Anti-Spam Strategy Question

Mods: I’m putting this here because I’m looking for advice from the masses. I don’t think there is a factual answer.

I’ve had a Yahoo! email account since 2003, and while I recently created a Gmail account that I am transitioning to I have too many friends who still use my old Yahoo! account so I am keeping it around for now.

My Gmail account gets almost no spam, however my Yahoo! account get’s quite a lot, 25-30 spam emails a day. Fortunately almost all of it ends up in my Spam folder and I just have to empty it every few days which isn’t a big deal, however much of it is the same spam from the same people every day… mostly people selling me drugs of one sort or another. I have NEVER purchased drugs online or from an email, and I never will.

I remember being told once not to open spam since that will signal the spammer that you are a real person and will encourage them to keep sending more or to sell your email address. I’ve also heard that unsubscribing sometimes works so you should try to unsubscribe in hopes of stopping at least some of it.

What say you? Just delete the spam without ever trying to unsubscribe, or try to unsubscribe at the risk of tipping off the spammers? In some cases I have been getting the same spam message for a few years now, every day of the week.

What’s the best strategy here?

Unsubscribe from legit sources - namely, any real stores you have shopped with, services you have signed up for or anything else you remember interacting with for real. Those unsubscribe links will be legit and will stop you from getting more.

Random spam emails for drugs, sexual enhancement, weight loss, real estate, political scandals, fake gift cards, etc can and should be ignored. The senders can and do track you opening them (to be fair so do legit senders) and will keep you on their rolls. They have no interest in you trying to unsubscribe.

Sounds like you are getting the latter, really, and should just ignore them.

Forward your Yahoo mail to Gmail–so Gmail should filter out most of the spam:

Thanks Past Tense. I think this will solve me problem.