Unsubscribing

How many emails do you receive everyday? More than you realise? Realising just how many emails we receive on a daily basis is a bit of a shocker. Most of us don't pay attention to it as we either read, ignore or delete them as they come. On average, an adult aged between 18-45 receive 55 emails each day. This is a combination of junk mail, subscriptions and personal emails.

It's fair to say that most of us don't have an idea of who is sending us all these emails, but what if we could take control of it? Our digital footprint has become so out of control, it feels like we can't get control back.

It's not all bad though. No matter how bad the mess is, it can always be cleaned up with a little bit of effort. Your account is overloading with nonsense, but realistically, it only takes around 2-3 weeks of unsubscribing from nonsense emails to get your inbox back in order. The reason it only takes less than a month is due to the frequency of subscriptions being sent. We're not saying that everything will be sunshine and rainbows, but it will certainly be in some sort of order, and may even reduce your stress levels.

However, if your email account is receiving a large amount of spam that you have no idea where it came from, it may be that your email address has been compromised and available to cyber criminals. Sadly, there's not really a solution to this one except keeping a close eye on the emails you receive in case they are phishing emails. If you feel the need to check if your email has been compromised, check it here - www.haveibeenpwned.com - it's a great free resource for anyone to use.

Here's the kicker though - even if you unsubscribe from every email that you received, they still hold your data. As it turns out, the 'unsubscribe' button is not a 'remove my data' button. Do you think this should be included in each marketing email?

Probably. In a world with information overload, it's time to take control by denying access to our data to people and companies that we don't want to have it. However, since we're in an imperfect world, we will have to settle for the unsubscribe button and manually email the companies to remove our data.

Fingers crossed the 'data removal' button appears in future.