How to block emails

You’re probably not new to this situation: another flood of unwanted and spam emails comes in and while for some you can use the “Unsubscribe” button, others may keep returning again and again. How to fix that?

Let’s dive into this topic and look at how you can block unwanted emails efficiently.


How to block emails on Gmail

How to block an email in Gmail? Google has a very good spam filter but in case some spam has slipped through the filter, here’s what you can do.

To block the specific person/sender you don’t want to receive emails from, start by logging into Gmail.com. Then you need to open the message from the sender you would like to block. With the message opened, click on three dots in the top right, and from the presented options select “Block [sender]”.

Now the specific sender should be blocked from your mailbox.

Another way is to report spam in case we’re not talking about an annoying individual but about automated spam emails.

Again, you start by logging in to Gmail.com. Open the spam message or tick the box to the left side of the message list. Above the selected message you should see the “Report Spam” button. Click on the button and a copy of the spam message will be sent to Google for analysis which should help them improve the automated spam filter and reduce the number of spam you receive in the future.

How to block emails on Outlook webmail

Similar to Gmail, Outlook allows you to block emails and report spam as well. Here’s how to block emails on Outlook.com.

Upon logging in to Outlook.com you need to select the unwanted message. In the top toolbar, you should see three dots or the “Block” button (depending on your screen size), hover over “Block” and click on “Block Sender”.

To block spam, select spam message from the message list, click on “Report” and select “Report junk”.

It will move the message to the Spam/Junk folder and update the server-side spam filter so it can filter out unwanted emails even more efficiently.

How to block emails in the eM Client app

While Gmail and Outlook allow you to block senders and report spam via their web apps, eM Client can work with both of these providers and many others. Below you will find out how to utilize blacklist and spam filter features in eM Client.

Locate the unwanted message in the eM Client message list and right-click on it. From the context menu click on “Move to junk” which will move the selected message to the spam folder right away or hover over “Move to Junk” for additional blacklist options:

Move to Junk and blacklist email – Moves messages to the dedicated spam folder within the respective email account and adds the email address of the sender to the blacklist to prevent them from reaching you again.

Move to Junk and blacklist domain – Also moves the message to the dedicated spam folder but instead of blocking the specific address, the entire domain is blocked. So for example, if you block the message sent from the Gmail.com domain, no other messages sent from addresses at Gmail.com will reach your mailbox.

Both of these options will help you to prevent spam from reaching your mailbox but it’s important to take a little bit of caution to avoid blocking popular email provider's domains when using “Move to Junk and blacklist domain”. Though you can of course edit and remove things from the Blacklist any time later via Menu > Rules.

To achieve the best spam filtering results it may be better to combine server-side filtering/blacklisting with eM Client’s features and you can see the reduced number of spam in no time.

Intrigued? Try out eM Client today.