I am in the process of writing this post. I am publishing it before completion because it contains valuable information already and will take me days to finish.

SPAM is an issue I hear about often. Usually the user is not serious about the issue enough to do what is needed. Here I will describe some steps to help control SPAM.

SPAM is a security risk as well as a productivity killer. Like most security measures, it is multi tiered. In other words there are several layers. Any of these layers may help and even if you do all of them, you may still get some SPAM and security issues delivered to your inbox. These measures are not listed in any particular order. I will try to start with cheap and easy and go down to the expensive and complex.

User Behavior

Much of this is too late if you are looking for a solution to the problem. This is best done from day one of getting an email address. This may take some time (months to years) for it to make a difference if you already have a problem but either way, start now.

• Be careful where you use your email address.
  • Registering on Websites. The general rule is never give your email to a website that you are not familiar with and sure is reputable. Before you use your email address on a website, make sure you want them to contact you and that you can reasonably ask them to stop and that they won’t share your email with others.. I often give a bogus email if it is required to get some information. One of my favorites is .
  • Advertising on Websites. Before posting your email address on a website. make sure the site uses some kind of encoding that makes it difficult for bots to get your email address. This usually involves some kind of JavaScript to display character codes rather than plain text or email shortcut.
  • Current SPAM response. Never click the unsubscribe link or any other link in a SPAM email unless you know it is a legitimate company that might honor your request. Clicking the unsubscribe link will usually confirm that this is a good email address and make it more valuable to the SPAMers. Simply delete this SPAM and go on.
  • Print Advertising. Not much you can do to control your email address once it gets out but you may not have much choice. It is unlikely that this advertising will be abused by SPAMers but they might find it.

Email Client

I use Outlook as my email client and you might notice that my first topic is not the cheapest. My reasoning is that I have used Outlook for 30 years and it does the most and I am familiar with configuring it. Most people have a Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Outlook. If you do not use Outlook, the following steps may still apply but you will have to research how to do it with your client. Thunderbird is a good free and open source option. Most web-mail clients also have similar options.

Client SPAM Settings. Adjust the SPAM Settings on your email client. In Outlook look under File, Settings, Mail, Junk Email. You will find settings for SPAM detection. When my SPAM problem reached more than a couple hundred a day, I set it to only accept email form my contacts. This instantly made my inbox manageable and made the Junk email folder useless. The obvious problem here is if you get email from someone not in your contacts that you want. When you run a business and hand out cards, that is always expected. Unfortunately, until you address this issue in some other way, it may be the least evil solution.

SPAM Email Services

Now we get into paying someone else to choose your SPAM threshold and you loose some control. But if your problem is severe, this may be a way to survive. I will discuss a few services below, starting with some I have used and taking a look at some I have not.

ProofPoint. I have used this in the past. It’s primary con is that it is made for the large corporate environment and initial config and setup is complex. It is best setup by a professional. That being said, it is very complete and has an option for email encryption that works if you need secure email communication.

Some links to external sources
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/reducing-spam