Most of us have received a spam email at some point in our lives. While frustrating, those emails are usually short and harmless – at least at first. But sometimes spam emails get more malicious and try to trick you into buying some kind of fake medication or supplement that can hurt you or financially harm your company.
Luckily, there are easy tips and tricks to help you stop these spam emails dead in their tracks. Here’s how you can block Viagra spam emails from arriving at all.
Sign up for a free account with Gmail
Gmail is one of the world’s most popular email platforms. It is widely available and many people use it daily. If you have a Gmail account, you can take advantage of its immense popularity and potential to block spam emails. Simply visit the Gmail sign-up page, click the big blue button, and you’ll be taken to a page asking you to confirm your email address. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt your wallet. Gmail will never ask you to buy anything, and you absolutely do not have to confirm that you agree to their ToS in order to use their services.
After you’ve signed up, you’ll be ready to take advantage of Gmail’s anti-spam measures. When you send an email to any of Gmail’s nearly 19 million users, the company’s servers will do their best to verify that the email is genuine. If they deem the email to be suspicious, they’ll put it through a “spam filter” that blocks it from ever reaching your inbox.
Why does Gmail block spam?
Gmail’s anti-spam policies are based on a number of factors. Foremost among them is the threat that spam poses to the security of its users. Phishing and malware, for example, frequently utilize spam emails to trick people into handing over their personal and financial information. Without Gmail’s filters, these emails would end up landing in your inbox and likely clog it up with lots of unimportant junk.
Another factor is that a huge amount of spam comes from mail-servers that are based in countries that don’t have strong anti-spam laws. When Gmail encounters emails from these countries, they’ll often be flagged as spam because they don’t meet Gmail’s criteria for “good” vs. “bad” emails.
Use Gmail’s advanced settings to customize your experience
Once you’ve signed up for a Gmail account, you’ll need to visit the platform’s website and click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page. This will bring you to your Gmail dashboard, where you can access all of its features and settings. From here, you can modify the email notifications you receive, as well as the order in which they’re presented, and set how long you want Gmail to keep your emails before deleting them.
One option you might want to explore is the advanced settings, found under the gear icon. Here you can modify the look of your inbox, add and remove labels, and change the order of your notifications. You can use this feature to block spam emails that might otherwise arrive in your inbox.
Use Gmail’s filters to automatically detect and block spam
Gmail’s spam filters can learn from previous emails you’ve sent and will try to understand what makes them suspicious. So, if you frequently get spammed by the same kind of email (i.e., they’re all from dubious marketers trying to sell you fake medication) Gmail will learn that pattern and flag those emails as “spam.”
To block spam with Gmail’s built-in filters, visit the app’s sign-up page and click the big blue button. This will bring you to a page where you can set up filters for the platform. You can use the simple search bar to narrow your search for filters that might suit your needs. Once you’ve found a match, click the button next to it to add it to your settings.
Filters are an essential part of Gmail because they allow you to customize your email experience. They can be used to automatically detect and block spam as well as to flag potentially dangerous content such as threats or inappropriate material.
Create a “Do Not Disturb” list
If you get a lot of junk mail and don’t like having it clog up your inbox, you can create a “do not disturb” list. To do this, visit Gmail’s website and log in. Then, under the “Settings” section, click the “+” icon in the upper right-hand corner. This will bring you to a page where you can create a list of emails you want to exclude from your daily dose of messages. Type in the email you want to put on your “do not disturb” list followed by the “@” symbol and then click the blue “Add List” button.
Use this list whenever you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed by spam and don’t want to open your inbox. When you add an email to this list, it will be sent to a special folder where you can revisit it whenever you want. But until then, it will be hidden from your usual view.
Disable / Change the email address linked to your Google account
If you’ve been receiving spam from a particular email address, you can delete it from your inbox and set up a new one. To do this, visit Gmail’s website and log in. Then, under the “Settings” section, click the “+” icon in the upper right-hand corner. This will bring you to a page where you can create a new email address. Type in the email address you want to use (make sure it’s not associated with any of your other accounts) and then click the blue “Create Address” button.
Gmail allows you to create as many email addresses as you wish and can be accessed from within the app’s settings. When you create a new email address, you won’t have access to all the features of Gmail—only the ones related to that particular email address. So, if you have a business-related email address already associated with your Google account, you won’t be able to access the Admin section of the app when you create a new personal address.
Use multiple email addresses
If you’ve been getting a lot of spam from certain addresses, it might be time for an intervention. If you use the same email address over and over again, either because you’re not able to change it or because you forgot to change it after your last intervention, Gmail will start flagging your emails as spam. So, if you want to keep your inbox free from junk, it’s time to create a new email address.
It’s also a good idea to create a new email address for each of your digital profiles. So, if you have a LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, you might want to create a unique email address for each one. This way, you’ll ensure that each platform has its own “unified” email address that can be used when connecting with other users on those platforms.