How to Block Emails on Gmail, Outlook, Apple, and More

Receiving tons of spam, junk, or unwanted emails from unknown senders can be overwhelming. To begin with, they take up storage space if not deleted right away. Additionally, some spam emails may even carry malicious threats like malware, aiming to harm your device and data.

To make sure your inbox and devices stay clean from any unwanted messages or threats, you need to know how to block spam emails. This article will provide step-by-step instructions to do so on various platforms and devices. Let’s get started.

How to Stop Getting Spam Emails?

Firstly, let’s get to know the most common types of unwanted emails:

• Spam emails. Unsolicited mass emails, typically for promotional purposes.
• Phishing emails. Malicious messages that may look like marketing emails or other legitimate messages. They are designed to trick people into providing personal information and often contain malicious software that can be installed on your device without you noticing.
• Forced subscriptions. Messages you received because an app or website you just accessed tricks you into agreeing to join their mailing lists and receive their marketing emails.

To stop receiving unwanted emails, first, try to identify whether the emails you are receiving can be considered as one of the above. Then, here’s what you can do to stop mass emails and other unsolicited messages from flooding your inbox:

• Click the Unsubscribe link. Subscription emails usually have unsubscription links at the top or bottom of the email. Simply tap Unsubscribe to stop receiving them.
• Avoid providing your email for marketing purposes. Create a separate email account for activities such as downloading a free ebook or creating a trial account, so that your primary email inbox can stay organized.
• Don’t publish your email address publicly. Only provide your email address to trusted persons or organizations. By not exposing your email on the internet, the chances of spammers and scammers including it in their target list decreases.
• Report spam. Don’t just delete the spam messages from your inbox. Mark or report the message as spam or junk instead, so your email’s automatic spam filter learns to identify spam messages and filter them out in the future.
• Don’t open suspicious emails. Spammers may send emails that contain a tracking pixel – an image that tracks if an email is opened. The spammers will get a notification that you opened the email, and they may put your email address in their list since they know it’s an active email account. If you use Gmail, use Ugly Email or PixelBlock to identify emails containing tracking pixels.

Why Should You Block Emails?

Blocking emails can be an effective solution to keep your inbox neat and clean. Moreover, it offers other advantages, namely:

• Spam-free inbox. While it’s true that you can get informational content from email subscriptions, they may flood your inbox and drive you away from the more important emails. Blocking those subscriptions will prevent that from happening.
• Time-efficiency. With a few clicks, all unwanted emails will be moved to the spam folder. This method saves a lot of time compared to deleting emails one by one.
• Malware protection. Many spam messages might contain malware that could harm your computer if you clicked on it. Be safe from these threats by blocking those emails.

How to Block Emails on Different Platforms and Devices

Each email provider and device has slightly different steps to block an email address, but we will guide you through each platform.

How to Block Emails on Gmail

On Gmail, blocking unwanted emails can be done two ways – by blocking an individual email address or an entire domain name.

Here’s how to block a specific email address on Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail account.
2. Open an email from a sender you want to block.
3. Click the three vertical dots right next to the reply button. A dropdown menu will appear, select Block [sender].
4. A pop-up will inform you that Google will mark this sender’s future messages as spam. Click Block.
5. A confirmation message will appear.

Another way to block unwanted emails in Gmail is by blocking specific domains:

1. Click the Show search options icon on the search bar.

2. Enter the internet domain name that you want to block on the From field.

3. Click Create Filter.
4. Mark the Delete it box to automatically delete all emails from that targeted domain.

5. Click the Create filter button.

How to Block Emails on Yahoo

Yahoo Mail allows you to create a blocked list containing up to 1,000 blocked addresses. All the email addresses listed will be directly sent to the junk email folder, keeping your inbox clean from any unwanted messages.

However, there are some differences between the web app and the mobile app. Here you will learn how to block an email address on both.

Follow these steps to create a blocked email list on the web app:

1. On your Yahoo web app, find a spam email from a sender that you want to block.
2. Open the email. Click on the three dots at the top of the email window.

