Most spam advice focuses on filtering it out after it arrives — better spam folders, smarter rules, more aggressive unsubscribing. That all helps, but it treats the symptom. The more durable fix is cutting off the supply before your address ever ends up on a list in the first place.
Where spam actually comes from
Spam rarely starts with someone guessing your address at random. It almost always starts with your address being entered into a form somewhere — a legitimate sign-up whose owner later sells or leaks their mailing list, a breach at a company you trusted with your data, or a "free trial" that was really a lead-generation funnel from day one.
Reduce the supply
- Use a disposable address for anything you don't fully trust. If the address expires, it can't be sold onward six months later.
- Read the sign-up checkbox. Many forms pre-check "send me offers from our partners" — that single box is often the actual source of the spam, not the service itself.
- Be skeptical of "enter your email to continue" walls on content that doesn't need one, like a PDF download or an article. These exist specifically to harvest addresses for marketing lists.
Clean up what's already accumulated
- Unsubscribe, don't just delete. The unsubscribe link at the bottom of a legitimate marketing email genuinely works most of the time and is faster than manually deleting every future message.
- Never click "unsubscribe" on something you don't recognize sending you. On actual spam (as opposed to marketing you signed up for), that link can confirm your address is active and increase, not decrease, what you receive. Mark it as spam instead.
- Set up a filter for repeat offenders who ignore unsubscribe requests, routing them straight to trash.
The long-term habit
Treat your real email address the way you'd treat a home address: something you give out selectively, to people and organizations you expect an ongoing relationship with. For everything else — one-time downloads, unfamiliar sites, anything you're just testing — a temporary address means there's simply nothing left to spam once the window closes.