“Spam — phishing, marketing, and scam emails — is annoying, that we can all agree on,” Glenn Fleishman writes for Macworld. “Unfortunately, the basis of internet email is that every part of the system more or less mostly trusts every other part. It used to be that every part completely trusted every other part.”
“Even if there were a way to prevent malicious and criminal parties from being able to send email from accounts under their control, an unknown, very large number of computers and email accounts have been hijacked or can be on a moment’s notice, sending scams through addresses that otherwise have only carried legitimate email until that point,” Fleishman writes. “However, you can take steps that will help mitigate it, if you aren’t already.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Email long ago became an unmanageable morass of spam. Using Mail’s VIP lists to collect the important stuff is the only way we’ve found to even partially get it under control.
When it gets too bad: Select All and Mark Read.
VIP helps, Filtering by known Contacts helps. I also use Spam Sieve which helps. The problem still is that many emails I need to read come in by people I’ve not set up in my contacts so I am forced to regular scan my junk and spam folders to make sure I am not missing something important. Email is still the primary method of communication in my business, so I can’t ignore it, but it does take too much labor to manage.
I use FastMail, which has been an awesome alternative to Gmail. I used to have a spam problem with another address, but since starting to forward email from there to my FastMail inbox, most of it is filtered out. It costs a little bit, but its well worth it and I use it exclusively for day-to-day email.
http://researchteacher.com/fastmail-review-a-great-alternative-to-gmail/
Something that needs addressing bordering on spam is getting a former mail list subscription to stop.
For instance, after cancelling the LA Times, I keep getting emails from lists I cancelled with my subscription.
Another are the clueless subscription offers from sites you are already subscribed to- Wired comes to mind. If I am already a subscriber I am, not interested in subscribing.
How about stopping the endless flyers and junk mail in our home mailboxes? Wish there was a way to do that.
Try SpamDrain. It removes a couple hundred unwanted email a day for me from 3 email addresses. Easy to monitor and train. Under $20/yr per email.
Thought I’d try making a VIP list to deal with spam, but can’t figure out how to make a VIP list.
The VIP feature has been available since Mountain Lion, and I’m running El Capitan but can’t find any reference to it in Mail 9.3 anywhere, under any Mail menu, or in Mail Prefs.
None of the instructions I’ve found online are any help. I get lost by the second or third paragraph. The images they use don’t match how my Mail looks. I thought it was because I have Mail’s Viewing pref set up to use Classic Layout, but changing it didn’t help.
All instructions referenced right clicking on the email sender to pop up a short menu that you select “Add to VIPs” from. For me, right clicking on a sender pops up a long menu with “Open, Send Again, Reply, Reply All, Forward, etc., etc., etc.”
Any suggestions? FWIW, went to Apple first… no help.