Yahoo! Mail Tutorials

Protecting Yourself From Spam

Avoiding Spam Blocking Images Blocking Email Addresses Unblocking Addresses

Blocking Email Addresses

Are you tired of getting email from certain senders? Do you find it a bother having to delete unwanted emails or to move them into the Spam folder? Yahoo! Mail can help you out with a handy feature that lets you list email addresses that you would like blocked from your Yahoo! Mail account. When emails arrive from addresses that you’ve blocked, Yahoo! Mail automatically deletes them. The emails never make it to one of your mail folders, not even your Spam folder, and they aren’t bounced back to the sender. If you want to block messages from a particular source, just list the sender’s specific address or entire domain. As long as the sender always uses the same mailing address or domain, this type of blocking is very effective.

Note: Blocking an address is different from marking a message as spam. When you mark a message as spam, Mail moves the message into the Spam folder and continues to deliver messages from that address into your Spam folder. When you block an address, you manually put the address into your blocked addresses list, and Yahoo! Mail deletes all messages from that address before you have an opportunity to view them. To learn more about spam and SpamGuard, see the Using SpamGuard tutorial.

 

Here’s How

  1. In the upper-right corner of your Yahoo! Mail page, click the Options link, then select Mail Options from the menu.

    Click the Options link.

    The Mail Options page opens.

  2. Under the Spam column, click the Block Addresses link.

    The Blocked Addresses page opens.

  3. In the Add Block area, type the email address you wish to block, then click the Add Block button.

    Type the address or domain that you want to block, then click the Add Block button.

    Tip: To block email messages from an entire domain (for example, baddomain.com), type the domain in this box.

    The address is added to your list of blocked addresses.

    The address is added to the blocked addresses list.

 

What’s Next:

The next task shows you how to unblock an address so you can once again receive email from that person or business.

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Words to Know

  • Blocked address: an email address or domain from which you never want to receive messages.
  • Domain: a set of Internet addresses, such as for a web site or email. On the Web, a domain is the part after "www." such as "my-domain.com".
  • Folder: a container that holds individual elements specific to the context; for example, email messages in Yahoo! Mail.
  • Spam: unsolicited email on the Internet; also called "junk mail".
  • Spammer: someone who sends spam.