Good time to prune junk emails

I only give my mobile number to family members. I do not want to be bothered by sales people all day long. If you are with some service providers they keep ringing to see if you Fancy a chat! That would annoy me to distraction.

Thanks, Yorkshiregel. I also make a slight change to name and another item. It's to my phone number! I think they sell those on, too, disregarding the data protection and tick box choice rules. So one digit off the exchange... and they will get sorry, the number you have called has not been recognised!

That's for any old site, not places where I am expecting a valid delivery where they need my number. But that is rare. And I never give my mobile as those get sold on for marketing, too.

Thanks for that Lewlew. I knew it was happening but didn't see that email so didn't know why. Now I know.

If you have emails coming back even though you have unsubscribed go to your blueyonder/gmail account server and put them in the spam box there. That definitely works. They are stopped at source. They will not be forwarded to the inbox on your computer.

Here's a tip. When you subscribe to a new website make some small change to your name ie put a 'z' in 'Susanne' instead of an s. Don't put an 'h' at the end of 'Sarah', that sort of thing. Then if they pass your name on to someone else you will know who gave them your name. I used to do this a lot and I wrote to the new websites to complain. I like to think it made them think twice about being prosecuted.

3500? All you have to do is say 'select all' then 'delete'! Not too hard is it. If you keep too many in your box your box will get full up and then you will not receive any mail until you empty it.

Jess I use unsubscribe all the time. If you do this, for those who don't know, the company is not allowed to send you any more emails so they should not come back unless you order something else from them. Easy isn't it.

I don't understand why people get so many unwanted emails. I've had my hotmail account for over 20 years and hardly ever get spam etc. in my inbox - it gets filtered into the junk box straight away.

I buy a lot online and have given my email address to loads of companies btw.

I want to do the opposite Daisyboots - I want to throw out most of my wardrobe and start again!

So I need to subscribe to more websites

As my DH and I have vowed not to buy any clothes in 2017 I must unsubscribe from a lot of online companies. No point in being tempted. Himself has also been banned from eBay because he is a spendaholic and buys the oddest of things which are of no use.

Love deleting - every day make a point of deleting at least 100 but since I get about 125 every day, I start by clearing my spam, then spend 15-30 minutes removing all unnecessary e-mails. The secret is not to open anything you won't have time to deal with today.

This was Virgin's Spam posting in the Email section on the Community Forum a month ago. I thought it indicated that they were emptying the spam folders every 30 days?

From today we'll be updating your default mail settings from ‘reject spam’ to ‘deliver spam to spam folder’.

This should prevent emails from being bounced back as spam, and instead give email users the option to click “not spam” on genuine emails.

Those using POP3 won’t see any change to their inbox, but webmail and IMAP users will start to see spam in the spam folder – which will be automatically deleted every 30 days. It's advised that you check your spam folder on Webmail if you believe you are missing otherwise expected emails.

You can of course change the setting as you wish.

We’ll start making these changes to accounts from Monday 28th of November. We’ll only be changing those where customers have their mail settings to ‘reject spam’, and these changes will be carried out over the next 2-3 weeks.

Thanks Yorkshiregel, I had this problem as I stopped using a download email client, eg Windows Live Mail, after my big crash this last summer. My first in 20 years of using PCs. Lost a lot of important work-related emails, even though I'd archived many, I sort of got lazy since semi-retiring. But, as you say, there were thousands stored on the server and I recovered many thankfully, so it was a help in that respect.

IMHO it all went pear-shaped when they stopped using a Google platform and went to their own a couple of years ago. That's when the big problems with spam began for a lot of people per their community forum.

So as I only use their webmail now, the spam isn't as bad (they do 'seem' to have better server-side filters now... sort of) but I was missing important emails. Now I just let them be marked spam, but they come to my inbox first.

Also, back in the day, when VM was owned by Telewest, they had rubbish security and we were often blacklisted on blueyonder for being the source of spam. That's when I gave up and went to gmail.

Sorry after your password type or clk 'My emails' at top.

