Spam. How NOT to Get It. A MYO Post

We all get it. Whether we like it or not, we all suffer through spam.

You know the ones. Those that make you blush. And your husband and children wonder what the heck you were looking at to even get those 'bigger, better...' etc. messages. Or, my personal favorite, (not) the 'lonely cheating wives in your area want to meet you' ones.

EEEEW. Gross! Do your homework before you start sending me a bunch of lonely cheating wife crap because, frankly, I ain't interested! Got it, chachi? I'm a heterosexual woman in a loving, monogamous marriage for crying out loud! What are four different ways to say ick right?!

So, before you inadvertently open an oh my word embarrassing email because you weren't sure who Alexandria is and why she'd be looking at your profile, let's do a few preparatory steps to keep those from cluttering up your spam folder in Gmail.


While I was searching on how to just completely bypass my spam box altogether so I would never, ever see another bigger better whatever email, I found many people just ignored it. But let me be frank for a moment. (Yes, when I'm done, I'll be Amanda again. Sorry. Little side joke, there.)

Temptation.
Pure and simple. Satan hasn't really changed his ways in the last, oh, shall we say, thousands of years he's been operating. One of the easiest, and most effective ways to get a Christian to fall is curiosity. Remember the adage? Curiosity killed the cat? There you go.


I know. Gmail has already set up a pretty good way of figuring out if your email is spam or not. Most of the time, they get it right, but there are times when a good email goes to The Box, so proceed with caution. I've found great pleasure in doing this. I feel as though I have conquered a humongous foe. I have beaten the giant, and my spambox is clean!

Win!

Here's what I did.

• Open up your Gmail account.
• Go to your settings tab in the top right corner of your email. Click, and a drop down menu appears.
• Click on settings.
• At the top, you'll find a filter tab. Click it.
• At the very bottom, you'll find a link that says Create New Filter. Click. A pop-up box will open that looks like the picture below. (At one point in my Gmail experience, I was typing in all *kinds* of inappropriate words in the subject line. I'm not kidding. I had at least fifty ugly words typed in for my filters, and still they were coming through. This is where this post comes in handy.)

• See where it says 'Has the words'? Type in:spam in that box. Next, if you just want to play with it for a moment and see what happens, go to the bottom left corner and click the magnifying glass search bar. See what comes up? All those ugly spam messages in your spambox. Now, if you tested it out, you'll have to hit your back button and retype in:spam in that particular box. 

• Next, click the Create filter with this search in the bottom right corner.
• You'll get a little warning box. Press ok.

• Another box will open that lets you decide what you want to do with those ugly emails. Me? I don't even want to see them, so I delete them. And they never. Ever. Enter my inbox, nor my spambox. Note: On the bottom, next to the Create Filter button, you can apply that rule to any existing emails in your spambox, and it'll wipe those out as well.

And your box will be clean.

What happens, is whenever Gmail suspects that a particular message is spam, it automatically pushes it to your spambox. But it still shows up in the sidebar. Call it OCD or whatever, I dislike immensely anything cluttering up my boxes. If it's bold, I need to take care of it immediately. That's just how I am. And it sidetracks me to have multiple messages in spam and it more than likely be something I don't want to see, or my family to see. 

I have found there are several things to ensure that this doesn't happen to good emails.

• One. If you sign up for something, like a writer's conference, for the first few days or so, disable the filter. (You can add it back later.) If you receive an email that is important in your spambox, mark it as important and add the sender to your contact list.

• After you've added them to your contact list, those emails should never go back to your spambox. See? Easy peasy!

Abstain from all appearance of evil. - 1 Thess. 5:22