Think of yourself opening your emails early Monday morning. What are you waiting to see? Letter from your crush or a message about a gaming team you belong to. Instead, you see an avalanche of emails you would prefer to get rid of. The amount of junk mail you receive on your email every day is huge and annoying. It takes some effort to check for the notifications and look for something important.
But what if I tell you that you do not need to install any additional programs to solve the problem? It does not require you to pay anything to get your emails. Everything you need is already available in your email app and it is totally free.
Let us start with the most widespread email provider – Gmail. Google is well-aware of the fact that spam emails create negative experience for their users. If you have @gmail.com address, then you have everything you need to improve the situation. The thing is that there is a difference between "Unsubscribe" and "Report Spam" buttons, and you should know the difference in order to manage the situation.
When you press the "Report Spam" button, you notify Google about the fact that the email is spam or malicious and it has to be hidden and used for protecting the further users. But if you report a legitimate newsletter of the store as a spam, then you might lose the ability to receive emails from the store in the future. "Unsubscribe" button, in turn, tells the company sending the emails that you do not want to receive emails anymore.
But there is one trick that will save your time. Just open one of the emails in your computer and find the "Unsubscribe" link near the email address of the sender. Google tries to hide this link, but it still there and now it moves to the three-dot menu in the upper right corner of your email.
Users of iPhone and Android can find the solution as easy as possible. You just have to open the email and look for the link in the bottom of it. Companies are obliged by the law to provide the user with an opportunity to unsubscribe, so the link or the text telling you that you can unsubscribe from the mailing list of this particular company is always there. All you have to do is to tap that link. It takes five seconds.
But now let us talk about the more serious things. You definitely have hundreds or even thousands of old emails that take the place in your storage. You do not have to delete them one-by-one like peasants. Gmail has a powerful search bar with some commands that help you find all the emails sent by a particular company or sender.
All you have to do is to write down the command "from:amazon" or "from:nike" in the search bar and press the Enter button. All of a sudden, all the emails from those companies become visible. You will see the checkbox in the upper left corner. The thing many people miss is selection of the text saying "Select all X conversations that match this search". Now you selected each of them and not just the first fifty.
Now after selecting all of them, you have to press the trash bin icon. This feeling is as good as popping bubble wrap! All your digital ghosts disappear in a blink of an eye.
Outlook users have the same opportunities. Microsoft calls this tool "Sweep". When you open an email from the subscription, you will see the "Sweep" button in the upper toolbar that allows you to delete all the messages sent by that particular sender or to keep only the latest one.
Apple Mail users have the tool too. Apple invented this tool in order to solve this issue. After opening the email from the particular brand, you will see the grey button named "Unsubscribe" in the bottom of the subject line. It happens because Apple checked the headers of the email and found the unsubscribe link for you.
You probably wonder why all the companies do not put the unsubscribe link into the body of the email. And the answer is obvious – it is about money. Each email in the database of the company is worth a fraction of a cent for advertisement. So, unsubscribing from the list means losing some money for the company. That is why they try to make it as complicated as possible and give you such options as pausing the subscription for 30 days and so on. Do not fall for it.
It should also be noted another tool called "Block Sender". While unsubscribing from the emails is needed if you just want to get rid of the newsletters and advertising messages, blocking is needed if some person, your annoying ex, for example, or a spam bot, who sends emails from different addresses, tries to contact you. In Gmail you have to click the three dots and choose "Block", in Outlook you have to right-click the name of the sender and choose "Block".
It should also be mentioned that it might take you up to ten days to unsubscribe from the email. The reason is in the fact that they use some other system or they just try to squeeze some profit from you. Do not worry if you receive one more email from that company. It is just another spam, and you have to delete it.
Your goal is to make your email app your friend, and not vice versa. You should be able to open your email app and see only messages from your friends, teachers, and family members, and not digging through the garbage. It will take you ten minutes today, but it will save you hours of frustration in the coming year. Digital hygiene is as necessary as brushing your teeth.
Stop living in a state of email anxiety. You have the tools, you have the knowledge, and you have the power. Go ahead and clean your house. Your future self will thank you one Monday morning.
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