To ‘abandon’ my email address

[Lemonylemony]

I’ve had the same email for about 15 years since I left uni. It is completely out of control. I miss emails because they are buried in tonnes of mailing list crap. No amount of unsubscribing, filtering and streamlining I’ve attempted over the last few years have helped. I currently have over 65,000 unread messages.

I’m considering just starting a new email and leaving this one. Change my address with the companies/services I actually need to and go from there. AIBU? Or should I be devoting hours/days to clearing it out?

Abandon it! There isn't enough time in the day to deal with those kind of shenanigans!

What’s the worst that could happen?

( I currently have 5413 unread emails in my Gmail inbox. )

Have you tried using the word ‘unsubscribe’ when filtering? Any email that comes to be with the word unsubscribe in it gets automatically sent to my trash.

Start a number of them. I do.

I have "not my name but to show you an example"

[email protected] (main)
[email protected] (for anything like shop wanting to send receipts, Amazon etc).
[email protected] (for less important stuff)
[email protected] (holiday, hotels, events)

I leave them all logged in on my phone. It means my main email is kept tidy.

I would certainly do it.Maybe you could set up an "out of office" saying you have changed email addresses in case you get a real person contacting you that you want to hear from - I suppose that might have the opposite effect with companies then getting your new address - but I can't believe many companies would go to the trouble of monitoring bouncebacks, harvesting the new address and re-subscribing you.

@Smithlets80

Have you tried using the word ‘unsubscribe’ when filtering? Any email that comes to be with the word unsubscribe in it gets automatically sent to my trash.

Don't do this OP. I just tried searching my mail for the word unsubscribe and the first result that came up was a recent phone bill.

I’ve never had that happen! I’d better check my trash!

Archive the whole inbox (stick it ALL in a folder) then start again at 0. Be super duper dedicated to unsubscribing every mailing list one that comes in every single day and deleting.

Start a new ‘junkmail’ email which you use for any new mailing list stuff.

if you make a kind of "out of office" put your new email address as something like "my new email address is lemony dot lemony at gmail dot com"

if a person sees it they can update it manually, and spambots can't read it as a mail address and target you.

gmail and hotmail do a good job of keeping spam, even from things you've subscribed to, out of your main inbox these days.

I have one mail address for signing up to stuff, and when i get the link to confirm i do it from there immediately and then change it to my main one if it's important to me.

Life's too short for an overfull inbox.

I have at least 5 personal ones that I use for different things.
My main one, one for anything to do with the house (eg bills)-DH also has access to this one. One for my BTL house, one for crap-eg those websites that make you sign up but I have no interest in. One for ebay which DH uses too.
I have 0 unread emails. They are all read then either filed in folders or deleted. The inboxes stay empty. I can’t abide unread emails!
I am the same with work, fortunately my PA is the same!

I spent a whole day a while back doing a digital detox. I unsubscribed from all shopping emails. Every single one. It took ages. But it’s done. I set up another email address and auto forwarded all emails to the new one (leaving old ones behind )

I have a personal email. But I also have a few others, as part of my management for emails.

I have one for shopping, one for any job applications/other applications, and one for registering on forums, etc, like on here. No personal info associated with that last email, and it's not linked in to anything important, so I should lose anything if it gets hacked. I change passwords regularly.

I get you OP... 🙈

Run away from it
My advice is set up 2. One for companies you want to hear from and a second 'burner' one that you use for all the random marketing crap where you need to put in an email. I look through my 'burner email' once a week or so in case of anything if interest like sales etc but ignore it most of the time

I have three email addresses - one main account for all my personal and important emails (emails with friends/work/bills/important stuff etc all organized into folders so it takes 5 minutes every day to quickly skim and sort them); one as a throwaway that I use for anywhere that wants a subscription/online receipts etc that I almost never check or read unless I'm looking for something specific and one for DD (club registration/school etc) bc I share custody 50/50 with ExDH so its easier to have an account we can both access with all of her stuff rather than remembering to forward stuff from our personal emails all the time.

New email addresses are quick and easy to set up. Get a few. One main one that you only use for real/important things, such as your banks, employers, HMRC, DVLA, and other "reputable" organisations. Another one for "normal" online shopping such as Tesco, M&S, Amazon, utility firms, friends and family etc. And finally a "junk" one for when you sign up to offers, one-off website purchases etc. The "junk" one will be the one that gets all the spam, so scrap it every few months and replace it with another junk one. You should never get spam from the "formal" one used for your bank etc so that should be there for the long term. Any spam you get from the "normal" shopping one should be minimal and you should be able to control it via unsubscribing, email spam filtering, etc, so you should be able to keep that long term too. You can easily set up multiple email addresses on smart phones, computers, etc so put all 3 on the same email system so you don't have to remember to log into different systems.

I actually have dozens of email addresses. I have domain name with a host where I can add unlimited numbers of email addresses at no charge. If I want to sign up for an offer or a "one off" website, I'll set up a new email address, i.e. [email protected] and just redirect any emails received to my main email [email protected] - that means I'm in control and can cancel the redirection if I get too many emails from them - I'll also know if they sell my email address to anyone else as I'd then get spam from a different firm to the pizzaexpress email!

Use filter searches to delete all the old mailing list crap

From:[email protected]

Select all

Delete

Sigh of relief

OMG - pretty much every email has to have an unsubscribe option on it now for GDPR purposes - whatever you do, do NOT move them to trash!

I'm not sure about the need for multiple email addresses for shopping, personal and other emails, that's what sub folders are for surely!!

I abandoned my first email address when I got married, set my self up a [email protected] email address and just made sure to change it with all the relevant companies. The I set up sub-folders within the inbox, so Bills; Personal; School and so on. That way, you don't have to keep signing in and out of different email accounts cos who could be arsed with that?!?!?

@Merryoldgoat

I get you OP... 🙈

That made my teeth itch

There is usually a way you can simply delete the email address altogether. I did it with an old Hotmail account years ago. Might be worth a Google.

I have different addresses - one for friends and family, one for online shopping and accounts like utilities, one for more anonymous stuff like online dating and Internet sign-ups I might not want linked with my real name. I unsubscribe to lots of stuff. I also have filters set on some of them. I have about a million filters set on work mails (not actually - I think the limit is 40.)

I also agree with using different email addresses for different things. I have one for commercial stuff like online shopping, netflix, etc. One for friends and family and another one for work related stuff. They are all gMail accounts, so they all come to my phone, but I can find everything much more easily.

@Smithlets80 - I would end up junking school emails if I used that option, as they weirdly have that option in emails. I guess because it is a mailing list.

However @Lemonylemony - YANBU. I have recently streamlined a lot of my emails into separate email addresses on the cloud depending on where they are from - kids schools, activities and household. It means any other emails still go to my original email address and I can use it for anything I still need to supply an email address for without worrying about losing the important ones.