When you join a team, group, online forum, or are a member of a website, you inevitably have to provide your email address… However, some “bad” websites often exploit this to send spam and advertisements. As a result, your inbox can become clogged with junk mail. What can you do about it?
First, make sure you have properly removed your email address from the mailing list as required by that forum, organization, or website. Avoid hastily concluding that they are a “bad” website. For Yahoo groups, you can remove your name from the group members. For forums or news websites, you typically just need to uncheck the box for “receive newsletters or notifications” in your personal account information.
If you are sure that you have done everything correctly but are still being harassed, add the email address you do not wish to receive emails from to the spam list and use anti-spam programs to block them. Here’s how to do it:
Yahoo Mail
Log into your Yahoo Mail account, go to Options (located on the upper right side of the screen). Enable the Spam protection feature by clicking on Spam Protection under the Mail Option section in three simple steps:
Step One, activate Spam Guard. Decide what Spam Guard should do when it encounters spam emails. Yahoo Mail gives you two options: either move spam emails to the Bulk folder or delete them immediately. Emails in Bulk will remain for 30 days before being deleted (by default).
Step Two, determine the actions associated with using the Mark Spam or Not Spam features when identifying whether an email is spam. When you select Mark Spam, the program will automatically add the sender’s email address to the block addresses list and will act according to the actions you defined in Step One whenever it encounters an email from that address. Not Spam will move emails from Bulk back to Inbox.
Step Three is simply to decide if you want to prevent images from displaying. This is purely for security reasons.
Once you have enabled Spam Guard, you can go to “block addresses” within the Mail Option section to add email addresses that you do not wish to receive emails from or you can use the Mark Spam function. This way, you can free yourself from the annoyance.
In Gmail
Log into Gmail, go to Settings, navigate to Filter, and click on Create new filter. This filtering tool is based on five characteristics of incoming emails: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have. If an email matches any of these characteristics, it will be placed on the list and actions you specify will be applied. To define the actions to be taken on filtered emails, click on Next, then choose actions like Skip the Inbox (send to Spam), Star it, Apply the Label, Forward to, or Delete it.
Thus, you only need to create a filter with the From line set to the email address you want to block and select the action to delete, so you will never see emails from that person in your inbox.
You can also use the Report Spam function in Inbox to mark emails as spam, preventing future occurrences. Gmail also continuously updates its spam filter with known spam sources.
In Email Clients like Outlook Express (OE) or Microsoft Outlook (MO).
Rules: Use Message Rule to block all emails from a specific address by setting up as follows:
In MO, go to Tools -> Rules and Alerts -> New Rule -> select Start From A Blank Rule and choose Check messages when they arrive -> Next -> check From People or Distribution List and click on People or Distribution List in the box below, then type the email address you want to block in the From line -> click Ok, then click Next and select Delete it. If you want to create an exception in your email filtering rules, click Next and choose conditions for the exception (meaning emails from that address but with an additional condition will not be filtered). Click Finish when you think you are done.
Thus, you will never be bothered by emails from that address.
In OE, the process is similar; go to Tools -> Message Rules and follow the same steps as above.
One thing to note is that when you use an email client, you are downloading emails from a mail server. This means that in reality, your inbox still receives these “junk mails,” but you simply do not download them to your device. The most effective way to block spam is still to set up filters directly on the server. This requires intervention from your company’s IT department.
Wishing you success in getting rid of these nuisances.
TRAN HUY
