How to stop spam emails in Gmail, Outlook and iCloud

To stop spam emails, match the way to the kind of mail. Report scams and phishing as spam so your provider's filter learns. Unsubscribe from real companies you signed up with. Block or filter the senders who ignore you, and give out an alias next time a site asks for your address. With iCloud, Gmail or Outlook, Alrighty's Stop mail does the unsubscribe, the archive and the block in one action.

Most guides to stopping spam list the same ten tips and stop there. They don't say which tip works on which mail, and that is why people still get spam after they follow them. A newsletter, a cold sales pitch and a fake bank email need three different answers. Clicking unsubscribe in the wrong one makes things worse. This page lists eight ways, says which kind of unwanted mail each one stops, and names the tools that do it in Gmail, Outlook and iCloud.

How we checked

We read each provider's and each tool's own help, feature and pricing pages on November 4, 2026, and every fact about another product links to its source. Where a page didn't say something, we say so instead of guessing. We compared what each way does, which accounts it works with, where it runs, and which kinds of unwanted mail it stops. Alrighty is our app, and it is listed first. We didn't run tests of our own.

Four kinds of spam, and why one fix doesn't stop them all

"Spam" covers four kinds of mail, and each one gets past a different defense.

• Lists you joined. A store, an app or a newsletter you gave your address to. These have an unsubscribe link, and a real company honors it.
• Marketing you never asked for. A company bought or scraped your address. It may have an unsubscribe link, but it keeps finding you.
• Cold outreach. A sales pitch or recruiter email, often written by a sequence tool from a real domain. It looks like normal mail, so filters miss it, and it usually has no link to leave.
• Scams and phishing. Mail that pretends to be your bank, a delivery or a payment app. Its unsubscribe link is a trap. Never click it.

Which way stops which kind of spam

Way	Tools	Lists you joined	Unasked marketing	Cold outreach	Scams and phishing	Where it runs
Stop mail and Clean up	Alrighty	Yes	Yes	Yes	Phishing checks send sure phishing to Junk	Your computer; Clean up on its server
Report as spam	Gmail, Outlook, iCloud	No, unsubscribe	Yes	Sometimes	Yes	Your provider's servers
A junk filter on your Mac	Apple Mail, SpamSieve	No	Yes	Sometimes	Yes	Your Mac
Block the sender	Gmail, Outlook.com, Apple Mail	Moves it, doesn't stop it	Yes	Yes, one address	Yes, one address	Your provider or your Mac
Unsubscribe	Gmail, Outlook.com, Apple Mail	Yes	Sometimes	Rarely a link	Never	The sender's list
Filters and rules	Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud.com, Apple Mail	Yes	Yes, by domain	Yes, by pattern	Some	Your provider or your Mac
A cleanup service	Clean Email	Yes	Yes	Screener holds them	Not described	The service's servers
An alias for sign-ups	Hide My Email, SimpleLogin, Firefox Relay, Gmail's plus	Turn the alias off	Turn the alias off	Not if they have your real address	Not if they have your real address	The alias service

No single row stops all four kinds. The provider's filter does most of the work, and you add one or two of the others for what it misses.

Stop mail in Alrighty: best for ending a sender's mail in one step

Alrighty is a mail app for Mac, Windows and Linux that puts iCloud, Gmail and Outlook accounts in one inbox. Its answer to unwanted mail is one action, Stop mail, so you don't have to choose between unsubscribe, block and filter.

• Stop mail. One action on a sender unsubscribes you in every way the message offers (one-click, an email to the list, or the list's web page), archives the mail you already have from them, and moves their new mail out as it arrives. When there is no way to unsubscribe, as with most cold outreach, the archive and the move still work.
• Clean up. It lists the senders you probably don't want, such as scams, cold outreach and newsletters you never open, so you can stop them all at once.
• Phishing checks. A message that is sure to be phishing goes to Junk. A likely one stays, with a warning. The check runs on your computer.
• Safe unsubscribing. Alrighty unsubscribes only from senders whose mail passed DMARC and wasn't marked spam, so a scammer never learns your address is live. When the only way out is the list's web page, Alrighty finishes it in a browser on its server, so the sender sees neither your computer nor its address.

Price. A 14-day trial with no card, then a Free plan or Pro.

Where your mail goes. Your mail stays with iCloud, Google or Microsoft, and Alrighty keeps its copy on your computer. Your passwords and tokens stay on your computer. To sort senders for Clean up, Alrighty sends each sender's address, three facts the receiving server found, and up to 3 of their newest emails (2,000 characters each) to its server, which asks an AI model. While you're signed in, Clean up sorts senders in the background.

