Webmail Address Book Bloat

Users of some webmail programs find that their address books or contact lists may become bloated with many email addresses they did not intentionally add. This is usually the result of an option in the webmail program's settings to automatically add all recipients' email addresses to the sender's address book or contacts list. For a one-time or infrequent original or reply email, a sender may or may not want to add the recipient to his or her address book.

Shown below are screen shot fragments that illustrate where to find the applicable option for the webmail clients of AT&T Yahoo email and AOL/AIM email. Click on each image for a larger view.

AT&T Yahoo Email

AT&T Yahoo webmail inbox showing Options link

Where to pick More Options

Where to find the applicable option

 AOL / AIM Email

Inbox showing link for Settings

Where to find the applicable setting

 
Another source of address book clutter relates to spam filtering. When an email program has identified an email as possible spam by tagging it or placing it in a user's spam folder, a webmail user may designate a desired email as not spam. Some webmail programs will then add the sender's email address to the reader's address book so that future emails from that sender are not treated as spam.