3 ways to block spam and organize email in Gmail

Posted on May 9, 2008 at 5:29 am

Looking for a way to block spam in your Gmail account? Personally, Gmail is the best online email client because it can block almost all of the spam coming to my account and don’t worry, I get a lot! Every month I end up having at least 5000 emails in my Gmail spam folder, so it’s pretty good at catching all that junk for email for me.

However, there are times when you end up signing up for a newsletter or buying something online and forgetting to un-check the option for sending you product updates, deals, and so forth. Those are usually not spam in the traditional since, but if it’s sent to you on a regular basis, it can be quite annoying.

Image Source: UVSC

Most companies that do this have the option to unsubscribe, but there are many that do not. In that case, there are a few Gmail hacks that you can use to help sort out spam email or email that you do not care to have in your Inbox!

1. The Dot Hack

If you didn’t already know, Gmail does not really look at dots in your account name when processing email. So for example, I could write out an email address as the.dark.dragon@gmail.com instead of the normal thedarkdragon@gmail.com. Pretty neat eh?

You can add as many dots as you like and it won’t matter, you’ll still get the email. So what’s the point of this if the email is still coming to your Inbox? Filters! You can give out an email address with dots in it and then setup a filter later on to have it automatically archived or deleted, if it ends up being very spammy.

If you’re part of many email groups, etc, you can use this to automatically filter out those emails from your Inbox, so it’s not cluttered up. It’s always safer to give out an email address that’s slightly different than your normal one in case spammers get hold of it later and start sending you crap loads of email.

2. The Plus Hack

This Gmail hack has been around for a LONG time and most people already know about it. However, I don’t think that many people use it! Simply place a “+” after your account name and add words to uniquely identify that email address, so you can again create filters, etc.

For example, I can change my email address to thedarkdragon+Amazon@gmail.com when signing up at Amazon.com. Now I can create a filter and have it automatically labeled whenever I buy something from there. Amazon is safe, but if you’re signing up for a free game download or free music download, etc, you might want to do something like this in case they give your email out to third parties.

The plus hack is useful, but it sometimes might not be allowed since it’s not a normal symbol in an email. In that case, use the Dot hack or the Googlemail hack I’m about to mention.

3. The Googlemail Hack

Finally, you can change the last part of your email account to googlemail.com instead of the normal gmail.com! It’s another nifty way to no give out your main email address and can seriously help clear your Inbox of spam or junk email.

So thedarkdragon@googlemail.com is exactly the same as gmail.com. So if you want to keep your account name consistent, without all of the dots or pluses, then you can just use googlemail.com instead.

That’s it! Three very useful Gmail hacks that you should definitely try out if you find yourself getting lots of email you don’t want in your Inbox. Enjoy! Source: LifeClever

[tags]gmail hacks, fight spam, block spam email, how to block spam email, prevent spam, stop spam, organize email[/tags]

» Filed Under Google Software/Tips

Comments

3 Responses to “3 ways to block spam and organize email in Gmail”

Crazykinux said on : May 9th, 2008 at 7:00 am

Interesting tips, will have to try them out.

I must say though that Gmail’s Spam filters works wonders. I rarely have to label something as Spam as it usually picks them automatically.

akishore said on : May 9th, 2008 at 9:11 am

Yeah same here, most of my spam is blocked…the only spam that gets through is when I sign up for something and then they start bombarding you with email newsletters, etc. It’s not really spam in the traditional sense, so I just use these hacks for that sort of stuff.

nola said on : February 6th, 2009 at 4:11 am

FYI – Gmail does not block spam, it only marks it as spam and directs it to another folder. This is so not blocking, the spam will continue to come regardless if you mark it or not.

What the web needs is a real spam blocker that never reaches its destination. Block it back to the point of origin.