
Block and Unsubscribe - xpressyoo
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/stay-in-control-with-block-and.html
======
mklim
> That’s why you can now block specific email addresses in Gmail [...] Future
> mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings).

It's nice to have a one-click button for it, but this was already available by
configuring a filter. You just need to select all emails from a particular
address and then choose to always mark them as spam or send them directly into
the trash. From the headline I was thinking that they changed it so that you
could keep email from an address from ever being delivered to your account in
any form.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I wonder though if they have taken it out of the filter flow. Filters are
interesting in that they can really slow things down, and if a previous one
fires before the send to trash one does, sometimes it has a different result.
If they have called this out as a behavior that can happen on the inbound
pipeline, and more importantly if they can reflect it back as a 5xx error to
the sender, it would be nice improvement.

~~~
nattaylor
Seems like the Inbox team has rethought the filter flow at least in terms of
UI and there are clearly some architecture/backend changes too. Perhaps this
new "block" flow in GMail is a reflection of working together with the Inbox
team.

------
mikestew
A nice fix for the companies that, either by malice or incompetence, use one
regex for their original email field and then another for the email field used
to unsubscribe. IOW, if you ordered something, used
"foobar+musiciansfriend@gmail.com" (which Musician's Friend takes just fine),
then went to unsubscribe, the email field regex for _that_ screen will
complain about the "+". Off to the spam bucket you go, Musician's Friend, and
my purchase dollars now go to Sweetwater.

~~~
tricolon
That was definitely a problem with Ticketmaster. It might still be, but I've
long since marked it as spam.

------
cdnsteve
Hilton hotels, can't unsubscribe because of account login forced. This is my
new fix!

~~~
chubot
It's amazing how many unsubscribe links, which are mandated by law, are broken
or flaky.

I just "report spam" now when that happens, and it totally works. No regrets.

~~~
meesles
I can see how people get annoyed (I do), but I think this strategy is harmful
to some companies. For example, I work for a web company that sends out a LOT
of emails as reminders for events. ISPs (or some other web intermediary, I'm
not sure) have rankings based on your likelihood to spam. A lot of spammy
emails are already caught in the filter, and either don't go through or go to
your spam folder. We work pretty hard to clear up misunderstandings that could
harm our email rating so that users don't miss important events.

That all being said, reporting spam instead of unsubscribe could hurt their
email rankings in the future. Obviously I'm not talking about VIAGRA6969.NZ,
but avoid the spam button if the company is respectable at all.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I see how that advice benefits your company. But it doesn't benefit me, much.
I'd prefer to err on the side of pushing that button too much.

~~~
linkregister
On the other hand, a false positive does harm you if it makes it more
difficult for your email provider to weed out the genuine spam.

(But I think you are only clicking "spam" on the unsolicited or hard-to-
unsubscribe stuff, which I support)

~~~
DanBC
As soon as a company sends me email other than hat I signed up for I report as
spam.

Companies need to learn that merely being in possession of my email address
doesn't mean they can send me anything they like.

I'd pay money for a modern day SPEWS-like art project.

~~~
linkregister
There are a number of modern-day services that perform a similar function.
Spamhaus is probably the most famous. Looking at the wikipedia entry, it looks
like SPEWS failed because their whitelist process was not good (and the DoS
attacks).

------
byoung2
Does anyone know how the unsubscribe feature works? Does it follow the
unsubscribe link in the email, or does it use some other mechanism?

~~~
wnevets
I believe it uses a header the sender includes with the email

[http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/](http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/)

~~~
kpcyrd
Also a cool way for a spammer to verify if somebody is receiving those mails.

