In the good ol’ days, spam was merely a time-wasting annoyance. With the rise of online fraud, however, it’s become a genuine threat, one that must be dealt with. The good news is that it’s possible to eliminate 99 percent of spam before it ever reaches your inbox. The bad news is that total eradication is impossible, and you’ll probably need a combination of methods and tools to achieve the best results. We’ve rounded up the nine best spam-fighting practices, software, and services, all field-tested with Apple Mail.

1. Never Try to Unsubscribe from Spam

Spammers want two things from you: a purchase from their product links, and, almost as good, confirmation that there’s a real-live person sitting on the other end of your email address. Clicking the unsubscribe link on a spam message simply encourages a spammer to send more messages by providing that confirmation. This only applies to unsolicited messages. If you tire of an electronic newsletter that you requested, by all means, follow the link to unsubscribe.

If a spammer were willing to let you opt out of his messages, he probably wouldn’t send them in the first place.

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