If you’ve been using the Internet for more than a week you probably recognizes the following scenario…
You sign up for an online contest or to receive some sort of freebie, then before you know it your email inbox is getting stuffed chock full of spam, phishing emails and various other kinds of junk.
Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. It happens to all of us.
The fact is, once you use your email address to sign up for most anything (my own Daily Tech Newsletter NOT included), it ends up on every junk mail list known to mankind.
The junk starts flowing in like water out of a fire hose, and you’ll find that it soon becomes a chore just wading through your new emails every morning.
Well guess what? There is an easy way to avoid this scenario…
Simply set up a “junk” email account with one of the free online email services, and use that email address to sign up for contests, freebies and other types of special offers.
From that point forward, this new junk email account will be the unhappy recipient of all the spam that would have otherwise started landing in your primary (aka real) email account.
Of course setting up a junk email account won’t stop the junk mail that’s already coming to your primary email address from coming in the future, but it’ll prevent that address from landing on any new junk email lists.
If you already receive numerous junk emails every day it might be worth your while to open TWO new accounts instead of one.
You can use the first new account as your junk email address and the second one as your new primary email address. Just be sure to let your friends and acquaintances know about the change so they can send their messages to the new address instead of the old one.
From that point forward, whatever you do, don’t slip up and accidentally use your pristine new primary address to sign up for ANYTHING (again, my own Daily Tech Newsletter excluded).
There are plenty of free email services to choose from. Here are three of the most popular ones:
Unless you’ve been living on another planet for the last decade, you’re surely familiar with all of these email services.
While the services listed above offer paid accounts offering advanced features, they also offer just a basic email account for free.
Bottom line: While it’s impossible to keep ALL the junk out of your primary email inbox, using a “junk” email account for the stuff you sign up for online can help a great deal.
Bonus tip #1: This post explains why it’s now ok to use Gmail for your business email address.