How to stop spam emails

It's almost impossible to stop spam emails completely, but you can cut them right down. Keep your spam filter switched on, and report and block the spam that still gets through. Never reply to spam or unsubscribe from it, and keep your main email address private.

What are spam emails?

Spam emails are messages you never agreed to receive, sent in bulk to large numbers of addresses at once. One might advertise a loan, another a miracle cure or a new car you've supposedly won. Some of it is plain advertising. Report it as spam and move on.

Some spam is more dangerous. Phishing emails try to trick you into visiting a website or handing over information such as passwords or bank details. It pays to recognise what you're looking at, because deleting a sales email is harmless, but clicking a link in a phishing email can cost you money.

How to recognise a spam email

Some spam is easy to spot, but scams are getting smarter. Bad spelling and an odd design used to give them away, but you can't rely on that any more. Check these points instead:

• The sender's address. Anyone can fake the display name, so look at the email address behind it. Be wary of an address made of random letters and numbers, such as lottery-winner@tX93053533aka09q2.com, or one that doesn't match the company the email claims to come from.
• Who else it went to. Spam is sent to many addresses at once, so a long list of recipients you don't know is a warning sign.
• Pressure to act now. A message that gives you 24 hours to respond or threatens a fine wants you to act before you think.
• An offer that's too good to be true. A prize, an inheritance or tickets that are almost sold out are classic bait. Ask yourself whether you really entered that draw or asked for that loan.
• A request for personal details. Your bank will never ask you to send personal information by email.
• Links and attachments you didn't expect. According to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a scam email often wants you to click a link to a website that might download a virus or steal your passwords. Leave an unexpected attachment closed too, even when the sender's name looks familiar.

If you're not sure whether an email is genuine, contact the company directly. Use the details on its official website, never the ones in the email.

How to stop spam emails: 6 things that work

If spam already fills your inbox, start with the first three tips, which deal with the spam you get now. The next two keep your address out of spammers' hands, and the last one helps stop a scam from reaching other people.

Report and block spam instead of only deleting it

When you report a spam email, it does more than deleting it would: the email moves to your spam folder, and your provider's filter learns from it. In Gmail, you can report an unwanted email as spam, and it's added to your spam folder. The more spam you report, the better Gmail gets at spotting similar emails. In Mail on a Mac, you mark a message as junk instead, and each one helps the junk filter in the same way.

Blocking goes a step further. Once you block a sender, their future emails go straight to spam. In our webmail, you can block a single address or block a whole domain. Your blocked senders are kept in one list, and you can take a sender off it again. Outlook lets you add both addresses and domains to its blocked senders list too. A block only covers the senders on that list, so keep reporting spam from new senders as well.

Keep the spam filter switched on

A spam filter checks every email you receive and moves the ones that look like spam out of your inbox. If you have business email with us, our virus & spam filter is switched on by default when you create an email account. It moves spam to the Spam folder and deletes emails that contain a known virus. With another provider, check in your email settings that spam filtering hasn't been switched off.

A real email can still end up in spam by mistake, so check your spam folder now and then. When it happens in our webmail, add the sender to your trusted senders, and their emails will skip the spam filter.

Email on your own domain, with spam and virus protection for every inbox.

Don't open, reply to or unsubscribe from spam

Never reply to a spam email, and never try to unsubscribe from one. Both tell the sender that your address is active, which only brings more spam. If an email already looks like spam in your inbox list, report or delete it without opening it.

Opening an email can give you away too. It can hold remote content, such as images that load from the sender's server, which tells the sender when and how many times you viewed it. In Mail on a Mac, the Protect Mail Activity setting stops senders learning this. In other email programs, look for a setting that blocks remote images and switch it on. If you do open a suspicious email to check the sender, don't click its links, open its attachments or load its images.

Keep your main address private

Spammers can't use an address they don't know. Share your main email address only with people and organisations you trust. Keep it off public web pages, where bots collect addresses to send spam to, and leave it off your social media profiles as well. If customers need to reach you through your website, a contact form keeps your address off the page. If you do publish it, disguise it as hello AT brackenlanepottery DOT co DOT uk: people can still read it and write to you.

If you've registered a domain, the WHOIS record says who is responsible for that domain. It's worth knowing what that record shows about you, because an address you keep private can't attract spam. For .co.uk and .uk domains, the WHOIS doesn't show your name or postal address unless you've agreed to it. For a domain registered with us, our Domain Protection add-on reduces what's publicly visible about you, though some details may still have to be shown.

Use an alias when you sign up for things

When a newsletter or an online shop asks for your email address, give it an email alias rather than your main address. An alias has no inbox of its own: emails sent to it are forwarded to your mailbox.

If your email is with us, you create an alias in the control panel and confirm the forwarding through a verification email. You can create as many aliases as you like. With another provider, look in your email account's settings to see whether it offers aliases.

If your email is with us, set up a filter in our webmail that moves everything sent to the alias into its own folder, for example Newsletters, so it never clutters your inbox. If the alias starts attracting spam, delete it and create a new one.

Forward scam emails to the NCSC

In the UK, you can forward a suspicious email to report@phishing.gov.uk. The NCSC analyses the email and any websites it links to, and it can take down scam addresses and websites. Reporting is free and helps protect other people from the same scam. You don't need to forward the suspicious emails that are already in your spam folder.

How to stop unwanted emails you signed up for

Newsletters and offers from a company you've bought from or signed up with are a different case. If you no longer want them, unsubscribe rather than block the sender. Use the unsubscribe link in the email, or the Unsubscribe option your email provider shows for the sender. In Gmail, if a sender keeps emailing you after you've unsubscribed, those emails go straight to spam.

If you recognise the company and remember signing up, unsubscribe. If you don't, treat the email as spam and report it.

What to do if you replied to a spam email

If you only replied, you'll usually just get more spam, because the sender now knows your address is active. Report the email and block the sender. If you shared details or clicked something, act straight away. The NCSC gives this advice for each situation:

• If you shared a password, change it on every account that uses the same password. If it was your email password that leaked, start there.
• If you shared your bank details, contact your bank and let them know what happened.
• If you clicked a link or installed something, run a full scan with your antivirus software and let it clean up any problems it finds.
• If the email came to a work laptop or phone, let your IT department know straight away.
• If you lost money, tell your bank and report it to Report Fraud on 0300 123 2040 in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, or to Police Scotland on 101 in Scotland.

Keep your business inbox clean

If you're setting up email on your own domain for your business, you can have this protection in place from the first day. Choose one of our email plans and create your first business address with the spam filter already on.