Switch Email to Gmail to Reduce Spam

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Switch Email to Gmail to Reduce Spam
Nov
22

If you struggle with a large amount of spam reaching your inbox you may want to consider switching your mail to Gmail, Google’s free email service.

The amount of spam that is sent is constantly increasing and often the most common techniques to decrease it reaching you fail. Google is known for its superb anti-spam filtering and you can take advantage of it with any mail account that you currently have.

The solution involves forwarding emails from your current mail account, e.g. jsmith@smithcompany.com, to a Gmail account, e.g. jsmith@gmail.com, which will utilize Google’s anti-spam filtering. However, the delivery and sending of your emails will still be handled through your mail client, e.g. MS Outlook, so your experience will stay the same despite the forwarding to Gmail that’s taking place.

How to Make the Switch

(it’s easier than you might think.)

  1. Set up a forwarder from your existing email account to your Gmail account, e.g. jsmith@smithcompany.com > jsmith@gmail.com. (If you don’t have a Gmail account, Gmail setup takes just a minute.)
  2. In Gmail, set up the “From” and “Reply To” addresses to be your existing email account, e.g. jsmith@smithcompany.com. The steps are straightforward. Google will send a verification message to your current email address to confirm that you own it.
  3. In your mail client, adjust the settings so you can receive emails from Google through IMAP (see list of supported IMAP mail clients). By default, we're using the mail client MS Outlook, but instructions for setting up IMAP access with a specific mail client are available.

Once you’re done with these steps, send yourself a few test emails to ensure everything is working correctly, paying special attention to the "From" and "Reply To" fields - they should show the correct address, e.g. jsmith@smithcompany.com

That’s it! Immediately you should see a significant reduction in the spam that reaches your inbox.

by Tara Loftus

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