~~~
jonknee
Who cares if they are receiving them and never seeing them because they are
blocked?

~~~
detaro
Someone who easily can send other mails to the now verified address from
somewhere else?

------
kohanz
This will actually be a useful feature for me. I consistently get e-mails from
a procurement business somewhere half-way across the world that somehow thinks
that my gmail address is that of one of their employees. I routinely get CC'd
on e-mails containing invoices, BOMs, customer inquiries etc. I've tried
reporting as spam, phishing, and even replying to all on message that includes
customers of the business to say "I'm not who you think I am and you probably
don't want strangers seeing these e-mails", all to no avail and these messages
just keep ending up in my inbox. They're not always from the same person (it's
a mid-sized company with varied customers).

Now I can just block them. I guess I could have used filters to do that, but
this seems more convenient.

~~~
swsieber
It's definitely more convenient. That's the whole point of the feature. If
anyone says this feature isn't a big deal because you can just make a filter,
you're wrong. This isn't a technical feature, it's a UX feature. And having
good UX makes a technical feature worth usable.

~~~
oldmanjay
That's a pretty good argument that this is a deal but I remain unconvinced it
qualifies as "big"

------
reustle
I wonder if this is just a shortcut to create a filter. That would make the
most sense, at least.

~~~
jusben1369
Yep. I think less sophisticated users would be intimidated by creating a
filter and this solves for that.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, the filter config for GMail is very full-featured. Like there are a
dozen actions you can take on a mail, all listed on a single popup. Makes
sense to provide an easier path.

~~~
coldpie
But no regexes :(

------
organsnyder
Hope this makes its way into the Inbox app as well. That app was announced
with great fanfare, but it is still missing some key features (such as
composing an email to a group) that are present in the regular app.

~~~
zyM7A6bQzJKBHnS
I would be really happy if the Inbox application had multiple accounts since I
also use Fastmail and yet another account for work. But I guess the "postpone"
feature would be impossible to have without access to the other servers.

------
fpgaminer
Speaking of spam, the wedding industry is the worst offender I've ever seen;
worse than porn websites. I've had my email address web spider-able for many
years, but never seen as much spam as I have while planning a wedding. These
venues and vendors take your information and sell it 2 seconds later to anyone
and everyone. One venue, for example, I emailed to set up a visit and meeting.
This wasn't some web form, it was me emailing them directly. Suddenly I'm
subscribed to their newsletter. That was quite novel; they now rot in my spam
folder.

Beyond that, after all this contact with venues, vendors, and bridal shows I'm
now being bombarded with email spam, text spam, and worst of all phone calls
from scam artists. The last one in particular is disturbing and makes it clear
that these wedding related companies are selling information like there's no
tomorrow. Disgusting.

~~~
silencio
I used a spam-only email and a google voice number to sign up for all my
wedding planning-related needs. It would be unbearable otherwise. It's been
two years and I still get spam _every day_ despite unsubscribing (and when
available, reporting them as unsolicited). Sadly I wish I could do the same
for facebook - I still get wedding planning and egg donation ads.

I think a close second place goes to real estate agents. I'll inquire about
something once and I end up with newsletters about seminars and houses I don't
care for.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I've gotten any spam from porn
websites I've signed up for, at least...

------
Touche
This is great! Any intention to standardize these with JMAP perhaps?

Any FastMail employees have anything to say about these new features?

------
dec0dedab0de
I would like it better if blocked users received undeliverable messages.

~~~
eli
As someone who sends email newsletters, I would definitely prefer that too. I
don't want to send messages to people who don't want them or aren't going to
read them.

~~~
iridium127
As someone who doesn't like spam, I'd rather see the spammers pay for sending
the emails even if I never see them.

------
nu2ycombinator
How is it blocking the person, when email from the person goes directly to
spam? Isn't it same as marking the email from that person as spam or creating
a filter to move to spam folder.

------
LukeHoersten
I wonder if these features will be available for Google Inbox on iOS.

------
codeulike
True blocking is when they get a mailer-daemon bounceback though. This is more
like hellbanning.