To empty your inbox from the provider site:

eg: Virgin Media

go to website
sign in with p/w
takes you to emails
clk 'Select all' which puts a tick by the side of the email
drag all those emails with a tick in to red trashcan at top,
repeat until all messages have been taken out of your in box,
make sure you do not delete the new messages you have not read yet
Do the same in trash can on left hand side (or sometimes I have been able to clk the three lines on left hand side and get 'clear trash can folder' wte) If you clk red trash can you will get message 'Delete permanently?' say 'yes'
You have to do this regularly. I had over one thousand again this morning to delete.

If anyone knows a quicker way pls post, I would be interested.

Funnygran never send your personal details to anyone who looks suspicious as that one does.

If you don't delete unwanted/old emails be warned especially if your email address is one of these:

These changes affect all Virgin Media email addresses ending in the following:

@virginmedia.com
@ntlworld.com
@blueyonder.co.uk
@virgin.net

What’s changing?

From the 8th September 2014, you’ll need to access your Virgin Media Mail mailbox at least once every 90 days. This can be via our Webmail service, an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, or from a mobile device.

What if I don’t do this?

If your mailbox isn’t accessed within a 90 day period, we may suspend access to your mailbox without prior notice. If we do this, your mailbox will remain suspended for 60 days.

I get loads of spam into my inbox bypassing the junk box - I'm with Virgin mail too. Can never understand why I might be interested in Russian ladies or Viagra ? I am a member of a local Streetlife forum and this morning they have asked me to verify my address and postcode by putting in card details so they can check it against the address. I haven't done it, seems a very odd request to me even though they say the card won't ever be used.

Thanks JessM. Good to know. I actually do do that, but what I would add to it is that you also get your emails from your virgin media, blueyonder (what ever) so you need to delete emails from that too. You can go to their website, type in your password and it will take you to your email account. On the left is a list so find the folder with your emails in it and delete them there too otherwise you email box will get filled up and you will not be able to receive more. You can take each email and put it in the trash bin, then click 'delete trash bin' or words to that effect. When I first found that out there were over a thousand old emails sitting there. Be careful that you do not delete recent emails that you have not yet seen in the in box on your laptop.

Ana I am on Virgin webmail, and the spam filters are rubbish. They are marked spam, but still arrive to my inbox (VM has a problem with this for quite some time).

The point is that Tesco should honour unsubscribing requests I would think.

For all other stuff I use gmail, this was before I had a gmail. So I have good spam filtering there.

Can't you click and send it to 'junk'? Tesco emails should all bypass your inbox then.

I do this regularly and with great success.

HOWEVER... I cannot get rid of Tesco!!! I have unsubbed so many times (and you have to be logged in to unsub). I originally signed on to them for the purpose of viewing their groceries online (you cannot browse Tesco as you can Waitrose, or others without joining up). But did not decide to buy and never logged in again until I tried to unsub.

They do NOT stop sending emails and passed my details on to F&F and other affiliates.

I got those unsubbed, but am still stuck with Tesco.

I delete emails regularly that aren't needed/have been read & no longer need. Spam is checked (just in case there's one or two slipped into there that shouldn't be) & permanently deleted. I unsubscribe any I don't want to hear from again. I also have a long list of folders & emails to be kept go into those - I also go through the folders when I have time & delete out of date ones.

I dislike having lots of emails in my inbox - easy to miss important ones - I do lots of Surveys, some have expiry dates so I could miss out on Points if I don't do them in time

In your junk mail box you should have the option to block senders. That way you can get rid of junk without having to open it.

I check my emails daily, deleting all those I'm not interested in that day but want to keep receiving, or mark them as important to be looked at later. Once deleted they go in a 'trash' folder which I empty daily. I unsubscribe from those who pester too much or I don't want to hear from again and maybe every 6 months sort the rest into folders, until I get bored. I really must go back and clear out the earliest stuff sometime ...

Hello all I never unsubscribe but go down the list of unread mails and click on the box next to each I don't want to open and then click on the move box and select spam. From then on all from that email will go straight to spam. It does get more difficult though I do agree. Less rubbish through the door though.

When you buy from an Internet company they usually ask you if you wish to receive further marketing emails. You might have to look hard for the box to tick or untick but most reputable companies have them.