Spam filter for Yahoo Mail: how to block spam emails

What Yahoo Mail’s built-in filter does

Yahoo Mail has a Spam folder. Emails that Yahoo treats as spam go there instead of the inbox. According to Yahoo, emails in the Spam folder do not count towards your storage.

• Teach it: select an email and click Mark as spam. Yahoo then sends future email from that sender to Spam.
• Correct it: open the Spam folder, select the email and click Not spam. If you cannot see the folder, click More below Sent.
• Mailing lists: for senders Yahoo trusts, it may offer Unsubscribe instead.

Yahoo recommends managing spam in its own apps or on its website, and turning off spam filters inside other email programs.

How to block spam emails on Yahoo

Block an address

Yahoo describes these steps for the older Yahoo Mail in a desktop browser:

1. Open the settingsClick the Settings icon, then More Settings.
2. Go to the block listClick Security and Privacy. Under Blocked addresses, click Add.
3. Enter the addressType the email address you want to block and click Save.

You can block up to 1,000 addresses. In the new Yahoo Mail the settings are behind the More icon on the left, below your folders; Yahoo has a separate help section for that version.

Make a filter

A filter sorts new emails by a rule you set. In the new Yahoo Mail: click the More icon on the left, then Settings, then Filters, then Add new filters. Give the filter a name, set its rule, choose a folder and click Save.

Yahoo allows up to 500 filters. A filter can move an email into a folder or into the trash. Filters are applied from top to bottom; if two match, the upper one wins.

What the built-in tools cannot do

• The block list knows addresses, not tricks. Scammers change their sender addresses all the time, and the list ends at 1,000 entries.
• Filters need fixed rules. A filter catches what you described in advance, such as one sender or one word. It does not judge what an email is trying to get you to do.
• No filter catches everything. Some scam emails still reach the inbox, and they are written to look like real ones.

Where a filter from outside fits in

Yahoo’s spam filter stays on. Guard Mail adds a second check from outside, for the emails that arrive in your mailbox anyway.

1. Connect the mailboxYahoo Mail connects through an app password. On the Yahoo Account Security page, choose Create app password, name it and select Generate password. The setup explains each step.
2. New emails are checkedA few minutes after an email arrives, Guard Mail checks it.
3. Scam emails are movedScam and phishing emails go into a folder called “Suspicious”. Spam goes to the spam folder. Everything else stays untouched.

Guard Mail itself never deletes an email. The “Suspicious” folder is never emptied automatically. Mail providers empty their own spam folder after a while, usually after around 30 days, so look into it now and then.

If you want, newsletters, advertising and notifications are moved into their own folders as well. You can also write your own rules in plain language. You keep your usual email program.

To check an email, its sender, subject and text are sent to our servers and to an AI model. The details are in the privacy policy.

Price: $6 a month or $60 a year for up to two mailboxes. Each further mailbox costs $2.50 a month. It is free to try.

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