needs to receive messages. It can be you and 5 other family members or 12 employees who work for you. This part is quite simple, just log in to your email control panel and create new accounts for each email address that will be used to receive email.

Step 3: Create public email addresses as aliases

An email alias is not a real email address, but an address that is redirected to a real email address. For example, configure receptionist@andywilliams.com as an alias that redirects to mary@andywilliams.com. Each time someone sends an email to receptionist@andywilliams.com, it will end up in Mary's inbox. If you change receptionist, simply modify the redirection to get a very elegant solution. You can then publish this public email address on a website, in a brochure, in print advertising, business cards, etc., without revealing your personal email address and without having to make many changes if Mary leaves and leaves. Hire a new receptionist. This is a great benefit and maintains your privacy, as well as that of other people for whom you have created email addresses.

How does this help with spam? By using email aliases in an intelligent way, you could easily close any spam that begins to arrive. Let's examine how this can be done.

Step 4: set the default or general email address

Your email control panel will have something called "default address" or is also sometimes called "general address." This is a valid email address to which all unresolved emails go. If you set this as your personal email address, for example, you will receive all emails addressed to "anything" @ andywilliams.com, this includes sales@andywilliams.com, joe@andywilliams.com and andrew @ andywilliams. com etc. Here lies the secret to fight spam.

Step # 5: Create specific public email addresses with name when necessary

When you are forced to register on a website you wish to obtain information from, you are generally asked for a valid email address. Well, guess what, now you have an unlimited supply of valid email addresses. I usually use a specific format when I register on websites: it is "websitename" @ andywilliams.com. So, if I am registering on a website called www.get-rich-quick.com, I would use the address get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com as my valid email address. When the site sends me an email, it is redirected to my personal email or whatever the default or general address is.

Step 6: send spam back

Here comes the real advantage, if you later start receiving spam directed to get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com, simply create an email alias for get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com and redirect the email to exactly where came, for example georg-bush@get-rick-quick.com. Then you will never receive another email from someone using that email address. This is great and it's my favorite part. Keep in mind that spammers usually send emails from an address that is not yours, so if you see an address such as noreply@get-rick-quick.com, you will redirect it to another place, for example, a Hotmail address that you configure only for redirection purposes. Exercise some discretion here because spammers often use the email addresses of real people and we don't want these innocent people to receive redirected email.

Step # 7: Be diligent in the continuous management of your domain

If you do this diligently for each website where you register by identifying the website name, you will know very quickly which websites sell email addresses and which ones fulfill their promise not to share your information. All this time, nobody in your personal intimate circle knows your private email address.

A real-life example in my case: I use a specific email alias for my Paypal account that nobody but Paypal knows. I have never received spam at this address, but I have received hundreds of spam messages in other email aliases that I created. All these emails supposedly come from Paypal and are addressed to me as "Dear valuable member of Paypal" or something similar, warning me that my account will close or suspend unless I click on your link and update my credit card information .