Dealing with unwanted e-mail messages can be a huge pain. A reader recently asked for some help figuring out just what was the various options listened in the Yahoo! Mail inbox mean: “Please explain the difference in Yahoo mail of unsubscribe, not my mail, spam and delete. Am getting more & more mail from unwelcome sites and have tried all of the above , but nothing works in lessing the unwanted sites. I don’t want to have to change my account. Thanks!
Clicking on Unsubscribe in an e-mail can work to unsubscribe you from a legitimate e-mail that you are actually subscribed to. But not always. It’s only going to work for legitimate e-mails that you have actually subscribed to, but no longer want. In some scam e-mails, the unsubscribe button could take you to malicious site.
Simply replying unsubscribe or stop to an e-mail won’t necessarily work, even if you’re dealing with a legitimate company. There may be steps you need to take, such as going to their website. That information should be found in the e-mail, usually at the very bottom.
Choosing the Spam option simply marks something as spam and moves it to that folder. Mark it enough times and Yahoo will start filtering -mail into from that sender or with similar subject lines to a spam box. That doesn’t prevent it from coming to you, just simply puts it in that box where you don’t have to look at it. Spammers have thousands of different e-mail address they send from, so they are hard to stop.
That doesn’t prevent it from coming to you, just simply puts it in that box where you don’t have to look at it.
Delete moves something to the trash. It has no effect on whether or not you will get more of it. There’s really nothing you can do to stop Spam, spammers send it out randomly to every possible e-mail address out there. They send millions of messages a day. Your best bet is to mark it as spam. If the e-mail asks for information such as your Social Security number or bank information, you also have the option to mark it as a scam.
Not my mail is a feature Yahoo added because they shut down many accounts that had been inactive for 12 months and allowed others to use those e-mail address. The not my mail button is intended for when you get something that clearly seems to be addressed to previous owner of the account. It is not intended to filter spam, but instead sends a hard bounce back to the sender letting them know the e-mail is closed.
This might stop legitimate e-mail meant for someone else from coming to your account, but as far as spam, it is generated automatically to various e-mail addresses and spammers are unlikely to pay any attention to bounce notices.
Be careful with your e-mail address when registering for accounts or entering contests. Many times, in the fine print, you’ll see that you are being automatically signed up for offers or e-mails. It’s not a bad idea to keep one e-mail address for stuff like that and another for personal and important business purposes. One big culprit in your name getting on Spam lists is friends that aren’t careful with our contact information. Maybe they send out e-mails to 50 different people at once. That puts your e-mail address as part of the message that goes to all of those people. If one of those people has lax e-mail security or just simply forwards stuff, all of those address can be made available to spammers.
Changing your e-mail might cut down on spam for a while, but eventually it will probably pick back up again. If you are super-careful with that new e-mail address you may be able to keep the amount of spam to a minimum.
~ Cynthia
I just wanted to add that on those sites that will actually unsub you, they have branches (other sites that are associated with them) which when you go to any of those and sign up (or simply surf) then it can re-establish a new subscription on the very site you just unsubscribed to so be careful of those types of sites as well. Read the small print at the bottom of these mails to understand why your getting mail from a site that you may have never visited.
Great post,thanks for sharing such a wonderful information…keep posting.Quit interesting topic.
I don’t get as much spam as I used to. For a while, I opened the stuff to get information for the FTC. Since I stopped doing that, it’s diminished. CNN sent unsolicited news alerts and took a lot of time to stop–phone calls and letters finally did the trick. Lending Tree–you’ve got to call them. I’ve written letters to companies that sent stuff I didn’t want. Since I really don’t want to keep getting unwanted email, I work at it! Sometimes people who have my email address have their accounts usurped and all sorts of junk appears–keep unsubscribing and eventually it stops. Yahoo attracts the most spam; comcast and outlook not so much.
Love all your tips!
With havin so much written content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright violation? My site has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it seems a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my authorization. Do you know any solutions to help reduce content from being stolen? I’d definitely appreciate it.|