How to Report Junk Mail that is Unwanted

Junk mail in your email inbox can take much of your time when trying to find important information. Junk mail is considered any mail that is unsolicited, meaning you did not give permission for it to be sent to you. This includes any emails that you no longer want or do not recognize the sender being someone you know. Reporting junk mail varies with each Internet Service Provider. For this article, we will focus on AOL's guidelines but many of these guidelines will apply to other providers.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• AOL internet service
• Computer
• AOL email account

1. Start up your computer and log on to America Online Internet then open your personal email folder. This is normally located in the top left corner of the AOL screen once sign on has completed. If accessing AOL through another ISP, the email icon will be located on the right side of your screen.

2. Click on the 'New' folder under your email to bring up all new emails sent to your account. This brings up all email that has not yet been read. Going through each email, if you do not recognize a name, you should right click on the email. There is no need to continue reading or to open the email.

3. Right clicking on the email will bring up a small menu. Click on 'Report Spam' and the email will be removed and reported as junk mail. To ensure the mail has been reported as junk, click at the top of your inbox on the tab that says 'Spam'.

4. Look through the emails that are currently in this inbox, and find the title of the email you just reported as junk. From now on, any email from that sender will be sent to this folder; therefore you no longer have to read over it in the inbox.

Tips & Warnings

• AOL and Yahoo both offer spam and junk mail services that offer you the opportunity to report mail that is unsolicited. Many times you may sign up to a new website and find that emails you want are stuck in this folder. If this is the case, simply left click on the name to highlight it, and at the bottom of the inbox you will click on 'This is not spam' and it will return this and all subsequent emails to your normal inbox.

Resources

• Do-it-yourself: Stop junk mail, email and phone calls

[sbarry77]

on 10/28/2009 Great tips on stopping junk mail! 5* and recommended