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Do you delete junk email or do you move them to the Junk folder?
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I take it you're using Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Yahoo? Because they are the four biggest culprits of a never-ending tornado of spam ripping through your inbox.
I don't get that many, but when I do, I just delete them. I keep an eye on my junk folder in case an "official" email accidentally gets sent to junk (which happens occasionally).
I delete them. I believe the purpose of the junk folder is "check this occasionally in case a legitimate message ends up here" rather than "store your junk messages here".
The general practice is to unsubscribe/mark as junk literally anything and everything you don't want flooding your inbox. Otherwise you'll keep getting the spam for all eternity.
Outlook is not as bad as Gmail when it comes to spam, but it's pretty horrible. Starting now, don't just delete the spam. Use Outlook's spam-fighting capabilities and mark the offending emails as spam. You can also unsubscribe from newsletters and those kinds of things. But the "unsubscribe" button is generally at the very bottom of the email in the smallest font humanly possible. It's easy to miss. There are also email management apps/websites that you can use to get a hold of your inbox again if it's becoming a monumental task. Two that come to mind are https://clean.email/ and https://mailstrom.co/
The junk folder is for anything that's considered junk. Anything that isn't a legitimate email should not be going to the inbox. You can still check for recent messages that may have been sent to the spam folder by accident. But for the sake of sanity, anything that's spam should go to the spam folder.
I use PrototonMail and Gmail and can't recall the last time I received a spam message. Is this perhaps a bigger problem in North America?
ProtonMail doesn't share your email address with everyone under the sun. So that makes sense. But Google does. If you're not getting spam in your Gmail inbox, you're fortunate. Or maybe you're just on top of managing your email properly.
With Apple Mail, I get too many false positives, so I need to check the junk folder often, but I do appreciate that emails age out of that folder and are deleted in 30 days. With ProtonMail I find the heuristics to be a bit better and only things end up in the spam folder. I'm also a bit more picky at how I hand out my main protonmail email address. I also have a junk@<mydomain.com> that I'll use instead and that's helped immensely.
With the way companies sell ones data, it would not surprise me if that is the case.
To me, in the past 3-5 years, the sheer volume of spam/junk/phishing has increased considerably. With that in mind, I now give businesses my main email address, since it is so infected. And, my true personal one (with my full name) is now only for friends. Then again, which friends use email these days? LOL
My problem was I used my apple email for everything. I had a Microsoft email for forms where I knew I would get spam but laziness took over. Now I’m transitioning to protonmail and being more picky in who gets my actual email
Over the past year or so, I have been thinking and considering changing my email address(es). However, at my age now, I am becoming more and more not bothered with it. Alas, the spam/junk/phishing is still challenging.
For now, since my Outlook Dot Com email address is out in the wild, it will remain. My personal M365 domain, will remain private. I honestly don't think I have given that email address to anyone or any website, thus far...😂
Anymore, my iPhone is my primary method of dealing with non-work email. I have several personal addresses which include Gmail and Yahoo (I've had my Yahoo mail account since 1999).
Yahoo has a strong spam filter and because of that it is primarily the address I use when dealing with business. Any spam I get from them, the Yahoo filters usually take care of. My Gmail accounts are rarely used so rarely see email, let alone spam. Most of the email I get is from restaurants trying to get me to come in and eat.
But when I do get spam I just delete them. I hardly check my spam folder as it's primarily full of stuff I don't want to see. If a spammer is persistent though, I will at first attempt an unsubscribe. If that doesn't work then I use the Mail app on my iPhone to block the sender.
My work email is a gmail account with a domain and I do get some spam. But the only people that know that address are those in the company (I am only emailing them) and I have no reason to give it out to anyone else.
Yahoo has a strong spam filter and because of that it is primarily the address I use when dealing with business. Any spam I get from them, the Yahoo filters usually take care of. My Gmail accounts are rarely used so rarely see email, let alone spam. Most of the email I get is from restaurants trying to get me to come in and eat.
But when I do get spam I just delete them. I hardly check my spam folder as it's primarily full of stuff I don't want to see. If a spammer is persistent though, I will at first attempt an unsubscribe. If that doesn't work then I use the Mail app on my iPhone to block the sender.
My work email is a gmail account with a domain and I do get some spam. But the only people that know that address are those in the company (I am only emailing them) and I have no reason to give it out to anyone else.
My main account is Outlook, and I get less than 5 spam messages per year.
If I have to register with a website/service I know I'm not going to use much I'll use either Simple Login or the iCloud hide my mail feature, or a temporary e-mail address altogether.
And I'll thoroughly read what permissions I'm giving, and make sure those marketing boxes are not checked.
If I have to register with a website/service I know I'm not going to use much I'll use either Simple Login or the iCloud hide my mail feature, or a temporary e-mail address altogether.
And I'll thoroughly read what permissions I'm giving, and make sure those marketing boxes are not checked.
I used to use Gmail and never got any junk direct to the inbox, It was the most successful of all email accounts in managing Spam. I moved my domain to iCloud+ when they started offering domains/email and it's hit and miss. Certainly not as good as Gmail.
Outlook.com is awful at identifying Spam.
I have been using the same domain (my surname) for email over the last 25 years. In those early years when Spam wasn't a thing my email was out there for all to see and find. So I have to live with Spam in high volume. Nothing I can do about it.
That said, I am really considering moving my domain away from Apple and back to Gmail.
Outlook.com is awful at identifying Spam.
I have been using the same domain (my surname) for email over the last 25 years. In those early years when Spam wasn't a thing my email was out there for all to see and find. So I have to live with Spam in high volume. Nothing I can do about it.
That said, I am really considering moving my domain away from Apple and back to Gmail.
You're thinking the management by Google, will be better on detecting spam and such?
I have strongly (and still) considered deleting my Outlook Dot Com email address. Alas, there is so much tied to it, espectically MFA/2FA related. I am almost scared to, in case I forget something that I need access to...
You can use a service like https://clean.email/ or https://mailstrom.co/ to greatly clean up your email and reduce spam if you don't want to get a new email. I've had people use these services before that had like 20,000-30,000 emails in their inbox.
I am not thinking it, I know it's way better. I used my personal domain with Google for many years without issue, I honestly cannot think of a single time there was a false positive and all the spam ended up where it should.
I just decided to move to Apple as it made sense when they introduced personal domains for email but like I say, I find it hit and miss.
I delete Junk e-mail by right clicking on the Junk folder and selecting Empty. Truly junk (spam) e-mails don't make it to my inbox. I delete annoying e-mails that come from companies I have a (marginal) relationship with. If it becomes excessive, I unsubscribe. With legitimate companies, this is not risky. They comply with the request.