A quick tip from a tired Julie…

Well this has been a bit of a busy couple of weeks for me.  As well as the course which has just closed (I hope everyone who joined is finding it useful!), Tim and I have just moved house!

So I spent much of last week moving things from one room to another, opening and closing boxes, and generally failing to find things – it’s felt a bit like being in a giant rubik puzzle!

It’s left me a bit dazed, if I’m honest – so if you don’t mind, I’m going to make this a short one…

Dealing with an over-zealous spam filter

Email programs and apps are very clever these days.  They have automatic systems to filter out all the rubbish that would otherwise end up in your inbox, so you don’t have to bother with it.

And that’s great – but these automatic spam filters can get a bit over-enthusiastic sometimes.

So, as part of the house move, we’ve been contacting various people to change our address – changing car insurance details, that sort of thing.  And we’ve been buying a few new bits and pieces too. Most of the confirmation emails from companies got through to me, but a good half a dozen ended up in my spam folder.  (I use the Outlook app on my phone, and it’s spam filter is annoyingly trigger-happy.)

There are things you can try to help stop emails going into spam in the first place. Try saving the email address to your address book, or sending an email to that email address yourself.  Those things often, but not always, work.

The best way to teach your spam filter to stop sending a particular set of emails to the spam folder is this:

• Look in your spam folder for an email that has been put there by mistake.
• Open it.
• Look for three dots in the top corner of the email.  If you don’t have any dots, you might have three lines, or a little flag icon instead.
• Click or tap on that and a menu will pop up – look for the option that says something like “Not Spam” or “Mark as Not Spam”.

It’ll automatically move the email to your inbox, and “whitelist” that email address – so it won’t get marked as spam again.

It’s a good idea to check your spam or junk folder at least once a month to make sure nothing important has ended up in there by mistake – the emails in there usually get deleted after 30 days.  

But also remember that most of the emails in that folder will be there for a good reason.  Take care and keep your wits about you for scams and phishing emails – don’t click on any links or open any attachments unless you’re absolutely certain of who they’re from.

That’s all from me for this week – all the best.