How to block a sender in Gmail

What does blocking a sender in Gmail actually mean?

Blocking a sender in Gmail is the one-click way to say I never want this person's mail in my inbox again. You open an email from them, choose Block, and from that moment every future message they send is automatically routed to your Spam folder instead of landing in front of you. You stop seeing their mail, you stop getting notifications about it, and you do not have to do anything by hand each time — Gmail handles it on every future message the instant it arrives.

It is worth being precise about what blocking does and does not do, because the word block implies something stronger than what actually happens. Blocking does not bounce the message back, it does not stop the sender from sending, and it does not delete their mail outright. What it does is reclassify everything from that address as spam. The mail still arrives at your account; it just arrives quietly, in the Spam folder, where it sits for thirty days and is then deleted automatically. So block is best understood as a permanent, sender-specific spam rule rather than a wall that turns the sender away.

Most people reach for block when an address has crossed a line — a relentless marketer that ignores the unsubscribe link, a spammer, an ex, a recruiter who will not take a hint, or any sender whose mail you have decided is simply never worth seeing. It is the bluntest of Gmail's tools for an unwanted sender, and bluntness is the point: one action, applied forever, no per-message decisions. For a single persistent address, nothing is faster.

The trouble is that block is often confused with three neighboring tools that look similar but solve different problems. Reporting spam trains Gmail's filters and is aimed at junk you did not ask for. Unsubscribing removes you from a legitimate mailing list at the source so the sender stops mailing you at all. A filter is a custom rule that can act on senders, subjects, keywords, or whole domains, with a wider menu of actions than block offers. Choosing the wrong one is the single most common reason people end up frustrated — blocking a newsletter they could have simply unsubscribed from, or trying to block a domain that block cannot touch. We sort out exactly which tool fits which situation below.

This guide covers the whole picture. You will learn the fastest way to block a sender on the desktop, exactly what happens to their mail afterward, how to block an entire domain using a filter workaround (because Gmail has no native domain block), how to unblock people and manage your full blocked list, when to report spam or phishing instead of blocking, how blocking works on Android and iPhone, and a clear comparison of block versus filter versus unsubscribe. We finish with a troubleshooting section for the maddening case where mail keeps arriving even after you blocked the sender, and an honest look at where Gmail's per-account, literal blocking stops being enough.

One framing to carry through all of it: Gmail's block is account-bound and address-bound. It lives inside one Gmail account, and it acts on one exact email address at a time. That scope explains almost every limitation you will run into — why it cannot block a domain, why a spammer who rotates addresses slips past it, and why blocking in your personal Gmail does nothing for the same sender hitting your work account. Knowing the scope up front means the rest of this guide will make sense instead of surprising you.

How do you block a sender in Gmail step by step?

The fastest way to block someone is straight from one of their emails. You do not go into Settings first; you start from the message itself, and Gmail pre-fills the sender for you. This works on a computer at mail.google.com, and it is the route almost everyone should use because it is two clicks and impossible to get wrong — the address you block is the address of the email you are looking at.

Here is the full sequence, from an open message to a blocked sender.

1. 1

   Open Gmail on the web

   Go to mail.google.com in a desktop browser and sign in to the account the unwanted mail is arriving in. Blocking is per-account, so if you manage more than one address, make sure you are in the right inbox.

2. 2

   Open an email from the sender you want to block

   Find any message from the address you want gone and open it. It does not matter which message — a single one is enough. The sender of the email you open is the address that gets blocked.

3. 3

   Click the three-dot More menu

   At the top right of the open message, next to Reply, is a vertical three-dot icon (More). Click it to open the message's action menu. This is a per-message menu, not the inbox-wide one.

4. 4

   Choose Block "sender"

   In the menu, click Block followed by the sender's name or address — for example Block "Acme Marketing". Gmail shows a short confirmation explaining that future mail from this sender will go to Spam.

5. 5

   Confirm the block

   Click Block in the confirmation box. The sender is added to your blocked list immediately, and every future message from that exact address is sent to Spam from now on.

That is the whole process. The reason the message-first route is the right default is that it removes any chance of typing the wrong address: you are blocking the sender of the email in front of you, formatted correctly, with no manual entry. Compare that to building a filter by hand, where a single mistyped character means you block nothing and never notice.

