Why Are Emails Coming From Another Country Even a Problem?

According to a recent survey by Radicati, an average person receives more than 120 emails a day. Unfortunately, not all of these are useful.

Many of these emails are spam, malicious phishing attempts, or irrelevant to users' interests. More than 150 billion spam emails are sent daily. On average, 1 in every 100 emails you receive is a phishing attempt, according to Help Net Security.

A phishing email is an email from a deceptive source pretending to be a reputable organization, tricking recipients into revealing sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers, passwords, or other confidential details. Given the malicious and rampant nature of phishing emails, we must implement measures against these cybercrimes to ensure robust data privacy and security.

One origin of such phishing attempts is emails originating from a completely different part of the world. For instance, if you reside in Canada and suddenly begin receiving emails from Russian or Chinese domains, you probably shouldn't trust these emails. If you find yourself on the receiving end of such emails, there's no need to worry as long as you haven't interacted with them in any way (e.g., replying to them, clicking on any links shared in the message, or downloading/opening any attachments).

Even if these emails are not malicious and are just random spam, the flood of them filling your inbox can be incessant. In fact, spam accounts for more than 50% of the total emails sent. If you are dealing with this specific type of email spam and want to eliminate this unending stream of annoying and deceptive messages, continue reading this article as we guide you on how to tackle this issue using both Gmail and Block Sender.

Why Block Foreign Emails

Are you suddenly the recipient of strange emails coming from domains like ".de", ".ru", or ".cn"? If yes, you are not alone! According to a study conducted by Statista in 2024, countries like the US, China, Germany, and Russia are leading sources of spam emails. US and Chinese domains are used to send around 8 billion and 7.6 billion spam emails daily, respectively.

Typically, these emails contain promotional material such as newsletters you didn't sign up for or fake order receipts from eBay and Amazon. Sometimes, these emails also contain phishing and malware links. In fact, a significant portion of spam emails originating from the US and China include malware links or phishing attempts. Most phishing attempts occur in emails masquerading as government agencies, fake health emergency alerts, crypto, or other investment scams.

Sound familiar? Here's why you should consider blocking these emails.

Free Your Inbox of Unwanted Content: If you're tired of constantly clearing your inbox of spammy newsletters or fake lottery schemes, blocking foreign emails is a proactive step.
Eliminate Irrelevant Content: Frustrated with continually deleting newsletters you never subscribed to? Block them all!
Enhance Security and Privacy: Concerned about credit card fraud? Strengthen the protection of your data by blocking emails from other countries.

To Delete, Unsubscribe, or Block?

But should you block these emails? Why not just hit the delete button and be done with them?

While this is an option, it's not necessarily the most effective one. Deleting emails as they arrive can:

Be Cumbersome
Spammers send emails persistently. Who has time to delete hundreds of spam emails every day?
Make Your Inbox Difficult to Use
Important emails can easily get lost in a cluttered inbox.
Impact Your Productivity and Lead to Unnecessary Stress
And who wants another contributor to daily stress?

Note: When considering unsubscribing, we strongly advise against doing so for these types of emails. A helpful rule of thumb is that if you don't remember subscribing to a newsletter, instead of unsubscribing, consider blocking the sender entirely. Clicking the unsubscribe link may redirect you to a malicious website or inform spammers that your inbox is active and monitored.

Thus, blocking is usually your most effective strategy against these emails. We will show how to do this using both Gmail filters and Block Sender.

Using Gmail Filters to Block Emails from Other Countries

Utilizing Gmail's built-in filtering techniques, one can effectively block emails from different domains and senders.

If your foreign spam consistently originates from the same sender, you can easily block the entire email address. However, if it comes from different senders within the same domain, you will need to block that specific domain to eliminate such emails.

For example, if many of your emails end with the same country domain (e.g., .in) but originate from various senders (e.g., abc.xyz.in or lmn.qrs.in), consider blocking that domain (.in in this case).

Suppose emails are coming from multiple geographical regions with various countries' domains. Then, you may have unfortunately fallen prey to a larger network of international spammers. This occurs because email addresses are frequently sold to spammers, which is why you should limit sharing your email address.

Now let's return to the point. If the source of spam comes from around the world, such as receiving emails ending with Russian domains (.ru), Chinese (.cn), and Indian (.in) domains, make a list of these and block them.

Here is how to block by domain using Gmail filters.

Open Gmail. Go to Settings by clicking the gear (⚙) icon in the upper-right corner, then select See All Settings.
Go to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab and select Create New Filter.
In the From field, enter the domain you wish to block, preceded by *@. For example, if you want to block China's domain, type @*.cn.
You can block multiple domains in the same filter by using the OR operator. For instance, if you want to block both German (.de) and Chinese (.cn) domains, type @*.cn OR @*.de in the From field.

Note: If spam emails consistently come from the same sender, you can enter the entire email address in the From field to permanently remove these emails.

Now, select the action you want Gmail to perform on these emails, such as Delete or Mark as Spam, and click Create Filter to confirm.

The Limitations of Gmail Filters

Gmail filters, while an advanced feature, have specific limitations that are addressed by Block Sender.

No IP-Address-Based Filtering: When attempting to block emails from a specific region, one might consider blocking certain IP addresses. However, Gmail doesn't support IP-based email filtering. You cannot block emails originating from a specific location by specifying that location or IP address in Gmail. Fortunately, this can be accomplished using Block Sender.
Filtering Is Time-Consuming and Challenging: The option to create filters in Gmail lacks robustness. First, the filtering option is not immediately visible and can be accessed by navigating to See All Settings. Furthermore, creating filters is significantly more time-consuming and challenging compared to using Block Sender.
Limited Features: Gmail offers limited features, such as the absence of options for filtering rules to work across multiple accounts and a complicated user interface. Users cannot easily block emails based on criteria like sender, subject, or common phrases.

Using Block Sender to Block Emails From Other Countries

An enhanced option for blocking emails from different countries is using the Block Sender app.

Block Sender for Gmail is a third-party tool that simplifies the process of blocking unwanted emails. It offers advanced features such as blocking IP addresses, sending bounce-back messages, linking multiple accounts, and sharing blocking rules across these accounts.

Block Sender provides enhanced flexibility in creating blocking rules. Users can block by sender, domain, email header, subject, and even IP addresses. Blocking rules can be further customized using wildcards or phrase blocking, which allows for targeting phrases commonly found in spam emails.

Now let's explore how to use Block Sender to prevent spam emails from various countries.

Installing Block Sender and Linking Gmail

Install Block Sender's browser extension by going to Block Sender and linking your Gmail account. Manage your account and blocking rules through its web-based dashboard. Then, link the account(s) for which you want to create blocking rules.

Blocking Emails Based on Domain

Log in to Block Sender. Navigate to Blocks.
Click on + New Blocking Rule to create a new rule.
Select Domain from the dropdown box and enter the domain you want to block.
Choose the actions you wish to perform, like Archive or Delete, and decide whether to bounce back emails.

Blocking Emails Based on IP Addresses

If you wish to block an entire IP address, choose IP Address from the dropdown menu and select your preferred action.

Conclusion

We recommend deleting spam emails originating from other countries due to the potential risks of malware and scams, as well as to keep your inbox free from unwanted junk emails. You can achieve this using both Gmail and Block Sender. However, to save time and effort, we highly recommend utilizing our Block Sender app.

Hamna Fayyaz

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How to Block Email Spam Coming from Different Countries