# Filtering Email

Filtering email is a fantastic way to protect yourself from falling victim to a number of different scams - from phishing to manipulated content, a filter can prevent these by putting all emails from the legitimate account into a folder.

The Wardle reading discusses how to be aware of "fake news", and in particular imposter content is relevant here. By filtering email to have all messages from one account sent to a folder, you only have to look in there to see those messages. If you get an email from an account pretending to be someone else, it wouldn't show up in that folder, and you can identify it as the scam that it is. And as the Boyd article discusses media literacy and fake news, I see that email filtering and content filtering is a form of media literacy - it is needed in order to properly engage with content and not fall victim to fake content.

But you have to be wary when creating filters. If you filter out all content from a specific site, you no longer get that viewpoint. As the Farnam Street article discusses, filter bubbles are real and can show themselves in the form of echo chambers. These are bad because they prevent people from seeing all sides of an issue. So if you filter out all emails from right-leaning news sites for example, you create an echo chamber in your email of only left-leaning content.