Spam is the electronic version of “junk mail.” The term spam refers to unsolicited, often unwanted, email messages. Spam does not necessarily contain viruses—valid messages from legitimate sources could fall into this category.

How can you reduce the amount of spam?

• Be careful about releasing your email address– 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. If these email databases are sold to or shared with other companies, you can receive email that you didn’t request.

• Be aware of options selected by default– When you sign up for some online accounts or services, there may be a section that provides you with the option to receive email about other products and services. Sometimes there are options selected by default, so if you do not deselect them, you could begin to receive email from those lists as well.

• Use filters or spam tagging – Outlook 365 offers filtering capabilities that allow you to block certain addresses or to allow only email from addresses on your contact list. Outlook 365 also offers spam tagging services that allow the user the option to review suspected spam messages before they are deleted. Spam tagging can be useful in conjunction with filtering capabilities provided by many email programs.

• Report messages as spam– Outlook 365 offers an option to report a message as spam or junk. Reporting messages as spam or junk helps to train the mail filter so that the messages aren’t delivered to your inbox. However, check your junk or spam folders occasionally to look for legitimate messages that were incorrectly classified as spam.

• Don’t follow links in spam messages– 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. Emails that offer an “unsubscribe” option are particularly tempting, but this is often just a method for collecting valid email addresses that are then targeted for other spam.

If you have any questions or need more information regarding filtering and blocking spam emails please contact tech support.