While there are no Google mail spam settings you can directly control, you can assist your account in determining what spam is to you. Spam is unwanted and unwarranted e-mail that advertisers, marketers and scam-artists use to get you to click on fake links, view their Internet ads or to sometimes verify your e-mail is active so they can add it to a list to sell.
What Google Does
Working behind the scenes, Gmail provides you some essential protection against spammers. You don't have to do anything as far as Settings go. Gmail maintains a list of known spammers and common spamming domain names and immediately puts the offending email into a folder named "Spam". After that, spam message are saved for 30 days; at that time, they are permanently deleted. So if you are expecting an email from a friend, co-worker or someone else and you feel it's been enough time, check the Spam folder: it is possible the Gmail thought it was spam.
Google Mail Spam Settings
Of course, the above method isn't foolproof: there's bound to be spam emails making it to your Inbox. How can you tell Gmail to interpret those messages as spam? It's very simple. First, either check the message or click on the message to load it (it's better if you just simply check the message so hidden scripts and links don't inadvertently get selected if you open the message.) At the top of the Inbox is a button labeled "Report spam"-it's next to the delete button. Once selected, the recipient and some keywords are saved by Google. More importantly, you are also helping Google with similar messages sent to other email addresses.
If, for some reason, you see the same email address coming through or you don't want to receive email from a particular person, you can block the incoming message. Anything sent from that contact or email address won't even get delivered. To do this, hover over the sender's name until a small box pops up. Then, click on the "More" drop down box and select "Block." NOTE: You will need to open the message before hovering over the name.
Deleting Spam
While you don't necessarily want to delete the Spam folder itself, you can clean out the folder in case the amount of messages is taking up too much space or you are a simple email folder clean freak. Select the Spam folder so the messages are displayed. To get rid of all of the spam in one shot, click on the link "Delete all spam messages now." You'll get a confirmation question asking if you want to continue. Select "OK" and all the messages will be gone for good. You are able to pick and choose what messages are deleted. Just select those particular ones by checking the box and clicking "Delete forever" when you are ready to proceed.
What if it's not Spam?
Occasionally, even if you correctly configure Google Mail spam settings, an email will slip through Gmail's filtering process sending it to the Spam folder when it's not spam. That's why you should glance through this folder every few days just in case this happens. Don't worry, not every message from that is sent from that sender will go there if you take the following remedy. Check the message or load it up. At the top of the message is a button labeled "Not spam." Select this and the message will appear in your Inbox. From that moment on, Gmail will know not to send any messages from that sender to the Spam folder.
Gmail is a popular free email service and, while spammers continue to infiltrate email inboxes with unwanted emails, Google has great backend services working for you to keep your Inbox free of that clutter.