3. A dropdown menu will appear. Select Block Senders.
4. A pop-up will offer to Block all future emails or Delete all existing emails from this targeted address. Select both, then click Ok.

Meanwhile, the mobile phone app does not provide the option to block a sender. It only allows you to move unwanted messages to your spam folder. Follow the steps below to do so:

1. On your mobile device, open an email from a targeted sender you want to block.
2. Click on the three vertical dots icon on the top-right corner of the screen.
3. A dropdown menu will be shown, select Spam. Yahoo will automatically send future emails from this sender to the Spam folder.

How to Block Emails on Outlook

There are three versions of the Outlook application – web app, desktop app, and mobile app. We will show you how to block unwanted emails on all of those versions.

You have two options to block emails on the Outlook web app – by blocking a specific sender or using a blocked senders list.

Follow these steps to block a specific sender on the web app:

1. Go to your inbox and open a spam message from a sender you want to block.
2. Navigate to the Outlook menu bar at the top, then click on Junk -> Block. This will prompt Outlook to delete all messages from this sender and permanently block their future emails.

The Blocked Senders list is helpful if there are multiple email addresses you want to block. Here’s how to create one on the Outlook web app:

1. Open the web app, then navigate to the top-right side of the toolbar. Click the Settings menu.
2. Click View all Outlook settings.
3. A pop-up will appear. Navigate to Mail -> Junk email -> Blocked senders and domains.

4. Select Add to add email addresses or domains you want to block.
5. After inputting each address, hit Enter.
6. Once you’re done with the list, click Save.

If you have a Microsoft Office 365 license on your computer, the Outlook desktop app will be included with it. Here’s how to block an email address on the desktop app:

1. Go to the desktop app and open an email from a sender you want to block.
2. Right-click on the email and select Mark as Junk. It will prompt Outlook to permanently block emails from this sender in the future.

The third method to block emails in Outlook is by using the mobile app. The steps are similar to the desktop app, except instead of clicking Mark as Junk, you need to select the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of the app’s window, then click Move to spam.

How to Block Emails on Mail.com

Blocking email addresses on Mail.com can be done by creating a blacklist. Here’s how to manage your blacklist on Mail.com:

1. Open your Mail.com account, then go to E-mail settings.
2. Under the Security section, select Blacklist.

3. Enter the targeted email addresses or domains you want to block.
4. Hit the Save button.

How to Block Emails on AOL

The steps for blocking emails on AOL Mail’s web browser and mobile app are slightly different.

Here’s what you need to do to block an email address on the web browser:

1. Go to your AOL Mail, then navigate to Options at the top-right corner of the web page, right under your email address.
2. A drop-down menu will appear. Choose Mail Settings.

3. On the left side of the Mail Settings page, there’s a navigation pane. Choose Block Senders.

4. Enter the targeted email addresses you want to block into the Block List field. Click + to the right of the email address or simply hit Enter or Return on your keyboard to include an email on the list.
5. Add as many senders as you want, then click Save Settings.

To block an email address on AOL’s mobile app, follow these steps:

1. On the mobile app, open an email from a sender you want to block.
2. Tap on the three dots at the bottom-right of the screen. Select Mark as Spam. This will effectively prompt AOL to delete future emails from this sender automatically.

How to Block Emails on Thunderbird

Thunderbird does not provide an option to block spam mail from a specific email address or domain. However, this email client has message filters that can get rid of unwanted messages automatically.

Please note that this feature operates on a per-account basis. This means you must configure it on each account logged in to your Thunderbird email client.

Here’s how to block an email address on Thunderbird:

1. Open Thunderbird, then open an unwanted email from any email sender you wish to block.
2. On the sender’s address, right-click and choose Create Filter From…

3. A Filter Rules pop-up window will appear, with the email address already inserted into it. Name the filter by entering the name into the Filter name field. In this example, we’ll name it “Blocklist.”

4. Under the Perform these actions section, choose Delete Message.
5. Hit the OK button to save the filter. Thunderbird will automatically delete messages from this address in the future.

