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What to do with spam

The easy part is that you basically do nothing. When you get a spam email, mark it as spam and delete the email before opening it. Likewise, with texts, you can simply delete them without replying and block the number.

That said, the FTC recommends reporting spam messages by forwarding them to the number 7726 (SPAM)—however, if you’re not tech savvy, fiddling with a spam text can increase the chance of accidentally clicking on a malware link somewhere in the message (and you should never click on unsolicited links). If you’re not comfortable forwarding texts, don’t sweat it—just delete, block, and ignore. Otherwise, you can forward spam texts using these steps, for either your Android or iPhone.

How to avoid spam

Spam is a part of life, but as the FTC recommends, there are some simple, useful tips that can help you prevent it:

Avoid displaying your email address in public. Spammers scrape blog posts, chat rooms, social networking sites, and forums—so the less of you that’s out there, the better.

Use two email addresses—one for personal messages and one for everything else. Ideally, this second public-facing email address should be one you are willing to delete one day, if needed. Personally, I use a second pseudonymous email address which I call my “junk email,” and I use to sign up for promotions or newsletters. Looking at it now, it has twice the number of spam emails compared to my regular address.

Use a truly original address that’s unlikely to be created by spammers. Spammers send out millions of messages to probable name combinations at large ISPs and email services, hoping to find a valid address. That means common first name/last name email addresses are more likely to attract spam!