How to filter messages from people not in my contacts?

Question

Suppose someone sends me an email. If he is not in my contact list, I want his mail will go in a "Stranger" label.

How to create filter for this this label?

Answer 1

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! :)

Answer 2

When posting your email adress, you could use a different email adress like [email protected] 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 [email protected] (without a code) as stranger (or all emails sent to [email protected]).

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

Answer 3

I couldn’t find an automated way to do this (the way I do it in Outlook/Exchange), so I wrote a Google Apps Script that will keep checking Gmail and create a filter for email sent from addresses that are not in my Contacts. The code and a YouTube video showing how to install and schedule it are at https://github.com/garyholeman/CreateGmailFilters.