A few details are worth knowing. Blocking acts on the exact From address, not the display name. If a sender emails you from news@acme.com today and offers@acme.com tomorrow, blocking the first does nothing to the second — they are different addresses even though the name on them is identical. This is why block struggles against spammers who rotate addresses, and why the domain workaround later in this guide exists. Blocking also does not move the messages already sitting in your inbox; it only governs future mail. If you want the old messages gone too, delete them yourself or sweep them with a search after you block.

There is no separate Settings path for blocking a brand-new sender — Gmail intentionally routes all blocking through an actual message, because the address has to come from somewhere. The Settings screen, which we cover below, is for viewing and unblocking addresses you have already blocked, not for adding new ones from scratch. If you ever go hunting in Settings for an add a blocked address button, that is why you cannot find one.

What actually happens after you block someone in Gmail?

Blocking changes one specific thing: where the sender's future mail lands. Instead of arriving in your inbox, every new message from that address is automatically marked as spam and dropped into your Spam folder. You are not notified when it arrives, it does not add to your unread count, and you will not see it unless you deliberately open Spam. For most people that is exactly the desired outcome — the mail effectively disappears from daily life without you lifting a finger again.

The mail in Spam does not stay forever. Gmail automatically deletes anything in the Spam folder after thirty days, so blocked mail accumulates briefly and then clears itself out. You never have to empty it manually, though you can if you want it gone sooner. This thirty-day window matters in one situation: if you blocked someone by mistake and need a message they sent, you have a month to find it in Spam before it is deleted for good.

Here is what blocking pointedly does not do, and where most misunderstandings live. It does not notify the sender. There is no alert, no bounce, no read-receipt-style signal — from their side, the email sends normally and looks delivered. They have no way to tell they have been blocked simply from sending you mail. It also does not stop them from sending; you have not severed the channel, only redirected where their mail lands on your end. And it is one-directional: blocking someone does not prevent you from emailing them, but if you do email a blocked sender, their reply will land in your Spam folder rather than your inbox, which can be a confusing surprise if you forgot you blocked them.

Blocking is also retroactive in a limited way and forward-looking in the main way. The messages already in your inbox from that sender stay put — block does not reach back and sweep them into Spam. Only mail that arrives after you block is redirected. So a thorough cleanup is usually two steps: block the sender to handle the future, then search your inbox for their address and delete or archive the backlog they have already left behind.

Finally, blocking interacts with Gmail's broader spam learning. Once you block a sender, Gmail treats their mail as spam even if you later fish a message out of the Spam folder and mark it as not spam — the block keeps reasserting itself. That is usually what you want, but it is also why occasionally unblocking, rather than repeatedly rescuing messages, is the correct fix when you change your mind about a sender. Marking not spam fights the block; unblocking removes it.

How do you block an entire domain in Gmail?

This is where Gmail's block button hits its ceiling. Block works on one address at a time, and there is no native option to block a whole domain — no Block everyone from acme.com button anywhere in Gmail. If a sender peppers you from constantly changing addresses on the same domain, blocking each one individually is a losing game. The workaround, and it is a solid one, is to build a filter that catches the entire domain and deletes its mail automatically.

A filter is Gmail's general-purpose rule engine. Unlike block, a filter can match a whole domain with the pattern *@example.com, and it can take a wider set of actions — including Delete it, which sends matching mail straight to Trash, or Skip the Inbox, which quietly archives it. Setting one up takes a minute and then runs forever. Here is how to block a domain this way.

1. 1

   Open Settings, Filters and Blocked Addresses

   On a computer, click the gear icon at the top right, choose See all settings, and open the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. This is also where your individually blocked senders are listed.

2. 2

   Click Create a new filter

   At the bottom of the filters section, click Create a new filter. A panel opens with fields for From, To, Subject, Has the words, and more.

3. 3

   Enter the domain in the From field

   In the From field, type the domain with a wildcard: *@example.com (replace example.com with the real domain). This matches every address ending in that domain, no matter who sends it.

4. 4

   Click Create filter and choose an action

   Click Create filter at the bottom of the panel. On the actions screen, tick Delete it to send all mail from that domain straight to Trash, or tick Skip the Inbox and Mark as read if you prefer to archive rather than trash it.

5. 5

   Apply to existing mail if you want, then save

   Optionally tick Also apply filter to matching conversations to clear out the backlog from that domain now. Click Create filter to save. From this point, all mail from the domain is handled automatically.

