mystery unkillable email

Question

My trash file and sometimes my regular email file is being invaded with mystery emails with very odd topic lines.  My attempts to create rules to block and delete them have been frustrated. I have numerous emails with "XOXO" in red followed by "!Welcome You".  I tried to create a blocking rule and got a pop=up saying: 'Filter searches containing "label:", "in:", "is:", date range (e.g. "before:" or "after:") or stars criteria (e.g. "has:yellow-star") are not recommended as they will never match incoming mail. Do you still wish to continue to the next step?' I tried the same thing with "( 83 ) 923917"  - one of the many odd "Insta-gram" emails with mystery numbers in parentheses in the topic line.  I got the same warning message. For reasons I don't understand it would not allow me to create a screenshot with the filter searches warning pop-up. Should I try the blocking despite your warning? Can you suggest methods of blocking this plague of junk on a continuing basis?

Answer 1

Can you suggest methods of blocking this plague of junk on a continuing basis?

I would select some of the representative emails one by one a highlight them and click spam. Do this every time a new one comes in.

Filter searches containing "label:", "in:", "is:", date range (e.g. "before:" or "after:") or stars criteria (e.g. "has:yellow-star") are not recommended as they will never match incoming mail.

If you are getting this message it is possible that in trying to craft a filer you are trying to create would never work. It also appears that it ignores parentheses in searches.