STOP Getting Spammed by Your Own Email Address

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that spammers have started more and more spam email from YOUR or MY email address. The email is from YOU and also to YOU. Chances are you have your email address white-listed. Here’s a little trick I use to stop these emails from getting into my Inbox.

First why would you email yourself…last week I wrote a tip on how you can stay organized by emailing yourself… that could be a reason.

Here’s how you can move the spam emails out of your Inbox but still keep the real emails you have emailed yourself.

Decide on a few characters that you will type in the Subject of every email that you send yourself. Keep it simple as you want to be able to type these characters from your BlackBerry etc as well. Use something like QAZ or whatever is easy for you to type.

Any time you send yourself an email type those characters in the Subject e.g. Instead of “Pick Stuff from Supermarket”, you would need to type (say) “QAZ Pick Stuff From Supermarket”.

Now setup Outlook.

• Add your own email address to the Safe Senders list in Outlook (this is probably already done)
• Create a Rule in Outlook so that all emails from your email address get moved to your Junk Mail folder, except those with your special tag in them (QAZ in the example above) 
• If you are using Outlook 2010. Click on File and select the Info tab and then click on Manage Rules & Alerts.
  For all other versions of Outlook, click Tools and then click Rules & Alerts.
• Click on New Rule… to display the Rules Wizard as shown below:

• Click Move messages from someone to a folder.
• Click people or distribution list. Enter all your own email addresses in the From field and click OK.
• Click specified folder. Use the screen that comes up to select the Junk E-mail folder and click OK.
• Click Next, Next and then Next again

• Tick except if the subject contains specific words.
• Click Specific Words. Enter the tag (QAZ in example) and click Add.
• Click OK
• Your Rules should look something like the following:

• Click Finish.

Now anytime Outlook receives an email from you, it will get moved to the Junk Emails folder, EXCEPT when they have your special tag. EASY!

Does this tip work for you? Do you have other better methods? Tell me what you think by leaving a comment on the blog.