How do I unsubscribe from all these unwanted emails?

Yes, this is absolutely excellent advice. There's no better way to say it. However, readers who may be a little less IT savvy may be extremely perplexed by mentioning that "When you click on 'this is spam' for legitimate email that may cause other people - people who want it - to stop getting it."

I hope Leo will be able to answer that question in a later message: "How can my marking mail as spam affect the mail that others receive?" I think I know the correct answer, but I'll leave that to the pro.

Thanks, Leo ... A great, great message.

That's actually addressed in the related article: Why shouldn't I use the "Report Spam" or "Junk" button?

18-Aug-2009

A few Suggestions:

re: 100 Spam emails

Turn your Spam Watch on - Yahoo calls it SPAM GUARD]
a] go through INBOX and anything you are sure you don't want to read tick off as either "Read" or SPAM [2 steps]

b] Move those to your email trash folder

c] Open Trash and SPAM folders to check for mistakes

d] Use Empty button to clean both Spam and Trash emails

In following this approach you might see email you want that was placed by you or your email provider in the SPAM folder!

When I receive an email from someone that I don't recognize I use the block sender, bounce email on my email program (incredimail) I never receive another email from those senders.

Something worth doing too is learning how to apply filters.

Just because you mark something as spam doesn't mean you won't get a very similar spam the following day. It's because marking something as Spam only identifies one particular source and 'blacklists' that source (and hence why it can hurt legitimate senders if you mark them incorrectly).

Far better to learn to filter emails with keywords in the subject. For example, I expect I will NEVER receive legitimate email with the subject line containing the word 'Pharmaceutical' so I have a filter in place to automatically delete mails with that word in the subject.

It can be tedious setting them up in the early days and it certainly pays to check your 'deleted' folder occasionally to make sure you're not accidentally deleting friendly mail.

As a point of interest, I'm sure they've made some adjustments now but Hotmail is/was a spam magnet (one reason many corporate firewalls disallow email from Hotmail email accounts!!).

Conversely, in four years of having a gmail address, I've received about three spam messages and they were very cleverly constructed. Perhaps Google use their smarts to filter spam better than others?

I had an ISP who actually charged a premium (can you believe that!!? - I wasn't going to pay extra to overcome their sloppy standard service) for spam filtering and I'm told their filter rate wasn't as good as Google's.

Anyway, enough of that rant. Learning to create filters is pretty simple and is one of the most worthwhile activities I can recommend. I get 80+ mails per day, I need as many helpers for sorting/deleting as possible.

Keep up the good work Leo.

Another point worth noting...an "unsubscribe" link can actually take you to an unsafe sight, opening yourself up to viruses, worms, and malware. Spam is really the least of your problem when you think about it. Spam is a nuisance, whereas virus/worm/malware can be catastropic.
Thanks as always Leo...see you on the Tardis.

I use a program called Mailwasher Pro by Firetrust. It allows me to bounce and delete unwanted email from the mail server before it ever gets to my local computer.

David has the best answer I have found. A Gmail account solved virtually all of my spam problems. My ISP had so much trouble with attacks on their system a couple of years ago, that they switched all email service over to Google. I wasn't sure it was a good idea at the time, but went along with it. The fact I didn't understand at the time was that I would need a separate Gmail address, but could continue with my old address as my main email contact. All "valid" email was just forwarded over to my new Gmail account, and the original address has served as a great spam filter.
Since I have my own real estate web site, and publish my email address (original) in newspaper ads and on literature, I get about 300 emails a day. With the above system in place, about 30-40 get through to my new gmail account, and the rest are caught in the old account. When I have time, I scan through the suspect emails and simply hit delete all.
The fact that I periodically find an email from a new client in the "Spam" account is usually easy to spot and send on to my "good" account.
Works for me!

Take a look at: http://firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro

Their product, Mailwasher, lets you preview your e-mail and bounce messages back as if you never existed. You can keep messages from ever entering your e-mail program. I've been using if for several years and have pretty near solved my spam problems.

On the other hand, some legitimate emailers do not bother to pull you from their subscriber list after you have unsubscribed. The only way I have found on these is to mark as spam or setup a filter for them, and quite frankly, a single click on "This is spam" is easier.

If they don't respond to a proper unsubscribe, I'd have a hard time calling them "legitimate" - but do make sure you're following their unsubscribe instructions properly.

18-Aug-2009

One other thing! I've used Hotmail for years. I used to get tons of spam in my inbox. But for the last few years, I get very few. Microsoft has done a good job of improving their filters. Granted, they could probably do better, but I have to say that I am quite satisfied with the service.