A filter is more powerful than block in three ways that matter for domains. First, it matches a pattern (*@example.com) rather than a single literal address, so it catches new sub-addresses on that domain the moment they appear — exactly the rotating-sender problem block cannot solve. Second, you choose the action: Delete it removes the mail entirely (Trash, then gone after thirty days), which is more decisive than block's send-to-Spam behavior. Third, a filter can combine conditions, so you can block a domain except for one address you still want, by adding -from:keep@example.com to the criteria.

Decide between Delete it and Skip the Inbox deliberately. Delete it is the closest thing to a hard domain block — matching mail goes straight to Trash and you never see it. Skip the Inbox is gentler: the mail is archived into All Mail, out of your inbox but still searchable if you ever need it. For genuine junk, Delete it is fine. For a domain you are mostly done with but not certain about — say a former vendor — Skip the Inbox plus a label is the safer choice, because nothing is destroyed.

One honest caveat: a domain filter that deletes is a blunt instrument, and it acts silently and permanently on every future match. If you get the domain wrong, or a domain you blocked later sends something you needed, the mail is gone with no notification. The safe pattern is the same one that applies to any destructive filter — run the criteria as a search first to see exactly what it would catch, and consider starting with Skip the Inbox for a week before switching to Delete it once you trust the match. We cover the full mechanics of filters in our companion guide on Gmail filters; here, the point is simply that the domain block you cannot do with the block button, you can do with a filter.

How do you unblock a sender and manage your blocked list?

Blocking is fully reversible, and Gmail keeps every address you have ever blocked in one place so you can review or undo them. The blocked list lives in Settings on the web, in the same Filters and Blocked Addresses tab as your filters. There are two ways to unblock someone: from that settings list, which is best when you want to see everyone you have blocked, or from one of the sender's messages, which is quicker when you have a specific email in front of you.

Here is how to unblock from Settings, which doubles as the place to audit your whole blocked list.

1. 1

   Open Filters and Blocked Addresses

   On a computer, click the gear icon, choose See all settings, and open the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab. Scroll to the blocked addresses section, which lists every sender you have blocked.

2. 2

   Find the sender you want to unblock

   Browse the list for the address. If the list is long, this view is the only complete record of who you have blocked, so it is also worth a periodic review to clear out blocks you no longer need.

3. 3

   Click Unblock next to the address

   Click the Unblock link beside the sender, then confirm. From that moment, future mail from that address arrives in your inbox normally again instead of going to Spam.

4. 4

   Unblock several at once if needed

   To clear multiple blocks, tick the checkbox beside each address and use the Unblock selected addresses button at the top of the list. This is the fast way to undo a batch of blocks.

The second route is faster for a one-off. If you have an email from the blocked sender open — most likely sitting in your Spam folder — click the three-dot More menu at the top of the message and choose Unblock followed by the sender's name. It is the mirror image of blocking: the same menu, the opposite action. This is handy when you realize a wanted sender has been going to Spam and you want them back in the inbox immediately without hunting through Settings.

Two things about unblocking trip people up. First, unblocking a sender does not retrieve their old mail from Spam — it only restores future delivery to your inbox. Anything already routed to Spam stays there (and is deleted after thirty days unless you move it out). If you need a specific message a blocked sender already sent, find it in Spam and mark it not spam before that window closes; unblocking alone will not surface it. Second, if a sender was never blocked with the block button but is instead being caught by a filter you made, the unblock list will not contain them — you have to remove or edit the filter instead. That distinction is the source of a lot of why can't I unblock this sender confusion, and it comes back to which tool blocked them in the first place.

It is genuinely worth opening the blocked list every few months and reading down it. Blocks are easy to add in a moment of irritation and easy to forget, and an old block can quietly send mail you now want straight to Spam — a recruiter you blocked who is now relevant, a store you have warmed back up to, a person you have reconciled with. The list is the only place this history is visible, so treating it as something to maintain rather than set-and-forget keeps it from working against you.

Should you report spam or phishing instead of blocking?

Block, Report spam, and Report phishing sit right next to each other in Gmail and look almost interchangeable, but they do different jobs and the difference is worth understanding. Block is personal and surgical: it affects only your account and only the one address you blocked, sending its future mail to your Spam folder. Reporting, by contrast, is a signal to Google. When you report spam or phishing, you are telling Gmail's filters that this kind of mail is unwanted, which helps Google catch similar messages — for you and, in aggregate, for everyone.

