Learning how to recognize spam and knowing when it crosses into phishing or scamming will help you stay safer online and help you keep your email inbox a little cleaner. What is spam? Spam is any unsolicited, unwanted digital message sent in bulk. Think of it as digital junk mail. At best, spam emails are annoying. At worst, they’re pushing scams or trying to install malware on your device. Here are some ways to get fewer spam emails. I'm here to walk you through what to do if a scammer has your email—and how to keep it from happening again. This article was made possible in part by Incogni. It was written and edited. This step-by-step guide with screenshots will show you everything about managing your spam folder and spam emails in Gmail and Outlook. Spam email is a low risk / high reward activity but not all email sent in bulk is spam. Learn how to recognize phishing signs and how to get rid of the annoying spam emails. There are many reasons you might receive junk e-mail. However, there are ways to reduce the amount of junk e-mail you receive and lower your risk for receiving more. Follow these guidelines to help lower your risk of receiving junk e-mail. We tested the easiest and most effective ways to stop spam and junk mail across popular platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. These fixes are simple to follow, don’t require technical know-how, and can make a huge difference. Spammers collect email addresses from chat rooms, websites, customer lists, newsgroups, and viruses that harvest users' address books. These collected email addresses are sometimes also sold to other spammers. In Gmail, you can report unwanted emails as spam. Emails you report as spam are added to Spam. As you report more spam, Gmail identifies similar emails as spam more efficiently. So, before you respond to a text or email about a “tax refund” — especially one that asks you to click a link — know that this could be a scam designed to get your personal information and steal your tax refund.