Regardless of which e-mail service you end up using, I find that an incredible simple rule to filter all e-mail with the word "unsubscribe" in it's body to another folder saves your sanity. It's still a folder you should go through a few times a week to read all the newsletters and shit you're subscribed to, and sometimes the occasional false positive, but your inbox will mostly contain e-mail you actually want to read. I have another rule that filters mail from specific senders that I want to read immediately to my Inbox before it hits the unsubscribe rule, but those exceptions are uncommon enough (I only have 7 after years of doing this) to not take much work.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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Brilliant tip. Thank you
This is a great tip!
Do you not sign up for any newsletters?
Yes, those go to the "unsubscribe" folder, so I read them less often than my normal mail.
you can use kill-the-newsletter to receive those via rss
Doesn't work, in my experience.
I can recommend the Spark Desktop email client, you can use it for free and without subscribing.
I’m not self hosting email but my rule is that no email gets to be in the inbox except for VERY rare exceptions
When an email lands in my inbox, I immediately make a rule that labels it correctly and moves it the fuck away from my inbox.
This way I can have notifications on for inbox emails and they’ll either be important or a new sender whose next email will end up labeled and NOT in my inbox
but I'm absolutely drowning in unread emails, around 4,000
WTF are you doing with your e-mail address that you get these amounts of mails. These are more mails than I got in the last decade.
At first maybe try to unsubscribe whatever you subscribed and stop putting your address into random services. Use a temporary mail for stuff like that.
Also mail filters can help with sorting mails from certain senders into folders. Bascially every provider has them and if not programs like Thunderbird have these built in on the client side.
Most are those annoying notifications like "Your security code is xxx," "Your parcel has shipped," and requests to rate my experience.
Uhm simply delete them when you e.g. inputted the code or got your parcel? Or change the settings that you no longer get them?
So, I’m on the hunt for an email provider that has solid SPAM filters...
Under your circumstances no provider in the world can do that, because nobody can determine if your "Your security code is xxx" mail is spam or legitimate... YOU have to determike that for yourself.
I have no idea, it's an old email I used for a lot of services before I knew about email aliases like Mozilla relay.
Like I said, most of them are useful once, like a shipping notification or a sign in security code. But most of the time I just copy the code from the desktop notification and leave the email. I don't know why so many services moved from a password based login to email security codes, it's annoying that's for sure.
I'll try to set up some filters to delete them after a day.
Don't unsubscribe, just send to spam. Unsubscribe just confirms you're a real person and you get put on a list for more spam. Spam folder achieves the same thing without sending any sort of signal back to the sender. Also if enough people flag it, it'll go in my spam folder automatically. Thank you for your service.
I use the Thunderbird email client to set up filters which send email to set folders.
Same. pfsense will filter a lot of spam with Spamhaus_Drop type feeds. Then T-Bird with a lot of rules for different sorting options. Also, I use a lot of alias email addresses so those are easy to filter right into the trash can. It's interesting to watch who sells my aliases.
How about using sieve rules? A nice plus is that if you ever move to self-hosted in the future, you can bring it with you.
I know at least Fastmail supports user-configured sieve. I don't have experience with Fastmail myself but in general mostly heard good things.
https://www.cstrahan.com/blog/taming-email-with-fastmail-rules/
I've been using Sieve on Dovecot (Pidgeonhole) for years and it's great. Earlier I had Procmail, which is fine, too. The only disadvantage is that I'd need to login on my server to edit the rules, while Sieve is directly editable in email clients.
I use my own version of inbox zero.
I manually archive emails I might need in the future (like rent payment confirmations, job position applications that got past the screening interview, official correspondence with local administrative bodies, and very few other things).
I keep things that need action or are ongoing in the inbox (like online orders until they arrive, event tickets).
I delete useless emails (newsletters, code confirmations, online order emails or event tickets once the order arrives or the event passed) possibly preceded by unsubscribing.
That’s it, I usually have 0 to 3 emails in my inbox. No plugins, no filters.
This is the way.
You can do most of that without any fancy AI or machine learning: Since you already have your own domain, setup some mail redirects and filter all mails going into them into subfolders. I have a redirect for onlineshopping where all those order confirmation and delivery informations and unwanted newsletters go. I have another I use for creating accounts - all 2FA etc. are going there. And then I have the main mail for actual communication and another redirect for all those interesting substack newsletters and so on.
One of these can just be solved with a mailbox rule within the email client itself for what it’s worth. Make a rule that’s based on keywords in the subject line and have them moved into a folder that you clear out every couple of months. Downside is the email client need to be running/opened for it to process them.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol for email |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #988 for this comm, first seen 9th Jan 2026, 10:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Get a proton mail. The complete plan not only supports custom domains, they also let you create unlimited alias.
This is the best thing ever. Alias work with custom domains too and they basically give you an endless amount of single-use emails allowing you to sign to each service/website with a different email (that will then be forwarded to your inbox).
This not only leaves your real email safe and unexposed, but it also lets you organize your inbox more tidily if your aliases have a structure and you use email rules for them (e.g. you can create aliases for your shipping stuff called [website].shipping@[myalias].com and then make a rule including all the adresses .shipping to a specific folder).
That's what I do, but with mailbox.org instead of proton, to name an alternative. They even offer temporary random addresses with the click of a button.
Everyone suggests proton and their whole infra just makes me sus. Just because of how much they are the "go to" alternative.
Maybe I'm paranoid. But I feel like these companies that focus on "privacy" are just not as good as we all assume.
It's like all the YouTube sponsored segments of "Ingogni". It just makes me feel like these companies that sell "privacy" are just consolidating data on the people that are worried about their privacy.
This is less a comment about proton I guess. But, incogni, is sus as fuck. Like, really, "give us all your personal info and we'll "scrub" it from the internet, trust us."
Are they sharing your emails. Probably not. But I just don't really trust anything.
Edit: lots of strong responses. Which I appreciate. But, my comment was more "vibes" based on Proton. But I'll take a stand on these "Ingogni" types services. I think they are sus as fuck.
If you don't trust anything, then your only option is self-host everything,
Is Proton perfect? Not at all. Are they better than Google? Well... if you trust the external audits (1) and external sources in general (2), then, they probably are.
But if you don't trust anything, then you probably don't trust those audits either, so it's pointless to even mention them.
Ingogni is super suspicious and I don't believe what they claim to do is even possible. But to me it's what they claim to do that makes them suspicious, and that's and entirely different thing than what proton does, and at least proton has documented audits to back up their privacy claims. INB4 the links to articles talking about proton complying with law enforcement requests, every company does that, even respected ones like mullvad. It's not important that they hand over information they're legally required to, it's important that they save as little as possible so they can hand over everything without identifying you.
And also, any privacy conscious service is never better than your own opsec, so if you get caught because your recovery email was your apple ID, that's on you and not them.
Guys...it's Incogni. Like incognito?
Incogni feels like a product the data brokers created to double tap your data and get paid for doing it.
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This comment describes Brave browser
Unlike those “we will delete your data for you.” Services. Proton operates under a Zero Knowledge Encryption, I.E. no one even themselves can read your emails.
Is it perfect? No obviously, if you use a recovery email that is not properly secured (say a Gmail account.) then congratulations your now vulnerable via the State asking Google.
But the privacy focus IS genuine
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Why would they be sus? They're a Switzerland based company which means really good privacy laws in regards to keeping your data out of the wrong hands. They're not going to monetize your emails or information, which is a big deal!
Incogni, you're right, give us your data so we know what to scrub? No thanks lol. Feels like the wrong approach lol
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