What it can't do. There's no iPhone or web app, so what you stop on your computer doesn't screen mail on your phone first. It takes iCloud, Gmail and Outlook accounts only, not Yahoo, AOL, Fastmail or other IMAP. It has no calendar. It's a full mail app, so you switch apps to use it, and it's new, with no long track record.

Pick it if you want one action that unsubscribes, clears out and keeps the sender away, instead of three separate steps.

Report it as spam: best for scams and mail from strangers

Reporting a message as spam moves it out and teaches your provider's filter. This filter runs on the provider's servers, so it works in every app and on every device. It is free, and it is already on.

• Gmail. Select the emails and click Report spam. Google says "Emails you report as spam are added to Spam," and Gmail uses your reports to flag similar mail (Google). For a message that asks for personal information, Google says you can "report the email for phishing" (Google).
• Outlook.com and Microsoft 365. Right-click the message and select Mark as junk. You can also send the report to Microsoft, which uses it to improve its filters. Microsoft says "Most junk email will be blocked by the email server that hosts your account" (Microsoft).
• iCloud Mail. On iCloud.com, select the message, click More, and choose Move Message to Junk. On a Mac, click the Junk button. Apple says iCloud Mail blocks most spam before it reaches your inbox, and that mail in Junk is deleted "after 30 days" (Apple).

What it can't do. A filter guesses from the message, so cold outreach from a clean, real domain often gets through. Reporting a newsletter you signed up for is the wrong tool; unsubscribe instead. The filter for one account doesn't learn from another, so with three accounts you report in three places.

Pick it if the mail is a scam, a fake sender or bulk mail you never had anything to do with.

A junk filter on your Mac: best for keeping Apple Mail

A filter on your Mac judges the mail your provider already let in. Apple Mail has one built in. Choose Mail, Settings, click Junk Mail, and check that Enable junk mail filtering is selected (Apple). It can mark junk and leave it in your Inbox, move it to the Junk mailbox, or run custom actions. Each time you mark a message as junk or not junk, Apple says "the junk mail filter improves."

SpamSieve adds a stronger filter to the Mac mail app you already use. It works with "Apple Mail (Mail.app), Outlook, Airmail, MailMate, GyazMail, and more," uses Bayesian filtering that "learns and adapts to your mail," and "does not transmit your mail data anywhere" (C-Command). It costs $39.99 for one license (store), with a 30-day trial. Running on your Mac, it can also keep spam off your iPhone, and it recommends an IMAP or Exchange account for that.

What it can't do. Neither one unsubscribes you. A filter on the Mac only works while the Mac is on and the app is running. Our spam blocker guide compares these filters with SaneBox, Spark, HEY, Canary and others in detail.

Pick it if you want to keep Apple Mail and your provider's filter misses too much.

Block the sender: best for one address that keeps coming back

Blocking sends one address's future mail to Spam or Junk. In Gmail, it's More, then Block in an open message, and Google says "all future emails from them go to Spam" (Google). Outlook.com takes "up to 10,000 addresses or domains" in its blocked and safe senders lists, and deletes Junk after 14 days (Microsoft). Apple Mail blocks up to 3,000 senders. The steps for each are in how to block a sender in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail.

What it can't do. Blocking doesn't unsubscribe you, and the sender never knows. Spam that comes from a new address each time walks around a block. For that, block the domain in Outlook.com, or use a filter.

Pick it if one person or one address keeps writing after you asked them to stop, or never gave you a way to leave.

Unsubscribe: best for real companies you signed up with

Unsubscribing is the only way on this page that stops the mail at the source, and it works only when the sender is a real company that honors it. Gmail's Manage subscriptions, Outlook.com's Subscriptions list and Apple Mail's unsubscribe banner all do it for free. Our unsubscribe app guide compares them with Leave Me Alone, Clean Email and SaneBox, and explains why unsubscribing sometimes doesn't work.

What it can't do. It never helps with a scam, and a scam's unsubscribe link can confirm your address is read. Cold outreach rarely has a link. Google warns that a sender can take a few days to process the request.

Pick it if you recognize the company and once gave it your address. For LinkedIn, Facebook and other big brands, turn their email off in their own settings: see stop emails.

Filters and rules: best for a whole domain or a pattern

A filter or a rule acts on every message that matches, not one address. That makes it the answer for spam that changes its sender address, and for cold mail that shares a phrase.

