How to block unwanted emails from reaching your email inbox

Are you frustrated dealing with unwanted emails landing in your inbox? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could control who gets to email you and who does not? Meet Gatekeeper — Spark’s newest feature that blocks unwanted emails, giving you a clutter-free inbox so you can focus on what’s important.

Practically everyone has to deal with unwanted and irrelevant emails landing in their inbox. Marketing emails, newsletters, social media notifications, LinkedIn connection requests, e-commerce discount offers, etc. keep being added to the top of your inbox one after the other and there’s no efficient way to manage them. Sure, you could try unsubscribing or marking them as spam, but who has the time? This unwanted clutter drowns out the important emails you actually care about, which means you need to spend time manually organizing your inbox.

Spark now ships with a nifty feature called Gatekeeper that helps you choose who can email you and who cannot, ensuring that your inbox stays clutter-free and saving you the trouble of manually cleaning up unwanted emails. Download Spark for Free to get started with all the amazing features that Spark offers.

In this comprehensive guide to blocking emails, you’re going to learn everything you need to know about unwanted emails and how to get rid of them on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows devices.

JUMP TO:

• How do I block someone from emailing me?
• How do I prevent unwanted emails?
• How do I reduce the amount of unwanted emails?
• Why do I get so many unwanted emails anyway?

How do I block someone from emailing me?

Maybe you’ve tried to unsubscribe from a marketing email list, but no matter how many times you try, you still keep receiving emails from them. With Spark Mail app, you can instantly block a sender from sending you emails, so that none of their incoming emails claim your attention. Here’s a simple guide that explains how to block a sender from emailing you:

1. If you haven’t already, download and install Spark on your device. Spark is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices and you can get started for Free.
2. Sign in with your email account and open any email from the sender you’d like to block.
3. Tap the three dots at the top right of the email.
4. Choose the ‘Block Sender’ option.

You’ve now asked Spark not to bother you with any future emails from this sender. Repeat the same steps for other senders you’d like to block and you’re quickly on your way to a neatly organized email inbox that contains only those emails that you care about.

How do I prevent unwanted emails?

Spark comes with a feature called Gatekeeper that puts you in full control of who is allowed to email you, and who isn't. Gatekeeper screens and filters all incoming emails for you, so your inbox can stay neatly organized with only the important emails you care about.

Whenever you get an email from a new sender (someone who’s not previously emailed you), Spark will ask you whether you want to Accept or Block emails from this sender. If you choose Block, all future emails from this sender won’t appear in your inbox. Here’s how to get started with Gatekeeper so that you can completely block unwanted emails.

1. Download & install Spark on your device. Spark is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices.
2. Sign in with the email account that you’d like to block unwanted emails from. If you have multiple email accounts, go ahead and add them all in Spark.

3. Enable the Gatekeeper feature by going to Spark’s Settings > Inbox > New Senders and choosing where you’d like to Accept or Block senders. Spark can ask you at the top of your email inbox, or inside the email.

That’s it! Spark is now ready to work on ensuring your inbox remains free from unnecessary spam & irrelevant emails. Now every time someone with a new email address sends you an email, you will get to choose if you’d like to receive emails from them in your inbox. If you choose to ‘Block’ them, all future emails from that email address will be stowed away in the blocked folder.

How do I reduce the amount of unwanted emails?

Here are a few steps you can take to reduce the number of unwanted emails you receive in your email inbox:

1. Avoid revealing your email address publicly.
2. When submitting your email on a website, ensure that you aren’t agreeing to be added to a marketing email list.
3. Train your spam filter by marking all the junk emails you receive as spam, so that the filter gets better at detecting future emails.
4. Never submit your primary email address on websites that ask for one to download a freebie. 
5. Use a disposable email address generator website such as 10minuteemail.com, ThrowAwayMail.com or Maildrop when you want to sign up on a website temporarily and never use it later.
6. Start using a modern & feature-rich email app like Spark that offers multiple ways to reduce or block unwanted emails. Spark is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices, and you can get started for Free right here.

Why do I get so many unwanted emails anyway?

Unwanted emails aren’t just limited to the random “Spam” that ends up in your inbox. Most email services do a decent job of filtering out a majority of spam. Yet, there are a variety of emails that you just don’t want to deal with. Here are some common practices leading to unwanted emails in your inbox:

1. E-commerce Marketing Emails: It’s getting increasingly common for online shops & marketplace websites and apps to start sending you daily or weekly emails as soon as you complete a purchase. This also includes discount offers & special sales they keep having every few months.
2. Social Media Notifications: In an effort to drive up their DAU (Daily Active Users) numbers, social media platforms will automatically sign you up for multiple email chains in an effort to make you launch the app every few hours.
3. LinkedIn Connect Requests: If you’ve ever received a request on LinkedIn from someone that you’ve gone ahead and approved, only to receive a pitch about how their app or service will change your life, you know how annoying these emails can get when you’re trying to focus. 
4. Direct Emails: If your email address is published anywhere on the internet, it doesn’t take long for automated scripts to harvest it and add you to a Sales & Marketing list where lead generators will repeatedly email you asking for your time. This is especially true if your LinkedIn profile mentions a decision-making role in your place of employment.
5. Newsletters: With ad revenue on the decline, more and more publishers are switching to a model where they can communicate directly with their audience and control their data directly. With emails, the publisher is able to bring the content to you instead of waiting for you to come to the content. 
6. SEO & Link Building: If you run a relatively popular website or blog, there’s a good chance you’ve received an email asking you either to add a link to an existing article or to publish a “guest article” on a topic that is “very relevant” to your audience. 

With Spark, you can take full control of who gets to email you and who does not, so that you can stop unwanted emails from piling up in your inbox.

Spark mail app is a modern, meticulously-crafted, multi-platform email client that offers a variety of features to help you focus on what’s important. Download Spark for Free and get started with the best email app for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices.

[Last updated: 14th October, 2022]