How do you stop spam in a gmail account?

[Duffield1]

A friend of mine is receiving dozens of spam messages to her gmail account.  I don't use gmail and am unfamiliar with how its spam filters work - as far as I can see, you can block set addresses, but there is no automatic filtering. 

Is there any way of turning on a better spam filter in Gmail?  If not, can anyone suggest alternatives?

[P-Kasso2]

Ah, but there is automatic filtering of Spam on Gmail. I use Gmail and if you go to the very left hand side of the screen you'll find a column saying...

Compose
Inbox
Starred
Important
Sent Mail
Personal
More - and this 'More' entry has a little down-arrow next to it.

Click on the 'More' arrow and you'll open up all of the following and you'll see the Spam folder right down at the bottom of the list...

Chats
Drafts
Spam
Trash

I find Gmail automatically puts everything it 'thinks' is Spam in the Spam folder and the Gmail spam detector works well. This week I have had 11 incoming emails that Gmail dumped straight into the Spam folder.

Gmail doesn't tell you it has done it though - and sometimes it spams an email that isn't Spam - so you have to check the Spam folder every now and then just to be sure.

(Once done, to close the enlarged column, just scroll back up to where 'More' will have changed to 'Less' and click on 'Less'.)

Of course, any Spam that does get through Gmail's spam detector you can manually report as Spam by using a button (on the work bar directly above the list of incoming new emails). From my experience, once reported, Gmail is 100% efficient at not letting Spam from that particular source through again.

 

[siasl]

There is a "report spam" button in mine (perhaps enabled via the Labs?), which, when pressed, will stick it in the spam folder and subsequent messages that look like it too. Additionally, if the email actually contains what looks like a valid "unsubscribe" button (required by law for businesses spamming from the UK, I believe), it will ask you if you want it to try and use that link.


As an alternative, buy your own domain and have one personal account that only gets sent to friends/contacts and very trusted parties, and then invent an email address for *every* service you subscribe to (with my service, I can define a set number of email accounts, but additionally have a rule for "all mail received on this domain gets delivered to this email account", and I think in the service I can specify some filters to discard received emails to a specific account).

For example, I'll have a personal account of siasl@mydmain.com, but if I sign up to a service, I will just use a new email servicename@mydomain.com, and my auto-forward from my email provider will give me any emails received. Later on, if I start getting adverts for various pills and other such junk with a target email of "servicename", I can specify a filter to discard all of those and, as an added bonus if I could be bothered, I can pursue that service in small claims court for up to £300 as I will have evidence that they've distributed my email without my permission (as I never tick/untick the box about "trusted partners").

True, a little cash is required annually to support this, and you need a bit of technical know-how - but it's not rocket science.

[P-Kasso2]

I agree with Siasl 100% about setting up a separate account for non-friends and non-safe emails. Years ago I simply opened a new email account called Junk@gmail.com.

Whenever I buy anything, or answer a poll, or make an enquiry that needs an answer I simply use my Junk email address (maybe that's why I hardly ever get splattered with spam?)

If that Junk2 account ever gets bombed with dodgy offers I'll simply open a Junk3@gmail.com account and use that. And if that gets inundated I'll just open a Junk4@gmail.com. And so on and on and on.

Gmail is free, so why not use it?  You can open as many new 'safe' Gmail accounts as you like. Goodbye spam!

[Cosmos]

If you're looking for alternatives that do a better job of filtering spam have a look at mail.com and look through their wide number of domain names ; there's something for everyone on this page under Desired Email Address https://service.mail.com/registration.html?edition=int&lang=en&#.1258-header-signup2-1
Or use Yandex.com . A Russian email provider that looks and works very much like gmail but with more traditional folder options .