• Gmail. Click Show search options in the search box, enter what to match, click Create filter, choose an action, and click Create filter again. Filters can "send email to a label, or archive, delete, star, or automatically forward your mail" (Google).
• Outlook.com. Open Settings, Mail, Rules, and select Add new rule. Each rule gets a name, conditions, actions and exceptions. Microsoft says "A new rule is applied only to messages you receive after the rule was created" (Microsoft).
• iCloud Mail. On iCloud.com, open Settings, then Rules, and click Add. Apple says "You can have up to 500 rules," and a new rule can take up to 15 minutes to apply (Apple).
• Apple Mail. Rules in Mail run on your Mac, including custom actions for junk (Apple).

What it can't do. A filter is only as good as its match. Match too wide and real mail disappears; match too narrow and the spam slips past. You also build and maintain each one by hand, in each account.

Pick it if the same company sends from many addresses, or the same kind of pitch keeps arriving from new senders.

A cleanup service: best for many accounts, from your phone

A cleanup service connects to your mailbox from its own servers and works no matter which app you read in. Clean Email "will send unsubscribe requests on your behalf" and can block lists that ignore those requests (Clean Email). Its Auto Clean rules can "move, label, or delete emails" by sender, keywords and subject, and it supports "Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, iCloud, and Outlook," plus "any other email provider using IMAP" (Auto Clean). Its Screener holds messages from new senders "in quarantine for your review" (Screener). It runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac and the web.

Where your mail goes. It indexes your mailbox on its servers, including "sender and recipient details, subjects" (privacy).

What it can't do. Its pages make no phishing claims. Its plans page lists plans for 1, 5 and 10 accounts but showed no amounts when we read it. One more company has access to your mailbox. Our email cleaner guide compares it with other cleanup services.

Pick it if you have Yahoo or another account Mac apps can't add, or you clean up mostly from your phone.

An alias for sign-ups: best for stopping spam before it starts

An alias is a second address that forwards to your real one. Give a different alias to each store or site. When one starts getting spam, you know who leaked it, and you turn that alias off.

• Hide My Email. Apple says "Hide My Email is a service that's included with an iCloud+ subscription." Safari offers it in an email field, and you can deactivate an address in iCloud settings (Apple).
• SimpleLogin. Free with "10 aliases," or Premium at "$36/year." It is "the product of Proton AG" (SimpleLogin).
• Firefox Relay. "Everyone gets 5 email masks for free," and blocking promotional emails is a Premium feature. The page showed a waitlist for Premium and no price when we read it (Mozilla).
• Gmail's plus address. Add a word after your name, such as yourname+shop@gmail.com, then filter on it (Google). It's free, but anyone can remove the plus part, so it sorts mail more than it hides you.

What it can't do. An alias protects only the addresses you give out from now on. It does nothing for the spam already coming to your real address.

Pick it if you sign up for a lot of things and want to cut spam off at the source next time.

How to choose

• iCloud, Gmail or Outlook, one action that unsubscribes and keeps the sender away: Alrighty's Stop mail.
• A scam, a fake sender or bulk mail from a stranger: report it as spam in Gmail, Outlook or iCloud.
• You keep Apple Mail and too much spam gets through: Apple Mail's junk filter, then SpamSieve.
• One address that won't stop: block it.
• A real company you once signed up with: unsubscribe. See the unsubscribe app guide.
• A company that uses many addresses, or a pitch that keeps coming from new senders: a filter or rule.
• Many accounts, cleaned up from your phone: Clean Email.
• Less spam next time you sign up for something: Hide My Email, SimpleLogin or Firefox Relay.

Questions

Why am I suddenly getting so much spam?

Most often your address leaked: a site you used was breached, or your address is on a public page that bots read. A sudden flood of sign-up confirmations from sites you never visited can also be an attack meant to hide one important email, such as a bank alert. Check your bank and shopping accounts, then filter the flood.

Should I open spam to unsubscribe?

No. Apple advises deleting suspected junk without opening it, since opening it can tell spammers your account is active (Apple). Report it as spam instead. Unsubscribe only from companies you recognize.

Can you stop spam emails completely?

No. Senders change addresses, domains and wording to get past filters. What you can do is stop each kind in its own way, so that very little reaches your inbox. Your provider's filter catches most of it, and one or two of the ways above handle the rest.

Does blocking or reporting tell the sender?

No. Both happen in your own mailbox, so the sender's mail is delivered as usual and then moved to Spam or Junk. That is also why blocking doesn't stop them from sending.

Is it safe to reply "stop" to a spam email?

Not to a stranger. A reply confirms your address is real and read. Reply only to a person you know, and report the rest as spam.