How does one blacklist a specific email address from showing up in their Gmail inbox. I get this question a lot, so I thought I would blog it and then tell people to read this blog post when I am asked again.
Yes, you get the spam over and over again from the same email address. Or you are signed up to your friend's mailing list and you don't want to insult him by asking him to remove you, but you don't want those email. Simple answer is to blacklist the email. But how do you do that in Gmail?
You set up a filter. Here is how.
(1) Go to Gmail
(2) Click Settings
(3) Click on Filters
(4) Click Add New Filter
(5) Enter Email address in from box and click Next Step:
(6) Check off the "Mark as Read" and "Delete It" check boxes and click "Create Filter.
You are done.
For a more advanced way of doing this, see Alex's post on this topic from 2006.




Comments
Thanks for this how-to. However, with over 2000 spam messages within a week, it will take some time to get through the number of spammers who send repeated emails. I think Google should make spam messages searchable like the inbox and then they can be worked on by sender. So annoyed with spam...
Posted by: Ethel Powers | February 19, 2009 2:51 PM
Brilliant! - I have several filters set up but it never occurred to me to make a spam filter.
Posted by: Hawaii SEO | February 19, 2009 5:51 PM
Too bad they don't have "Report as Spam" on the list of check boxes.
Posted by: Hawaii SEO | February 19, 2009 5:52 PM
What Dave said. I want Google to learn that this is spam! Why isn't that a checkbox option?
Posted by: Tamar Weinberg | February 19, 2009 6:52 PM
This is perfect! I get so many spam emails and they seem to be growing. I guess if you spam enough people someone will buy into it eventually.
Posted by: Nick Stamoulis | February 20, 2009 12:32 PM