How do I stop spam and junk email?
How to reduce junk mail properly — unsubscribing safely, filtering, and using aliases so new signups don't reach your main inbox.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 45 min
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Unsubscribe from legitimate marketing using the link in the email, but never interact with obvious spam — it confirms your address is live. Mark spam as spam rather than deleting it, so the filter learns, and use email aliases or a secondary address for signups.
There are two different problems here. Legitimate marketing you signed up for has a working unsubscribe link and should be unsubscribed from. Actual spam should never be interacted with at all, because any interaction — including unsubscribing — confirms your address is real and monitored.
Step by step
- Distinguish legitimate marketing from spam.Marketing from a company you've dealt with has a working unsubscribe link and a real sender. Spam is unsolicited, often from a spoofed sender.
- Unsubscribe from legitimate marketing using the link in the email.It's legally required to work in the UK and EU. It's the cleanest way to reduce volume.
- Never click anything in obvious spam, including unsubscribe links.Any interaction confirms your address is live, which increases the amount you receive.
- Mark spam as spam rather than deleting it.This trains the filter and improves it over time. Deleting teaches it nothing.
- Set up filters for anything that keeps arriving and isn't quite spam.Most providers let you file or delete by sender or subject automatically.
- Use email aliases or a secondary address for signups.Several providers offer alias addresses. If one starts receiving spam, you know which service leaked it and you can disable that alias.
- Check whether your address has appeared in a breach.Have I Been Pwned shows which breaches included your address. It explains a lot of otherwise mysterious spam.
- Don't publish your address in plain text on public pages.Automated scrapers harvest addresses from web pages continuously.
Tips
- 'Plus addressing' works on many providers: sending to yourname+shop@example.com still reaches yourname@example.com, and lets you filter and identify the source.
- Some spam is designed so that images loading confirms your address is active. Most clients block remote images by default — leave that setting on.
- For physical junk mail, national mail preference services and writing to the sender both reduce volume, though the process differs by country.
- A separate address for shopping and signups keeps your main inbox usable indefinitely.
Common mistakes
- Clicking unsubscribe in actual spam — It confirms the address is live and monitored, which usually increases what you receive.
- Deleting spam rather than marking it — The filter doesn't learn from deletion. Marking it improves future filtering.
- Using one address for everything — One breach anywhere and it's public forever, with no way to isolate the source.
- Replying to spam — It confirms a real person reads the address, which is the most valuable thing a spammer can learn.
Questions people ask
Is it safe to click unsubscribe?
In legitimate marketing from a company you recognise, yes — it's legally required to work. In unsolicited spam, no: it confirms your address is active.
Why did I suddenly start getting more spam?
Usually a data breach at a service you signed up to. Checking your address against known breaches often explains it, and it's a good prompt to change the password there.