Think twice before you respond to any request for your email address, on the web, verbally, or on paper. Spammers can harvest any email address posted on a website. If you give your email address to a company, that information is often entered into a database so that customer information and preferences can be tracked. […]

Modern email spam filters are very powerful and can keep many common threats at bay without them ever hitting your inbox. Still, it’s advisable to periodically take a look at your spam folder to see if the filter is too aggressive and is blocking mail you want to see. Marking items as spam or not […]

By default, purchases of new website domains publish your name and mailing address in a publicly searchable database. This can lead to unwanted spam. Fortunately, you can usually pay a small annual fee to keep your registration information private.

Some spam relies on generators that try variations of email addresses at certain domains. If you click a link within an email message or reply to a certain address, you are just confirming that your email address is valid. Unwanted messages that offer an “unsubscribe” option are particularly tempting, but this is often just a […]

The Messages app on any iPhone or Mac collects both your SMS texts and iMessage chats. For the latter, you can configure a setting that disables notifications for any iMessage from a phone number or email address that’s not already in your contacts list. That can filter out phishing scams and general message spam.

Be a responsible and considerate user. Some people consider email forwards a type of spam, so be selective with the messages you redistribute. Don’t forward every message to everyone in your address book, and if recipients ask that you not forward messages to them, respect their requests.