Tip of the Week: Gmail Takes a Page From Facebook By Letting You Block People

How overwhelming is the amount of spam and junk mail you receive on a regular basis? Are you able to effectively navigate your inbox without wasting time on unimportant messages? If you’re a user of Gmail, you now have some tools available to you by default that can help you in the war on spam. You can block specific users and even unsubscribe from email campaigns, allowing you to take back time previously spent cleaning up your inbox.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of the features, though, we want to mention that Gmail’s new block and unsubscribe features should not be considered a substitute for a full-fledged spam protection solution. In order to mitigate the amount of malicious emails you receive, a comprehensive spam solution is imperative. Blocking and unsubscribing from particular email addresses isn’t guaranteed to stop spam. If it can’t come from one source, it will simply come from another. This is why it’s important to stop spam in its tracks before it hits your inbox.

That isn’t to say that Gmail’s new features aren’t worth looking into. They’re still useful for an immediate remedy to a particular problem. It’s a solution that the average consumer can use without worry. If you’re receiving some sketchy emails from a particular sender, you can block an individual email address easily enough. Messages from blocked users will go straight to your spam folder. To block someone, all you have to do is open an email from the sender you want to block, click on the down-arrow next to the reply button, and select Block “user.”

A similar feature can be found on the Gmail Android mobile app (the most recent version - it’s not available on the desktop version of Gmail yet). Unsubscribing allows users to keep messages out of their inbox from email advertising campaigns. It works in a similar manner to clicking the “unsubscribe” links at the bottom of messages. All you have to do is open the message you want to unsubscribe from, click the three-dot More button next to Reply, and select Unsubscribe.

While unsubscribing and blocking users on Gmail isn’t the best way to completely block spam, it’s a good start that can relieve some of the pressure in your inbox. In order to achieve the level of spam protection your business deserves, you need to integrate a powerful spam blocking solution that’s designed to eliminate spam before it even hits your inbox. To accomplish this goal, contact Directive at 607.433.2200. For more tips on how to optimize your organization’s IT infrastructure and improve your workplace productivity, subscribe to our blog.