How To Set Up Spam Settings In Yahoo Email

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Amelia has over 25 yrs of experience in the IT, Training and Education, and eLearning industry. She is also an author of over 14 books.

What Is Spam?

Spam is online junk mail that may include advertisements, online offers, coupons, scams, and other unwanted email messages. Spam tends to clog one’s inbox, so it’s important to know how to avoid and control spam so that your inbox only contains the email messages that you prefer.

Each type of email system has different ways to control spam. For companies and business environments, email programs such as Microsoft Outlook may be used, and there may be a global way that spam is being handled through the use of spam-filtering software.

For non-business environments, different programs may be used, such as Gmail, Yahoo email, and others. Each email application has specific settings and, in most cases, automatic spam filtering. There are specific settings and actions you can take to control the amount of spam that is sent to your inbox. Gmail (Google Email) appears to have a better way of handling spam, and thus less spam reaches your Gmail inbox.

Reducing Spam With Yahoo

Yahoo has improved over the years, but it still seems to have a poor way of filtering spam. I’ve devoted this article to try and help Yahoo email users understand their spam settings in an effort to help reduce the amount of spam in your inbox.

NOTE: Due to newer versions of Yahoo, the methods of controlling spam have changed. This article was updated as of October 21, 2018, and again on March 14, 2020, in an effort to note these changes.

How Do Companies Get Your Email Address?

Whenever you register online for any type of account which may be for online purchases, job searching, clubs, coupons, free software downloads, games, etc., there is a chance that the company may share or sell your email address with other companies. Be sure to read the privacy policy for the website or company you are providing your email address to.

If you don’t trust a site and there is no disclaimer that the company won’t share your email address, think twice about signing up or registering, or use an alternative email address so as not to clog your “good” main email inbox. An alternate email address is also recommended when you post information to a blog or other website.

Another way your email address may be shared is if you fill out a paper form or online form which may require your email address. One way to avoid getting too much spam in your mail email account is to setup a secondary email account to use for online purchases, registration cards, stores, etc.

How Do You Block Spam in Yahoo Email?

If you are using the latest new version of Yahoo, you screens may look different than the screen prints in this email. Not sure which version of Yahoo mail you are using? Here are images are both versions:

Send Emails to the Spam Folder

One way to reduce spam is to mark email messages as spam, which will send them to the Spam folder. To mark emails as spam:

Select the email messages to send to the Spam folder, then click Spam.

When you mark email as spam, not only do the email messages go to your spam folder, but the email addresses (senders of the spam messages) are added to the Blocked Addresses list.

Unsubscribe From Mail Lists

Another way to reduce spam is to unsubscribe from mailing lists. These may be mail lists which you may or may not have subscribed to. Scroll down to the bottom of the email and look for an option to unsubscribe. If you’re not sure the email is legitimate, just select the email and mark it as spam to send it to the Spam folder.

How to Avoid Spam

Don’t reply to unknown senders.
Be careful who you give your email address to.
Create a secondary “junk” email address to use for shopping sites.
If you click subscribe and it asks you to enter your email, don’t do it. This may be a spammer trying to collect your email address. Instead, just mark the email and send it to the Spam folder.

In earlier versions of Yahoo email, click Options, More Options. From the Mail Options screen, click on Spam on the left, as shown here:

Next, on the right of the Spam settings screen above, click in the checkbox to Automatically send suspected to my Spam folder (see checkbox in picture above). Before the checkbox, be sure to specify how often you want to empty your Spam folder (once a week, once a month, etc.).

You can manually add email addresses by clicking on the Add button and pasting one or more addresses, as shown in the graphic below. Once you have changed your Spam settings, be sure to click on Save Changes on the upper left, as shown here:

What to Do If Too Many “Good” Email Messages Are Going to Your Spam Folder

If email that you need is missing from your inbox, and ends up in your Spam folder instead, then go back to your Spam settings and use the Remove button to remove the email address(es) of senders who you would like to receive email from, as shown here:

Will marking unwanted email as spam dispose of all unwanted messages? Unfortunately, it won’t, but it will assist you in cleaning up some of your spam.