Report spam is the right tool for unsolicited junk — the marketing you never signed up for, the bulk mail that slipped past the filter. When you click Report spam, the message moves to your Spam folder and Gmail learns from it, making it more likely to catch similar mail from that sender and others in the future. Reporting spam often has a blocking-like effect as a side benefit, because once Gmail decides a sender is spammy it tends to keep routing them to Spam. For everyday junk, Report spam is frequently the better first move than block, since it both removes the message and improves the filter.

Report phishing is the one to reach for when a message is not just unwanted but dangerous — anything trying to trick you into handing over a password, a card number, login credentials, or money, often by impersonating a bank, a colleague, or a service you use. Reporting phishing does everything reporting spam does and more: it flags the message to Google's security systems specifically, which helps protect other users from a live scam. The rule of thumb is simple — if a message is merely annoying, report it as spam; if it is trying to defraud you or anyone, report it as phishing. Do not block a phishing email and move on, because blocking only protects your one inbox and tells Google nothing about the scam.

So how do these stack up against block in practice? Block is best for a known, persistent, legitimate-but-unwanted sender — a real company or person whose mail you simply never want, where there is no fraud involved and unsubscribing has not worked. Report spam is best for junk you did not ask for and want Gmail to learn from. Report phishing is best for anything malicious. The three are not mutually exclusive: it is perfectly reasonable to report a phishing email and then block the sender too, or to report spam and let Gmail's filter do the rest. But reaching for the right primary tool means your action actually does what you intended.

The most important pairing to internalize is phishing versus block. Blocking a scammer feels decisive, but it is the weaker response, because phishers send from throwaway addresses they discard after a single campaign — blocking one does nothing about the next. Reporting the message as phishing feeds Google's security systems the pattern, which is the response that actually scales. So for anything that looks like a scam, report phishing first; block second, if at all. For mere annoyance, the calculus flips, and a personal block or a Report spam is exactly right.

How do you block a sender in Gmail on Android and iPhone?

Blocking an individual sender works in the Gmail mobile app on both Android and iPhone, and the steps are nearly identical to the desktop. You start from one of the sender's messages, open the same three-dot menu, and choose Block. The result is the same too — their future mail goes to Spam on every device, because the block lives on Google's servers, not on the phone. Here is the flow on mobile.

1. 1

   Open the Gmail app and the sender's email

   Launch the Gmail app on your Android phone or iPhone, make sure you are in the right account, and open any message from the sender you want to block.

2. 2

   Tap the three-dot menu on the message

   At the top right of the open message, next to the sender's name or the reply arrow, tap the three-dot (More) icon to open the message's action menu.

3. 3

   Tap Block "sender"

   In the menu, tap Block followed by the sender's name. Confirm if prompted. The sender is added to your blocked list and their future mail goes to Spam, just as on desktop.

Where mobile falls short is managing the blocked list and blocking domains. The Gmail app has no Filters and Blocked Addresses screen — there is no way inside the app to view everyone you have blocked, unblock from a settings list, or create the domain filter described earlier. You can block an individual sender from a message, and you can unblock one by opening a message from them (usually in Spam) and tapping Unblock in the same menu, but the full list and all filter management are desktop-only.

If you need to do any of that from a phone and have no computer handy, the workaround is to open mail.google.com in your phone's browser and request the desktop site from the browser menu. Gmail's full settings, including Filters and Blocked Addresses, then become reachable. Be warned that the layout is built for a wide screen, so the controls are cramped and fiddly on a phone — it works in a pinch, but most people prefer to wait until they are back at a real keyboard. For the common case of blocking or unblocking one sender, though, the app handles it natively and you never need the desktop site at all.

This split — individual blocking everywhere, list and domain management on desktop only — is a recurring theme with Gmail's older settings features. Blocking itself made the jump to mobile; the management surface around it did not. For most people the limitation rarely bites, because you set a block once from a message and never need to revisit it. But if you find yourself wanting to audit or restructure your blocking from your phone, plain Gmail will make you reach for a laptop.

Block vs filter vs unsubscribe: which should you use?

Block is rarely the only right answer, and choosing it by reflex is how people end up blocking newsletters they could have unsubscribed from in one click, or trying to block a category of mail that block was never built to handle. The three tools — block, filter, and unsubscribe — overlap just enough to be confused and differ just enough to matter. Here is how they compare across the things that actually decide which to use.

