It is easy to overlook your e-mail account and let it become crammed and unmanageable. Before long your inbox is full of unread messages, malware, spam and phishing emails. Whether you use an e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook or a web-mail such as Gmail or Hotmail, an untidy inbox is a fantastic route for infections to attack your system. Before long you can become riddled with problems, which strain your system often to breaking point leading to data recovery problems. Data storage is cheap, but this is not about freeing up storage space. It is about keeping your system healthy.

Firstly you must understand that your email client is not a ‘to do’ list or a filing system, it is for communication. At Data Recovery Specialists we are asked to recover PST files more than any other file type. Generally this is because important information has been stored as attachments or in the body of e-mail messages. Recovering a PST file is only the start, a signature search is subsequently required to locate the necessary information which could be hidden in gigabytes of messages. Somewhat like looking for a needle in a haystack! So be sure to save important attachments or messages in your documents, rather than rely on an e-mail archive.

Make sure you clear the deleted messages folder. Although you may delete unwanted messages from your inbox, they are likely to still reside in the ‘deleted files’ folder. Keep this clean by manually emptying the folder or set an automatic filter. Better still, get good quality anti-spam software which will automatically keep your inbox clearer. In addition, you should unsubscribe to all those junk e-newsletters. Use a tool such as unroll.me to scan through your inbox and unsubscribe you from all that junk. A word of warning though. Be careful when removing yourself from mailing lists. Some spammers use unsubscribe buttons to confirm that email addresses are active, resulting in far more junk. Set your filters to block these people or organisations and you will simply not see their correspondence.

It is always useful to have a sacrificial e-mail address. A web-mail address which you can use on websites that are likely to bombard you with junk can help keep your primary e-mail address clean. Using a web-mail address reduces the risk of picking up an infected e-mail. Never ever, reply to unsolicited e-mails or open suspicious attachments. Follow this advice and managing your e-mail system should become much less burdensome.