We’ve been saying for ages that the Gmail spam filters are excellent. However there has never been a (easily found) way to have Gmail automatically mark something as spam and send it to the Gmail spam folder, by which we mean something that you have defined as spam, even though the Gmail spam filters may not have. But we’ve figured it out, so here is how to have Gmail automatically tag as spam something you define as spam, and send it to the spam folder.
This “how to” for how to have Gmail automatically mark as spam something that you designate as spam works whether you are using Gmail as your primary mailer, or as a pass-through spam filter (anyone who has read the Internet Patrol for some time knows that we advocate using Gmail as your spam filter even with other email programs; plus, the Gmail spam settings can be used to create rules in Gmail so, for example, you can have Gmail automatically delete foreign language spam).
Moreover, having Gmail automatically mark something as spam turns out to be so simple, once you know the secret, that we actually kicked ourselves for not having discovered it before.
Now we are sharing it with you.
How to Have Gmail Automatically Mark Something as Spam and Send it to the Gmail Spam Folder
The secret is that, in Gmail, ‘block’ = “this is spam”.
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It’s seriously that simple. But finding the ‘block’ function is half the trick.
So here you go.
Let’s use this spam from referhire.com as an example:
Now, referhire.com is one of those detestable places that gets their users to import their contacts and then spams all of their contacts. That said, we do not know anybody named Lauren Shea. So how they got my personal email address is beyond me.
So this spam from referhire.com is a perfect example of something which is spam, but not caught by Gmail’s spam filter, so let’s make Gmail’s rules automatically send any email from referhire.com to the spam folder.
In order to make Gmail send email that you never asked for, don’t want, and didn’t agree to, to the spam folder, what you need to do is click on the dropdown arrow near the top of the offending email.
From the dropdown menu, click on ‘Block (sender name)’. Do not be confused by how they word this – it is actually the sending email address that will be blocked, not the so-called ‘friendly name’ (the ‘friendly name’ in this example is “Lauren Shea via ReferHire”). What will actually be blocked in this example, despite what the menu says, is ‘updates@referhire.com’, which is of course exactly who is sending the spam.
Clicking on that menu item will display this message:
Which will result, again, in your ‘blocking’ the sending email address, which in reality means automatically marking it as ‘spam’!
See?
You can find a list of all of the sending addresses which you have blocked by going to your Gmail > Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses page, and down at the very bottom you will see:
And that’s how you get Gmail to automatically mark certain email as spam, first time, every time.
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One of the options when you define a filter is to mark the matching messages as spam: I don’t know whether this counts as “difficult to find”?
Phil, there is no such option in Gmail. (See screenshot – and neither the “Apply the label” nor “Categorize as” offers it). Are you perhaps thinking of Gsuite or a different Google product?
THANK YOU
This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and now that I know how, I feel rather stupid because it’s so simple, perhaps even obvious, but I don’t care because it will allow me to get on top of some senders who really don’t impress me.
Thanks again.