The clearest way to choose is to ask one question: is this a legitimate sender you once said yes to, or not? If it is a real newsletter, store, or service you signed up for — even accidentally — unsubscribe is almost always the right move. It is cleaner than block because it stops the mail at the source instead of quietly diverting it to a Spam folder you then have to ignore. A blocked newsletter keeps arriving (into Spam) and keeps consuming a little of Gmail's storage for thirty days at a time; an unsubscribed one simply stops. For mail you legitimately opted into, unsubscribe beats block almost every time.

Block earns its place when unsubscribe is not available or not honored. A spammer offers no working unsubscribe link. A relentless marketer ignores the one they do offer. An individual — an ex, a difficult contact, a recruiter who will not stop — has no list to leave. In those cases there is nothing to unsubscribe from, and block is the correct tool: one address, sent to Spam, done. The key is that block is for an address, not a category. If you find yourself wanting to block all marketing email or everything from this whole company, that is a filter's job, not block's.

Filters are the answer whenever the target is broader or the action needs to be smarter than block allows. A filter can catch an entire domain, match by subject or keyword, route mail to a label, archive it, delete it, or guarantee it never goes to spam — none of which block can do. The cost is that filters are desktop-only to create and match literal text rather than meaning. But for anything beyond a single unwanted address, the filter is the more capable tool, and the domain block earlier in this guide is really just a filter wearing a block's clothes.

In practice, a healthy inbox uses all three: unsubscribe to shed the legitimate lists you have outgrown, block to shut down the handful of persistent individual addresses that have no list to leave, and filters to handle whole domains and categories with precision. Reaching for the right one each time is what keeps the inbox calm without losing mail you actually wanted. The failure mode is using one tool for every job — blocking what you should unsubscribe from, or unsubscribing from senders who never gave you a real way out.

Why are you still getting email after blocking the sender?

It is genuinely common to block someone and keep seeing their mail, and it almost always comes down to one of a handful of predictable causes rather than a Gmail failure. Blocking is literal and address-specific, so when it seems not to work, the usual reason is that the mail arriving is not actually coming from the exact address you blocked. Here are the culprits, from most common to least, and how to fix each.

• They are emailing from a different address. Block stops one exact address. A sender who mails from news@acme.com and offers@acme.com needs both blocked, or a domain filter (*@acme.com) to catch them all. Check the real From address in the message header — it often differs from the display name.
• It is a different sender on the same topic. Marketing and spam frequently come from many addresses across many domains. Blocking one does nothing about the others. For a whole category, a filter matching a keyword or list is more effective than blocking addresses one by one.
• You blocked the display name, not the address — but block only follows the address. If a spammer keeps the same name while rotating addresses, every block you add catches nothing new. This is the single most common why is blocking not working case, and a domain filter is the fix.
• Old mail is still in your inbox. Block does not remove messages that arrived before you blocked the sender. If their old emails are still there, that is expected — search their address and delete the backlog manually; only future mail is redirected.
• You emailed them, so their reply skipped Spam logic in your head. Blocking is one-directional. If you email a blocked sender, their reply still goes to your Spam folder, not your inbox — so if you are checking the inbox and not finding it, it may be sitting in Spam exactly as designed.
• It is phishing from throwaway addresses. Scammers discard addresses after each campaign, so blocking one is meaningless against the next. Report phishing instead — that signals Google's filters in a way blocking a dead address never will.
• The block did not save. Occasionally the confirmation is dismissed before the block registers. Open Settings, Filters and Blocked Addresses, and confirm the address is actually in your blocked list. If it is not, block it again from a message.

If you work through that list and mail still arrives, the fastest diagnostic is to read the actual From address on the offending message rather than the display name — open the message, and on desktop click the small triangle or the details arrow under the sender name to see the real address. Nine times out of ten, the address you see there is not the one in your blocked list, which immediately explains why block is not catching it: the mail is coming from somewhere block was never pointed at. The fix is then either to block that specific new address too, or, if the addresses keep changing within one domain, to stop playing whack-a-mole and build the *@domain.com filter that catches all of them at once.

