What's the best way to prevent SPAM in mail.app?

212rikanmofo said:

I've heard of numerous ways ranging from setting up a catch-all forwarding if you own your own domain, to using iCloud aliases. I'm getting pretty fed up with the uncontrollable amount of spam that I am receiving and want to do something about it. I just want to hear everyone's method on what way works the best and most efficiently.

I am using google (IMAP) for my email btw if that makes a difference.

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'Google (IMAP)'? You mean gmail? Doesn't gmail already come with comprehensive spam filtering? And custom filters for adding your own filtering rules.

I use a mac.com email, from way back in the day, as my primary email. I was also tired of putting that address out there for the world to see, for crawlers to find it and send me stuff, so I set about a new strategy. I created an alias, xxxxxxx@icloud.com. Here, I took advantage of the fact iCloud can do "+" addressing. So for sites I'm signed up for and that accept the "+", I used, typically, the name of the site. For this site, for instance, i used "alias+macrumors@icloud.com". That way, I still get the messages but they're not going to my primary address, which I keep private to only those I know. To remember them all, I used a Numbers document that lists the site and the alias I used. This is also a memory jogger to remember sites that don't accept the "+" entry. This not only allows me to remove my email from sites whenever possible, but if I start getting spammed, I can check and see which site it came from, in most cases, based on the email+ address it went to. So if started getting spam sent to my "xxxxxx+macrumors@icloud.com" address, I know the site was sharing my email with others. I could then make a decision to cancel my account or change it again, to a second alias I've set up for my failover. And so on and so on.

As I said, lots of work to set up, but now that I'm off and running, it's been really smooth and easy so far. By the way, I'm only using macrumors.com as an example - they have never spammed me since 2006 since I've been a happy member.

Mark the junk as Junk. Unsubscribe from legit businesses you don't want to hear from anymore. Use a private email for friends and family (as you're doing). Like you, I also use a second email for websites, but I don't create a separate email for each.

Some spam still gets through Apple's filters, but not very much.

I find that Apple's own filter does a pretty good job if I mark them as spam, and i've set up a few custom rules for the few that slip through

Yakibomb said:

I find that Apple's own filter does a pretty good job if I mark them as spam, and i've set up a few custom rules for the few that slip through

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Do you mean mark them as "Junk"?....or is there a "mark as spam" option that I'm not seeing on my account?...the Junk filter isn't very effective for me.

Over my many years I have set up three (3) email accounts. First is my personal (iCloud) and a GMail account and ISP account. This way I can use one for family & very close friends, another for online shopping and one for various other web logins. This way my personnel account never gets spammed, the online shopping I keep a close eye on to see what online sites sell that address (I have only once had to change that account in 7 years). The last one is the spam haven. I have there times wiped in clean and create a new account.

I also believe in Inbox Zero and instead use archive folders for various emails. The Inbox Zero thing has made my life so much better and haven't had a third of the problem other in Mail have had. So try to go to Inbox Zero and see if it speeds up your connections.

More: I have found using Inbox Zero in GMail have sped up Mail's connection to GMail considerably!