Protecting Yourself From Spam
| Avoiding Spam | Blocking Images | Blocking Email Addresses |
Avoiding Spam
Spam is any unsolicited message or posting, regardless of its content, that is sent to multiple recipients.
Websites that are not reputable, or ones that have received your permission unknowingly through their privacy policies, may sell your email address to spammers. Just as some merchants send junk mail to your house, spammers send unsolicited email with the hope that you’ll buy their products or services. Since sending an email is very inexpensive, spammers can afford to send millions of them—even if only a small number of people respond by purchasing their products. They send their messages from numerous different—and often falsified—addresses, which makes them hard to track.
To help reduce the amount of spam that comes to your Yahoo! Mail account:
Never respond to unsolicited email. One response or "hit" from thousands of emails is enough for spammers to justify the practice. In addition, a response lets the spammer know that your email address is active, which makes it more valuable and opens the door to more spam.
Never send your personal information (credit card numbers, passwords, and so forth) in an email. Spammers can fake the format of Yahoo! and other trusted sites. Yahoo! will never ask you to send your password or credit card information by email.
Never follow a spam email’s instructions to reply with the word "remove" or "unsubscribe" in the subject line or body of the message unless you trust the source. This is often a ploy to get you to react to the email, which lets the spammer know that your email address is valid.
Never click on a URL or web address listed within a spam email, even if the message tells you that’s how you unsubscribe. This also alerts the sender that your email address is active and can result in more spam.
Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam lists. Although some of these sites may be legitimate, most are actually address collectors. If a collector records your address, they will value it more highly because it’s active.
Never open an unsolicited email unless you have blocked HTML graphics. Blocking graphics prevents spammers from being alerted when you open the message.
What’s Next:: Avoid Giving Out Your "Real" Yahoo! Email Address
This
is a Yahoo! Mail Plus feature. Learn more. 
A useful feature in Yahoo! Mail Plus is disposable email addresses. Your disposable address is part of your Mail account, and you can give it to online businesses instead of your "real" email address. If you find spam being sent to a particular disposable address, you can simply delete it and not disrupt your "real" mail account in any way. To learn more, take a look at the Using Multiple Yahoo! Email Addresses tutorial.
Words to Know
- Disposable email address: a customized email address that you create to protect your regular Yahoo! Mail Plus address.
- Spam: unsolicited email on the Internet; also called "junk mail".
- Spammer: someone who sends spam.
- Yahoo! Mail Plus: a fee-based, advertisement-free version of Yahoo! Mail that provides additional online protection features and control.