How to Get Rid of Spam on My Computer

By David Wayne

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Most email clients include a spam filter, and while these filters keep most spam out of your inbox, the filtered mail still takes up space on your hard drive or cloud server. Other sources of spam include social media, Web forums and site comment sections. In reality, you can't remove 100 percent of spam from these sources, but you can greatly reduce it by emptying your email spam folder and reporting spam when you see it.

Filter and Delete Spam Email

Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and other email clients turn on spam filtering by default. These built-in filters work very well and usually don't include any adjustable settings. To delete filtered spam messages, choose the “Spam” folder from the navigation sidebar, select all displayed messages and click “Delete.” This process works the same way for any email client, although with some clients, you can only delete spam messages one page at a time. To automatically delete new spam in Outlook, select “Junk” from the Delete section in the Home tab, then enable the “Permanently Delete Suspected Junk Email” option. However, with this option enabled, Outlook automatically deletes messages falsely marked as spam.

Reduce Spam on the Internet

Report spam emails that evade filtering by clicking the “Spam” button in most email clients. If you know a message to be spam, select it without opening it and then click “Mark as Spam” or a similar option. If you open a spam message, don't click any of the possibly malicious links, just click “Spam” to report it. This process applies to most public spaces on the Internet where people post spam. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Answers, Instagram and most forums and comment sections include a Report Abuse or similar button embedded in each post. By reporting spam whenever you see it, you make it more difficult for people to create malicious user accounts and spread spam messages in public spaces.

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