During the holidays, you might notice that your Inbox is filling up fast with emails! Many are mailings for things you have no interest in and perhaps don’t even recall how your name might have been added to a mailing list. 

Some of these emails may land in your spam folder or Inbox. Given all these mailings, what strategies can you employ to help direct legitimate messages to your Inbox?

Know What is Spam

Spam is the unsolicited email (e.g., junk or bulk mail) that floods the internet and your Inbox each day. Some are from legitimate marketers, but many are from scam artists and include chain letters, promises of quick money and pyramid schemes. 

Other emails might seem like spam to you, but they come from legitimate sources, such as the NC State University Police Department or Environmental Health and Safety. Examples include:

• Crime Alerts
• Crime Warnings
• Campus Broadcast messages

These messages ARE NOT SPAM! 

If you do not want to view these types of emails, delete them instead of marking them as spam. If you and enough campus users mark these types of emails as spam, it can cause Google to consider them spam and impact the delivery of these messages to people who do want them. 

Know How to Manage Your Inbox

• Use the unsubscribe link in each email footer to discontinue receiving email you don’t want. Be cautious when clicking on links from known and unknown sources.
• Create filters to keep email from an unwanted address out of your Inbox or to make sure email from a particular address (e.g., crimewarning@ncsu.edu) is always sent to your Inbox. 
• Mark “true” spam messages as spam! Google’s spam filters will “learn” to send future mail from that email address to your spam folder. See Spam for more information.

As always, the NC State Help Desk is available to help you with any of your email issues. You can submit a help request or search knowledge articles via the IT Service Portal.