I’ve gotten several requests over the last few months from people wanting to know how to close their e-mail accounts and open new ones. The primary reason for these requests is that they find they are getting too much spam and want to just close down the account and start over.
Folks, it’s just not that simple – depending on what e-mail provider you are dealing with, it can be really difficult, if not impossible to just close out an account. The best advice I have is, don’t close the account, deal with it.
Spam is a fact of life – there are things you can do to decrease the amount of spam you get, but let’s face it, no matter how hard you try there is going to be some amount that gets through.
Having said that, now let’s take a look at how best to deal with it. There are various spam blocker programs, and all sorts of applications that promise to keep your inbox spam free, but the fact still remains, some is going to get through.
All the e-mail programs I know of have their own way of trying to prevent spam, and most of them do greatly reduce it, but some still gets through. Are you getting my message here? Some spam is going to find its way to your inbox no matter how hard you try.
So here’s my best advice to you – lighten up and don’t let it bug you so much! I strongly recommend using more than one e-mail address. Decide which address you are going to use for family and friends, and others you actually want to hear from. Only give that address to those people.
Use another address for those online instances where you have to give an e-mail address – you know, when you sign up to be able to read a news site, or when you place an order for something online and have to give an e-mail address. It’s a sure thing that once you sign up for anything online and give them an e-mail address the volume of spam you get at that address is going to increase. If you buy something online, from that point forward you will be getting solicitations to buy other things.
Coincidentally, as I was getting ready to write this post, in my mailbox landed a newsletter covering just this subject. It’s from the “Ask Leo” website, and while he doesn’t talk about the advantage of using multiple e-mail addresses, he does go into some detail about the problems with closing an account.
Take a look here for what Leo has to say about it.