How to Block Emails on Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail offers a feature named Blocklist to help handle spam messages. Here’s how to set up a Blocklist on your Zoho Mail:

1. On your Zoho Mail, go to the navigation pane on the right side of the web page, then click Settings.
2. Click on Anti-Spam Lists.

3. To block specific email addresses, go to the Email address tab and type in the email addresses you want to block in the Add new Blocklist email field. Hit Enter to add them to the list.

4. To block specific domain names, navigate to the Domain tab. Add a domain to the Add new Blocklist domain field and hit Enter to add it to the list.

This way, the next emails from those addresses or domains will be blocked by Zoho Mail. You can also click Mark As Spam in any email you receive, and Zoho Mail will add the sender’s email address to the Blocklist.

How to Block Emails on Android

Android uses the Gmail app as its default email service, so to block junk emails, you have to do it via Gmail. Check the steps below to do so:

1. Open the Gmail app, then open a spam mail from a sender that you want to block.
2. Tap on the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of the app’s window.
3. Click Block [sender]. Gmail will automatically send future emails from this address to the spam folder.

However, if your Android device is Samsung, the default email app will be Samsung Email, which requires a different email setup.

How to Block Emails on iOS and iCloud

There are multiple ways to block emails on iOS and iCloud – via Settings on iPhone or Mail app on MacOS.

Here’s what you need to do to block email addresses on iPhone via Settings:

1. First, make sure that you already saved the email address to block in your device’s Contacts app.
2. Go to Settings -> Mail.
3. Under the Threading section, select Blocked Sender Options.

4. Select Mark Blocked Sender -> Move to Trash.

5. Go back to the Threading section, navigate to Blocked -> Add New.
6. Select the contacts whose email you want to block.
7. Enable Mail in the device’s iCloud so that these specific senders can be blocked across all your Apple devices.

To block unwanted email messages on iPhone via the Mail application, follow these steps:

1. Open Mail and open an email from a sender that you want to block.
2. Tap the sender’s name, then select Block This Contact.
3. A confirmation message will pop up. Select Block this Contact to confirm this action.

Please note that emails from this contact will no longer be visible on your Apple Mail app but will still be visible on your email provider app or in the web browser.

The steps to block emails on MacOS are quite similar to the previous ones:

1. Open Mail on your Mac.
2. Open an email from the sender that you want to block.
3. In the message header, click the arrow next to their name. Choose Block Contact.

It’s also possible to add senders directly to a list of blocked senders. Follow these steps to do so:

1. On the app, click Mail on the top menu bar and select Preferences.
2. Go to Junk Mail -> Blocked. Enter the email addresses to be blocked on the provided field, and tick the Enable blocked mail filtering option.

Useful Tools to Help Keep Your Inbox Spam-Free

You can take a few more steps to ensure your inbox is free from clutter and spam. 

Use additional tools to help clean it up. Here are our recommendations:

• SaneBox – sorts out your incoming email based on your email history. The important ones will stay in your inbox, while the less urgent ones will be moved to the SaneLater mailbox. 
• Maildrop – provides temporary email addresses that prevent the spam from going into your actual email inbox. It’s useful when you are required to give an email address for marketing purposes, but you don’t want to provide a real one.
• Shift – makes all of your email accounts accessible from one place, which saves you from having to switch between emails and log in and out every time.
• Unroll.me – shows a list of all your subscription emails, allowing you to review them quickly and decide which ones to unsubscribe from. 
• Mailstrom – identifies messages in your mailbox based on various filters, such as sender, subject, and size. Choose in bulk and decide an action, such as archiving or deleting them. 

Conclusion

If you’re getting tired of spam emails, blocking senders is ideal to stop spam from reaching you permanently. Your inbox will be more organized, it will be easier to find important messages, and it’s a great way to avoid malware.

Blocking unwanted emails on different platforms and devices may have slightly different steps. Thus, we have provided several alternatives to help you easily block an email address and get spam emails automatically deleted from your inbox.

However, if you accidentally block someone, all email platforms and devices we’ve covered also allow you to reverse the action with ease.