Everything I know about stopping spam

The ultimate guide to stopping spam

Plus: Meta’s anti-hacking efforts, a great voice dictation app, and my Linux adventure

Jared Newman   |   December 9, 2025

Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, a longtime tech journalist, and you’re reading the free edition of Advisorator, my weekly tech advice newsletter. Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up to get it every Tuesday.

This week, I’ve got a hefty new guide for Advisorator’s paying members, and it’s all about dealing with spam calls, spam texts, and spam emails.

Spam is a topic I get asked about often, and while I’ve scattered bits of advice for dealing without it throughout the newsletter, one thing I haven’t done is put all of that information in one place.

So here’s a big guide that makes stopping spam as simple as possible. Follow these steps, and you’ll significantly cut down on unwanted calls, texts, or emails from illegitimate senders.

Here’s everything I know about stopping spam →

An Advisorator membership gets you access to all the guides and tutorials I’ve ever written. You can even sign up for a month and read everything. I’d really appreciate your support!

News in brief

Meta takes a hack at hacking: Meta has acknowledged that getting support for a hacked Facebook or Instagram account can be a nightmare (or, in its words, “hasn’t always met expectations”). The company says it will now provide better alerts about risky activity, improve its recognition of trusted devices, and offer new ways to recover your account, such as a selfie video to verify your identity. It’s also rolling out a “support hub” with guidance for account issues.

Just don’t expect any actual human support for free. Instead, Meta is testing an “AI support agent” to handle inquiries. (The company does offer human support with a $15 per month Meta Verified subscription, but I’ve found it to be a waste of time and money.)

Proton Sheets: Proton is launching a spreadsheet editor to take on the likes of Excel and Google Sheets. Like the existing Proton Docs document editor, Proton Sheets is free to use and promises end-to-end encryption, so even Proton itself can’t see the contents of your files.

It’s rolling out gradually, so you may not have access yet, but this could eventually help with my ongoing effort to de-Google my life.

Other notable reads:

Tip of the week

Spotify clearly ignored my Sabrina Carpenter-heavy party playlist in arriving at this conclusion.

Your year in review: It’s “Wrapped” season, in which a slew of tech companies (mostly music streamers) try to remind you of how you engaged with their services over the last year. Spotify popularized the trend with its year-end “Wrapped” feature, and now there are plenty of imitators.

A rundown:

  • Spotify Wrapped: This year it will assign you a “Listening Age” based on how old your favorite music is relative to others in your age group. I played too much bebop and so now I’m 87. (Just tap the “Wrapped” button atop the Spotify app to see yours.)
  • Apple Music Replay: Look for the Replay button in the Home tab, or head to music.apple.com/us/replay.
  • Amazon Music Delivered: Head to the Library tab and tap the “2025 Delivered” button.
  • YouTube Recap: Apparently this’ll be available under the “You” tab or on the home page, but I’m not seeing it yet.
  • Steam Replay: This probably won’t come out for another week, but it’s always fun seeing which PC games sucked me in.
  • Google Photos: Okay, I really enjoyed this little slideshow of my year’s photos. Just hit the “2025” button at the top of the mobile app to view yours.

Try these apps

Better voice dictation: I’ve previously recommended Superwhisper as a voice dictation app for MacOS, and now it’s available for Windows as well. I like that Superwhisper has an on-device speech-to-text engine, so you can use it offline without sending everything you dictate to some remote server and having it count against a usage limit. Unlike the built-in dictation features in Windows and MacOS, Superwhisper also has a handy push-to-talk shortcut that’s helpful for dictating short text snippets.

There is a caveat, though: Superwhisper now uses cloud-based processing by default, at least in the new Windows app. To use on-device processing instead, open the app’s Settings menu, head to the “Modes” tab. From here, make sure Preset is set to “Voice,” and change the model from “Ultra” to “Standard.” (You’ll have to click the little download icon next to the model name first.)

Like that? Play this. Justin Pot had a great recommendation in The Intelligence’s Cool Tools newsletter (to which I’m also a contributor) that I have to share here. It’s called the Similar Songs Finder, and it lets you enter any number of songs or artists to see a list of similar tunes. You can then listen to the playlist on YouTube, export it to Spotify, or transfer it to any number of other streaming services. It’s great for discovering your next listen.

Spend wisely

Well that didn’t take long. The Apple Watch Series 11, which launched less than three months ago, is already $100 off from Amazon. That brings the price to $299 for the 42mm model and $329 for 46mm. (The same deal is also at Best Buy and Target, but out of stock for some colors/sizes.) If you bought an Apple Watch for more on Black Friday, consider returning/re-buying or asking for a price adjustment.

A few other notable deals:

And a few streaming music offers for good measure:

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Thanks for reading! Catch you next week.

Until then,
Jared

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