Using Gmail for your business correspondence is becoming more and more the mainstay of internet business these days. Gmail uses an impressive set of anti-spam filters to insure the spam in your inbox stays at a minimum. While these filters work great to catch unsolicited spam, it is possible to get spam in your inbox.
This happens when you sign-up for online newsletters, software and other freebie websites to name a few. These companies will often sale their sign-up lists to compensate for the free service they provide.
These are 3 examples to help you keep spam under control in your Gmail inbox.
- When signing up for newsletters you actually want to receive but are unsure if you are going to receive spam due to signing up to the service, add a + and the sites name to your address. Example: username+johnchow.com@gmail.com . The email will still land in your inbox but will no reflect the new address. You can setup filters to put it into a John Chow folder and if later you notice spam hitting your account with that address, you will know who the "evil" culprit is and you can then filter it to the spam box.
- The above tip won’t always work. Some sites I have noticed will not allow you to enter addresses with a + in the address. For this you can add a period in any part of the username you desire and you will still receive the email in your inbox. Example: user.name@gmail.com or us.ername@gmail.com . Gmail doesn’t recognize periods when receiving incoming mail so you can add it anywhere you want in the username. You can then setup a filter for that incoming email address and route it to any folder you want, including the spam box.
- This last tip is the one I use when signing up for free stuff that I do not wan’t to receive email from, ie. catalogs, contests, etc. You are able to use two server addresses for your Gmail account. These are gmail.com and googlemail.com. Example: username@gmail.com and username@googlemail.com . Again, you will receive email to your inbox from either addresses from above. When signing up for services you never want to hear from again, just use the googlemail.com address and filter the incoming address to the spam box.
These tips will help control spam and even help you redirect email you want into folders of their own.
Note: These tips will not work with Google Apps domains. You must use your Gmail account to use these features.
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These are some great tricks. I had no idea that you could do this with gmail. I am going to use one today to signup to some blogs.
Just don’t forget what email address you use. Some sites use these for login usernames and changing it up could be a pain in the future for sites you actually want to comment on.