Block Spam on Yahoo! Mail

Spam is a big problem in the modern email world, but there are a lot of different ways you can both reduce the amount you receive and deal with the spam that slips through the cracks. Yahoo! already has fairly powerful anti-spam filters, and any messages you find in your Spam folder can be safely left there. With good email habits and regular reporting, you can minimize the amount of spam you have to deal with.

Steps

Blocking Spam Messages

  1. Identify the difference between spam and legitimate advertising emails. Not all email advertisements are spam. If you've signed up for a newsletter, or left a box checked when creating an account that signs you up for special offer emails, these messages are legitimate advertisements and can be dealt with quite easily.[1]
    • Most legitimate advertising emails will clearly state the company that is sending it, as well as provide methods for unsubscribing at the bottom of the email. These messages should not be reported as spam.
    • Spam messages rarely state the company that is sending them, and are often littered with outlandish claims and bad spelling. Many spam messages claim to offer "free trials", "samples", or a prize to a contest you didn't enter.
  2. Block an address that is repeatedly spamming your inbox. If you are repeatedly receiving messages from an address that is bypassing Yahoo!'s spam filter, you can permanently block it. Note that in order to block addresses, you'll need to log into the Yahoo! Mail web interface on a computer; you can't block addresses from your mobile device's Mail app, for example.
    • Hover over the Gear button in the upper-right corner.
    • Select "Settings" and select the "Blocked Addresses" tab.
    • Type the address in and click "Block".
    • Repeat for any other addresses you want to block.
  3. Unsubscribe from legitimate marketing email messages. Most of the marketing and junk email that fills up your inbox are actually perfectly safe marketing messages. You can unsubscribe from these messages by following the "Unsubscribe" or "Email preferences" link at the bottom of the message.
    • Unsubscribing from a mailing list may take a week or two to take effect.
    • Don't follow "Unsubscribe" links on messages that are clearly spam and not legitimate marketing messages. This will tell the spambot that it's found a legitimate email address, and you'll receive even more spam.
  4. Mark messages in your inbox as spam. Yahoo! does a pretty good job of automatically sorting unsolicited spam messages into the Spam folder, where messages will be automatically deleted after one week. If you do find a spam message in your inbox, you can quickly move it to the Spam by checking the box next to the message and then clicking the "Spam" button at the top of the inbox.
    • This will register the sender as a spam sender, and future messages will be sent directly to the Spam folder.
    • Make sure to report only unsolicited bulk email messages. Reporting legitimate business messages can prevent you from receiving important messages from them.
  5. Report spam messages to anti-spam services. If you want to be more proactive in the fight against spam, you can report spam messages that you receive to anti-spam services. These services work to shut down the connections that spammers have to the internet.
    • SpamCop (spamcop.net is one of the most prolific anti-spam organizations, and you can join and report your unsolicited, bulk spam messages.
    • If you are in the US, you can report spam messages to the FTC by forwarding them to spam@uce.gov.
  6. Create filters for common spam terms. If you are finding a lot of random spam coming into your inbox, you can use filters to try to automatically send it to your spam folder. You can only create filters from the Yahoo! Mail web interface.
    • Look for common terms in your spam messages that don't appear in your regular emails, such as "enhancement", "supplement", "clinical trial", etc.
    • Hover over the Gear button and select "Settings".
    • Click the "Filters" tab.
    • Click the "Add" button to create a new filter.
    • Use the rules to create a filter that catches your common terms.
    • Select "Spam" from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the window and save the filter. For more details on creating Yahoo! Mail filters, Create-a-Filter-in-Yahoo!-Mail.

Preventing Spam

  1. Never click any spam links. The entire point of a spam message is to try to get you to click the link that it contains. These links are nearly always malicious in some way, so avoid clicking them at all costs, even if the offer sounds perfect.
  2. Never download attachments from unknown emails. This goes for more than just spam, but spam is definitely one of the main offenders. Email attachments are one of the most insecure things on the internet, and should only be downloaded when you completely trust the sender.
  3. Never post your email address in a public place. While it's usually OK to use your email address to register for a site or account, you'll want to avoid posting it in forums or putting it in plain text on your website. Spambots scour pages looking for email addresses to add to their mailing lists, and when you post your email address you're making it much easier to be on the receiving end.[2]
    • Make sure all of your various accounts online are set to hide your email address from the public.
  4. Use a disposable email address. Yahoo! Mail allows you to create disposable email addresses that you can use to sign up for services that you don't want to share your regular address with.
    • Hover over the Gear button in the upper-right corner.
    • Select "Settings" and select the "Security" tab.
    • Click the "Create base name" button and enter in the first part of your disposable email. Don't include any personal information.
    • Click the "Add" button and create the email address. You will need to enter the keyword that determines the specific address, and you can choose where you want the mail to be delivered to. You can now use the new email address to register for services. If you start receiving too much spam from it, you can simply delete the email address.
  5. Make your email address unscannable if you want to post it. If you want people to be able to contact you at your Yahoo! email address, obfuscating your address can help prevent it from being picked up by spambots.
    • For example, if your email address is "example@yahoo.com", you could write it out as "example[at]yahoo[dot]com"
  6. Avoid Yahoo! chat. Yahoo! chat is an easy way for spammers to figure out email addresses, since they just have to take all the usernames in a chatroom and add "@yahoo.com" to the end of each one. Try to use Chat-Online if you must chat online and want to protect your Yahoo! account.
  7. Only register for accounts on trusted sites. Always review the privacy policy when creating an account to ensure that your address will not be sold to advertisers. Avoid signing up for anything that sounds too good to be true.


Tips

  • Periodically go through your spam and your bulk folder to make sure that nothing was accidentally diverted there.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.theemailadmin.com/2011/09/teaching-people-how-to-identify-spam/
  2. ↑ http://techchai.com/2011/05/23/how-to-stop-spam-emails-6-most-effective-ways-to-filter-junk-emails/
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