Questions & Answers

Question: My Yahoo account doesn’t send any spam emails to the spam folder any more. What could be the reason?

Answer: I notice that Yahoo email has a lot of Spam, even if I send messages to Spam constantly; take a look at the sender’s email address because it could be that the sender’s email address has changed (sometimes they use more than one address to send from) and in this case, if you mark email as spam one day, another day it will look like spam from the same company but yet they are using a different email which will not be flagged so you may have to flag it again. If issues persist, I would recommend setting up a second email like Gmail as Google email does a much better job at filtering.

Question: My Yahoo account will only allow 200 blocked spam email addresses – how do I increase that number?

Answer: I checked Yahoo help forums to confirm some information for you. The blocked address list is not really meant for spam addresses. Some of the addresses of spam email senders may not be “real” email addresses, so if you add them to the blocked list, the spam may not go away. This info may also help: If you receive spam messages from a specific domain, you can block the whole domain by just entering the domain name in the list (you don’t have to include the @). Spam is best filtered by the email server, so it’s best to mark the emails as spam, and then the email server will filter from there.

Question: My spam folder doesn’t show Spam filtered by Yahoo anymore, only ones that I have sent to spam. Where are the rest?

Answer: Yahoo will send email messages to Spam once you flag them as Spam; I checked Help but I could not find any evidence that Yahoo marks as Spam separately vs. if they were originally flagged as Spam. It could also be due to the version of Yahoo you are using or the changes they have made. According to Yahoo Help, Spam is deleted after 30 days. You can also check in Settings> More Settings> Filter to check or change any Filters which are set which may be effecting Spam.

Question: How do I set Yahoo mail to show when my account has new spam messages?

Answer: New spam messages should be in your Spam folder on the left pane, and to identify new spam messages, click the Spam folder, then new messages will be in bold in the folder. I believe Yahoo email has changed a lot in the last year or two and it does not show the number of new spam messages like it used to in parenthesis next to the folder name. There may be some additional settings and different Yahoo options to consider. Click Settings, then at the bottom click More Settings, then on left, click Filters; you may be able to setup a new filter to screen certain emails such as spam. Hope that helps.

Question: How do I change how often messages in the spam box are automatically deleted?

Answer: The option to change how often messages in the Spam folder are automatically deleted is no longer available in Settings> More Settings> Security; accordingly to Yahoo Help,

“By default, both the Trash and Spam folders empty automatically to keep your account tidy. You cannot change the Trash and Spam settings. Trash deletion frequency – Trash is deleted after 7 days. Spam deletion frequency – Spam is deleted after 30 days.” I found this on Yahoo Help Central via this link: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/new-mail-for-desktop/tra…

Comments

david miller from florida city on May 22, 2018:

wow really i have not seen any such type of article till now. this article is a must to appreciate by all the people who are benefited by this. And for more visit https://www.usahelplinenumber.com

Amelia Griggs (author) from U.S. on December 30, 2014:

True, Romey, there has always been way too much spam in Yahoo email. I have never heard of Yagoloo. I mostly use gmail now. Thanks.

Romey on December 07, 2012:

There was too much spam in Yahoo!We noticed many made the jump to yagoloo.com and wanted to welcome everyone to be part of the Yagoloo community .

Amelia Griggs (author) from U.S. on November 04, 2012:

I think 100 spam messages is a bit much and too many for me. Is that with a yahoo account? After trying all the tips to block spam, what you could do is create a free gmail account to use for online purchases (there is less spam with gmail) and then slowly start using the gmail account more. It helps to have separate accounts for different things, and be careful about sharing your email with websites. Hope that helps.

Thanks for your comment.

dave on November 03, 2012:

no comments? hard to believe…SHOULD IT BE ok TO GET 100 SPAMS PER DAY Shhould I care?