Facing digital clutter? Here're ways to clean up your messy email, WhatsApp

Remote working has increased digital clutter in our lives but there are ways of dealing with it

The pandemic has led to a sea change in work paradigms. This has, in turn, meant very high dependency on digital means of communications. It has also meant that there’s been a commensurate increase in digital irritation, for want of a better phrase.

Most people have been using a combination of instant messengers and email, along with video conferencing software to connect to colleagues and work acquaintances. This is, in most cases, a combination of office email (which is often hosted by Google, but usually has a different address), Gmail for both personal and official work, WhatsApp for both business and personal purposes, and either Google Meet or Zoom.  

Spammers are also using the same channels with renewed enthusiasm. And it’s become increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter, or reduce it, to ensure we see the important messages and don’t waste time on the rubbish. There’s also a need to clear up space on smartphones since these devices can run out of it.

So here are a few suggestions that may help mitigate the mess. First, let’s deal with the email.

When you receive a spam message, mark it as spam but don’t “unsubscribe” if your email provider offers that option. If you opt to “unsubscribe” from something you haven’t subscribed to anyway, a message will go from your email id to the spammers. Spammers work on a shotgun basis sending out messages to random email ids in big batches. Once they receive an unsubscribe response, they know there’s a human being at the other end of that email id and you will just receive more spam.

Second, loop your email. Start whitelisting the addresses you wish to receive email from — this could be from your work colleagues, your financial service provider, friends and relatives. Whitelisting ensures mails from a given address or a given domain will never go to spam.

Third, set up several free subsidiary email ids with addresses that make sense to you, such as Myname­financials@gmail.com, Myworkoffice@gmail.com,  myfamily&otheranimals@gmail.com, myhob­bies@gmail.com etc. I’m suggesting Gmail because you can sync multiple Gmail accounts on your phone and PC simultaneously. But there’s dozens of other free email services, and you could take your pick.

Once you’ve whitelisted those addresses in your original email or emails, you can organise them into lists. Then, set up auto-forward systems to the specific email ids, where you’d categorise them. This means your financial service providers will land in one inbox, work in another, etc. The spam, which you don’t want to deal with, will remain in your original inbox.

Setting up lists is easy and so is setting up auto-forwards, though it does mean some initial work. If you’re doing this with your office email, you may need to speak to your admin to learn how to auto-forward. But this way you can just monitor the accounts to which you forward and these are likely to stay less cluttered than your original addresses, which every spammer knows.

WhatsApp is more difficult to clean up and a lot of the spam comes from friends and relatives who cannot be blocked without causing offence. But there are ways around it (see box).

In addition, you can try apps like Station (https://stationhq.com/) to help you find things and seamlessly use various web-tools if you tend to have lots of browser tabs open at the same time. Other apps like File Juggler can help you find stuff on your PC by using keywords, etc. However, such tools can also add another layer of privacy issues to worry about, and File Juggler is not free (you get a 30-day free trial).  

Doing all this involves a certain amount of digital “jharu-pocha” (sweeping-mopping) but it may be worth the trouble. It would ensure that you do receive the messages you need to see — and reduce the rubbish.