Texting may have put a dent in e-mail’s dominance as the primary form of electronic communication. But e-mail is far from dead. And the same can be said, unfortunately, for spam and inbox overload.
One of the best ways to keep ahead of both is to set up different e-mail accounts for different purposes. With different accounts, you can virtually eliminate spam without the use of a costly anti-spam package, and you can easily set up rules to route messages according to the account to which they’re sent. Here’s how you might proceed.
Personal Mail
Your main personal account should be sacrosanct, given out only to friends and colleagues that you know will not be exposing your address in any way to marketers. This address should be the one that’s easiest to remember, identifies you plainly, and that you expect never to have to change.
Don’t post this address on any Internet sites — or anywhere online where automated crawling bots can harvest it for use on some marketing list.
Shopping and Financial Accounts
You’ll probably also want an e-mail address that you give out only to retailers, vendors, and financial institutions, both online and offline. Offline merchants increasingly want to know your e-mail address these days.
When purchasing online, do your best to keep vendors from sending marketing materials to this address. Uncheck any boxes that opt you in to newsletters and sales pitches, and, when possible, prefer vendors that promise never to give your e-mail address to third parties. Despite your best efforts, though, you’re probably going to get some spam sent to you at this address, which is why you want to keep it separate from your personal account.
Career-Related Mail
Hopefully you won’t be searching for a job very often. When you do, though, you should have a separate e-mail address for this purpose if…