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suppose someone sends me a email. if he is not in my contact list, his mail will go in "Stranger" label. how to create filter for this this label.

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2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

You can do this:

  1. Go to your contacts
  2. Choose to compose email to your whole contact list
  3. Copy the "To:" field
  4. Paste it here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/08/create-email-blacklist-in-gmail.html
  5. This will convert the list of emails to from email OR email OR email and so on
  6. Copy the converted line
  7. Make new filter
  8. In the "Has the words:"-field write "-from: {paste here that copied line}" (without "")
  9. Click Next Step button.
  10. Choose to add label to this filter
  11. Finish!

You can also add whole domains inside like *@domain.com inside the {} just remember to add extra OR between every address.

Little tricky but should work. I hope this helps! :)

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When posting your email adress, you could use a different email adress like yourusername+codeword@gmail.com where codeword could be the name of the website you're posting the address (or just a random word you like).

In the filters, label any email not sent to yourusername@gmail.com (without a code) as stranger (or all emails sent to yourusername+codeword@gmail.com).

Using multiple email address can be really helpful in tracking where the spam comes from and for blocking it.

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this wouldn't get mailing lists, since they're to field is their mailing list field. –  Rixius Aug 13 '10 at 15:26
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