Your Email In-Box is Filled with Junk. Should You Hit UnSubscribe?

There's a new phishing attack going on in your in-box and this one is difficult to deal with.

Recently, I've been inundated with dozens and dozens of emails from a PR company sending me two copies of news releases and lawsuit announcements. On average, I was receiving about 50 emails an hour.

What should I do?

One think I considered right off the bat was to hit the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email. "Take me off your mailing list," was my thought.

The problem is - this is not a good option. A legitimate email sender is required to include the unsubscribe link, which allows recipients to "op out" of the email campaign. This is fine, if the sender is legitimate. If the sender is a bad actor conducting a phishing scheme, there's a good chance the unsubscribe link is sending you to a bad place. It could be affirming that the email address is active, it could be placing malware on your device, or even worse. The suggestion is - don't hit unsubscribe unless you trust the sender.

Here's what Norton suggests.

"If you remember signing up for the emails and you're sure they come from the actual business, go ahead and hit unsubscribe. Don't remember signing up for the emails or think the message looks fishy? Use the tools in your email program to label the message as "spam." For example, here's how to label a Gmail message as spam.

Marking the email as "spam" will send future messages from the same sender straight to your spam folder. And it will get you one step closer to your goal: a decluttered inbox."

It's getting more and more difficult everyday to avoid phishing attacks on computers. The rule remains in place: if you don't know the sender, don't click!