A lot of people I know send out emails to a bunch of people with jokes or other seemingly innocent content. They have the best of intentions but probably don’t realize that they are contributing to our growing and out-of-control spam problem. especially when they put everybody’s email address in the ‘TO:’ field.

First of all, any unsolicited email is spam… whether sent in bulk or not. And just because your friend has given you their email address, does not mean they have given you the green light to send them jokes, etc.

In order to keep my inbox clean (as best as I can), I use email shadows. Often known as an alias, an email shadow is temporary email address that points to your real email address. You can turn them on or off whenever you want, and you can use one per person. I use them when I sign up for things on the web, like newsletters, etc.

This way, if an email address gets compromised or I no longer want to receive email from that person/organization, I simply ‘kill’ that email address and no longer receive the emails. It actually works very well!

So whenever possible, try not to use your real email address and see the benefit it has on your inbox.