cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/46161145

I’ve been using Thunderbird to sort out my junk email for a while, ever since I walked away from my Gmail account. Thunderbird does a great job, but it does mean it has to stay running somewhere.

However I’m currently in the process of moving and as a result I’ve had to shut down the system that that I had been running Thunderbird on. The result of which, obviously, is that my inbox is now being flooded with spam.

Since it’s been a while since I last looked at the problem, I figured I ask. How do you deal with spam email?

  • iii@mander.xyzEnglish
    11·
    7 hours ago

    It might be too late for OP to implement this, but I got this advise years ago and it works wonders: I use my own domain with a wildcard email inbox.

    So when a company asks for my email address, I respond with companyname@mydomain.tld.

    If ever I receive spam on companyname@mydomain.tld I just black hole that email address, and know never to trust that company again.

    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      3 hours ago

      You can also somewhat do this with other providers in some cases.

      For example, Gmail has the +Alias feature where you can use a plus symbol on your existing username to make things unique. If you go to a website and use myusername+somecompany@gmail.com those messages will still go to your same inbox. You can then use rules to handle them differently. The only problem is that some signup systems won’t accept a + in an e-mail address.

      Technically you can also do this with periods as well with Gmail, since:

      myusername@gmail.com

      my.username@gmail.com

      my.user.name@gmail.com

      Are all the same and go to one mailbox too. So you can use a particular variation with periods for “spam” signups, then filter those messages out.