~~~
catshirt
preferable though, no?

~~~
detaro
Depends on the use case?

------
fwn
This will probably help Google to decide whether some email someone marked as
spam is actual spam or just something the user didn't like to receive.

------
franze
that's a huge gif (embedded on the
post):[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WF4v__O9Tbg/VfySrow-
OPI/AAAAAAAABx...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WF4v__O9Tbg/VfySrow-
OPI/AAAAAAAABxI/NouiJxI7wBo/s1600/Block.gif) -> 1.369.049 bytes (1,4 MB on
disk)

------
SquareWheel
A bit unrelated, but Google and other companies have been using a lot more
gifs in blog posts lately. I find my eyes have a harder time keeping my
position in the text, and I keep losing my place/getting distracted. Any
others feel the same way?

------
computer
Presumably the advantage of this over a standard filter is that blocking
(hopefully!) checks SPF/DKIM and verifies that the person being blocked is
actually the sender of the email. Simply blocking a From-address would not be
effective.

------
siscia
I am trying to solve a similar problem but offering unlimited email addresses,
you can block any of your address, forward some of them to your regular email,
visualize all (or just some) of the addresses in the same page as they were
the same address and eliminate an address so that email is undeliverable.

We are in pre-beta, but if you leave your email (of course I won't spam) I
will keep you up to date and I will ask your opinion :)

[http://mailroad.co/](http://mailroad.co/)

------
empressplay
This just seems to be the same as creating a filter. What would be really cool
would be if it bounced messages from people you "blocked"... that would be
something!

------
jebblue
This looks great! I'd really love to see Google and Microsoft stop people from
registering a new account to send spam to my accounts. If my humble
Postfix/Spamassassin configuration can correctly identify them as spam; I'd
expect Google and Microsoft to be able to do the same and stop those messages
before they are sent, particularly when they have virus document attachments.
I just got another one yesterday.

~~~
linkregister
Gmail is also the biggest source of the spam in my inbox. I'm curious if Gmail
directs Gmail-to-Gmail traffic through their excellent spam filter.

------
eddd
I've seen that feature before, when I was adding email to spam. Google would
then ask If I want unsubscribe from given list.

------
mrcactu5
I just write filters that sent directly to spam or delete. I've been doing it
for years.

------
friendzis
If I recall correctly, in the early days of the Internets that used to be
block (ban) and kick

------
mkoryak
I've been getting 2-3 emails per year from a recruiting company. Each time I
respond telling them to "REMOVE ME", but never hear back.

This feature will help, but does leave me feeling like no justice has been
done.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
One would imagine that when google receives enough block and/or unsubscribe
clicks from their users that they would eventually ban that sender from
contacting any gmail addresses in the future.

------
yuvadam
LNKD is down 1%. Related or not, either way, good riddance.

~~~
lemevi
I deleted my linkedin account and recreated it using an email address I use
for catching spam. Haven't had any emails from them since in my real inbox.

------
danielrw7
What happens when you later need to see emails from that email address again?
Are the emails saved somewhere?

~~~
hesselink
It says they go to Spam, so I assume it will be treated like other spam
(autodelete after 30 days, IIRC).

~~~
logicallee
(What I'm writing applies to individuals, not mailing lists.)

I think a bounce would be preferable! Why waste someone's time?

I think it should only hell-ban via a special checkmark. By default it should
cause a bounce saying that this person is not receiving email from that
address. Then neither sender nor recipient have their time wasted going
forward.

I mean for the 0.01% of cases where someone would literally create a new
address just to continue harrassing you, yeah, you could then hellban their
second address.

~~~
jamiek88
Why should we the general public worry about being 'fair' to spammers?

It's like the whole ad block thing. Now people have the power to do something
about it they are asked to be 'reasonable' and won't somebody please think of
the advertisers?

Nope. They had their chance to be fair with us. Techies have always been able
to block such stuff but now it's seeping into the normal users ability/ ux
upgrades hide complexity of doing so.

I feel as sorry for the spammers and ad trackers as I did for Borders when
Amazon came along. Not at all.

------
halviti
Ah, finally a solution for paypal.

I've unsubscribed from their mailing lists more times than I can remember.

------
patja
Is this very different from the same feature Hotmail has had since 2011?

------
benburton
I like to call this the "father in law" feature.

