Overview
Question: How often should you check my spam or junk email folder?
A. Sometimes
B. Always
C. Never
D. All of the above
Spam risks
The correct answer is…well, let’s think about this for a minute. Automated security tools that identify spam, junk, or phishing email messages have gotten much more accurate in recent times. Consider the dangerous nature of those messages and the consequences: just viewing spam, junk, or phishing messages can alert the sender that:
1) your email address is valid, 2) is being used often, and 3) you’ve just viewed the email message they sent and 4) include information about your geographic location, computer, operating system, and web browser.
Phish risks
Simply viewing one of these messages will almost always result in more spam, junk, or phishing messages. And if you happen to click on a link or open an attachment, you could become a victim of account or password compromise, financial harm through identity theft, ransomware that encrypts all your files, or other malware that could break your computer.
Types of email accounts
Your F&M email account
You have an F&M email account for work-related purposes. The nature of the spam and junk email received at this account is almost always unsolicited work-related sales, product, or service emails, along with very smart, sophisticated, and dangerous phishing emails. For my F&M account, the answer is C: Never.
A personal email account
You likely have a personal email account you use for personal stuff, fun, entertainment, and social media. You may get a lot of junk email because that email address has been circulated widely. For this email account, the answer would be C. Never. There would never be a useful message that lands in the spam or junk email folder for this account.
A private email account
You may have a separate private email account for managing finances, paying bills, online shopping, and banking. You don’t really use this email account for anything else, so you are likely to receive very little spam, and for this account, the answer would be A. Sometimes. Generally, the emails received at this account are of interest to me, but you may still receive spam over time.
Commonly, one-time authorization codes or links from financial institutions may end up in the spam or junk email folder. These types of messages are generated in real time in response to an attempted login and are typically expected. One should be particularly careful and inspect these messages before taking any action. By hovering your mouse over the sender name and email address and any included weblinks, you can verify they are what they claim to be. When in doubt, mark the message as spam and delete it.
Important Notes
Expecting important messages
If you are expecting an important message, create an address book entry for that specific sender in advance. This will ensure the message lands in your inbox rather than in spam. You can also carefully examine the contents of your spam or junk folder for anything that might be important, but do not click or open all the messages—that would be reckless.
Someone signed me up
What if someone co-opted your account and innocently or maliciously supplied it as their own email address? Or, what if someone signed you up for a mailing list and now you are receiving emails that you are not interested in? The recommended course of action is to mark these messages as spam so any related messages that arrive in the future will land in your spam or junk email folder. Trying to unsubscribe from legitimate mailing lists may be successful, but that could just result in more spam.
Long lost friend
What if a long-lost friend is trying to contact you via email and you never see that message in your spam or junk folder? While this is a possibility, it’s more likely that this scenario would occur through social media, where people can publish as much (or preferably, as little) information about themselves as they choose. That long-lost friend probably also contacted other friends you have in common or family members, or they may have found your contact information through an event such as a reunion or club.
Review
Let’s review: All of our email accounts are under siege by spam, junk, and phishing messages.
1. Rarely visit spam and junk email folders in any of your email accounts.
2. But when you do, it’s in response to an action you initiated, like logging in to a particular website.
3. Never open and read spam or junk email messages because that will result in more spam and junk and could lead to way more dangerous things.