if you’re like me, you might be tired of fixing problems in gmail.
According to statista, as of September 2020, 47% of all email received globally was spam, also commonly known as spam. spam can also accumulate. you unsubscribe, then somehow you end up on ten more lists, unsubscribe again, and the seemingly endless saga continues.
Some spam even makes it past the myriad filters you’ve set up to combat a barrage of spam to a good email account you’d like to decisively dominate. this gets old fast.
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I prefer a more careful (read: one-time) approach to these problems, so be prepared for a lengthy list of step-by-step instructions. Until recently, I was overwhelmed by spam coming into my main gmail account. Hundreds were sent to me every day. As a result, I took steps to prevent further occurrences.
Even if you’re one of those people who think their inbox has passed the point of no return, stick around because you might be surprised. In 2021, there are countless ways to get rid of this problem, and this post explores many of them.
block spammers
If you block a sender who sends you a lot of spam, you should no longer receive messages from them. sometimes an address can go unnoticed, but re-blocking the offending sender usually solves this problem. Blocking a spam sender can be done on both the mobile and desktop versions of the Gmail app, and the process only takes a few seconds.
On desktop or laptop, it’s as easy as doing the following (the process is similar on both android and ios):
1. Click on the icon with the exclamation mark.
2. Choose whether you want to report the message as spam and unsubscribe, or just report it as spam.
report spam
This is part two of the fight against spam: reporting spam to help reduce the volume of spam you receive.
by communicating with google about spam, you are participating in a kind of collaborative reporting group for the greater good. google takes action against what it considers “spam accounts” and remember to block the delivery of these messages in the future.
filter them
Do you ever get emails that aren’t spam, but they keep going to that folder anyway? although this is a separate issue, it still occurs regularly enough to add to this list. you can do this in both the mobile and desktop versions of the gmail client.
Here’s how to set up a spam filter in gmail.
- first, log in to your gmail account.
- click the gear icon in the upper right corner, then click settings.
- go to filters and blocked addresses, then click create a new filter.
- Next, type the sender’s email that you want to keep out of your spam folder.
- Click create filter.
what about “acceptable” spam?
according to google, gmail automatically filters spam by moving such messages to the spam folder. If you want to allow some emails that might be tagged as spam to reach your inbox, you can create filters that bypass the spam tag.
Essentially, it creates an approved senders list of what google might traditionally classify as spam. This could be a message you’ve been waiting for a long time, even something from a potential employer. gmail can bundle messages that aren’t destined for spam folders as real spam, and that can lead to “lost mail” that someone claimed to have sent.
To do this, find the message in your spam folder and click the button to report it as not spam. these messages will return to your inbox, even if your spam filter would have picked them up normally.
third party applications
There are many third-party email applications and plugins designed to prevent spam, many of which use machine learning to acquire patterns of typical spam-filled emails. some of them are free and others have a subscription fee. some of my favorites are em client (opens in new tab), mailwasher, and popfile.
consider your email exposure level
Your email is probably somewhere on the internet, essentially exposed to the (web) world. however, you can still control some of the profiles where that information is visible. doing so can protect you from receiving spam emails, but it does require some vigilance.
To get started, you need to opt out of making your email public on social media profiles like facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc. If you own a domain, it’s worth investing in what’s called “domain privacy.” domain registrars always extend a service called domain privacy. this service hides your personal information from public view for an additional fee.
There isn’t much you can do using external applications, and part of the burden falls on you. It might also be worth doing an assessment of your internet profile and seeing where you can remove/hide your email from the public. This is no small feat, but it is also not impossible.
With a few hours and a willingness to clean out your inbox, you can make your email private as it should be. doing so could protect you from bots that crawl the web looking to add viewable emails to mass email blast lists.
Many other creative measures happen to illicitly acquire emails, but taking some or all of these measures could give you back some control of your inbox.
when all else fails, unsubscribe
This was a big part of what I spent doing, unsubscribing from emails that I had certainly subscribed to at some point.
For one reason or another, these emails may no longer be relevant, and this is where something I call “the purge” comes into play. check your emails and unsubscribe from all email accounts you no longer want to hear from; this will help you avoid unwanted spam from these senders in the future.
It may take a few rounds to get it right, but this casual task will eventually pay off, both for desktop and mobile.