There is a deeper reason this keeps happening, and it is the same reason a different approach can help. Gmail's block matches a literal, exact address — it has no notion that fifteen different addresses on the same domain, or twenty addresses sending the identical pushy pitch, are all the same unwanted thing. So you end up adding block after block, or filter after filter, chasing each new address or phrasing as it appears, and the unwanted mail keeps finding a new way in until you notice and patch the next hole. The work never quite finishes, because a literal address match cannot recognize a sender it has not been explicitly told about. That maintenance treadmill is precisely the gap a smarter, meaning-aware approach is built to close.

How does AI Emaily handle unwanted senders across every account?

Gmail's block button is a fine tool for a single persistent address, and everything above is worth knowing. But it shows its age in three places, and those gaps are exactly what AI Emaily is built to close. AI Emaily is an AI-native email client that works across every account you connect — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, any IMAP mailbox — so your protection from unwanted mail applies everywhere at once, instead of being trapped inside one provider's settings page. If a spammer hits both your personal Gmail and your work address on another provider, you stop blocking the same sender twice in two incompatible places.

The first gap is that Gmail's block is literal and address-bound. It matches one exact address and has no idea that a dozen addresses on the same domain, or twenty different addresses sending the same pushy pitch, are all the same unwanted thing. AI Emaily layers AI spam and phishing protection on top of your accounts that recognizes the pattern, not just the string — it catches the variations a per-address block lets through, and flags phishing attempts by what they are trying to do rather than waiting for you to have seen that exact address before. You stop playing whack-a-mole with addresses.

The second gap is that Gmail gives you a Spam folder and a blocked list, but no real say in what reaches you the first time. AI Emaily adds an AI Screener — a gate for first-time senders, so mail from someone you have never corresponded with waits for your nod before it ever reaches your inbox. Combined with simple allow and block lists you control, it means unwanted senders are handled before they land, not cleaned up after. The screener is the proactive version of blocking: instead of reacting to mail you did not want, you decide who gets through up front.

The third gap is fragmentation. Gmail's blocking lives in Gmail; it does nothing for your other mailboxes, and managing the blocked list is desktop-only. AI Emaily's allow and block lists, screener, and AI protection span every connected account and work from any device, so there is no this has to be done on a computer and no maintaining separate defenses per inbox. One place, every account, every device.

• AI spam and phishing protection that recognizes patterns and intent — catching the address variants and scams a literal per-address block misses.
• An AI Screener that holds mail from first-time senders for your approval, so unknown senders are vetted before they ever reach the inbox.
• Allow and block lists you control, applied across every account you connect — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, any IMAP — not just one provider.
• Manage all of it from any device, including your phone, instead of being locked to the desktop web for list and domain management.

AI Emaily has a free plan at $0 to start protecting your inbox across the accounts you connect, and a Pro plan at $17.99 per month billed annually for the full AI spam and phishing protection and screener. If Gmail's block has taken you as far as a single provider's settings page can — and you are tired of chasing rotating addresses, managing blocks one inbox at a time, and reacting to mail after it has already arrived — it is a natural next step. You can create an account at app.aiemaily.com/signup.

Putting your Gmail blocking to work

Blocking a sender in Gmail is two clicks from any of their emails: open the message, click the three-dot More menu, and choose Block. From there, their future mail goes quietly to Spam and is deleted after thirty days, they are never told, and you can undo it anytime from Settings, Filters and Blocked Addresses. For a single persistent address, nothing is faster, and now you know exactly what it does and does not do — it redirects the future, it does not bounce mail, and it follows the exact address rather than the sender.

The bigger skill is choosing the right tool. Unsubscribe from the legitimate lists you have outgrown rather than blocking them into Spam. Block the handful of individual addresses that have no list to leave and no working unsubscribe. Reach for a *@domain.com filter when a sender rotates addresses on one domain or when you want to shut down a whole company at once. And report phishing — never just block it — for anything trying to steal a password, money, or data, because that protects more than your single inbox.

Keep two facts in mind and most blocking confusion disappears: block acts on the exact address, so mail that keeps arriving is almost always coming from a different one; and the full blocked list plus domain filters live on the desktop web, even though individual blocking works on your phone. Check the real From address when something slips through, audit your blocked list every few months so an old block does not bury mail you now want, and clean up the backlog by hand since block only governs the future.

And when literal, single-address, single-account blocking stops being enough — when you want protection that recognizes a spammer across every address they use, a screener that vets unknown senders before they land, and one set of defenses that covers every account from any device — that is the line where Gmail's block ends and AI Emaily begins. Set your blocks up well today; you will know when you have outgrown them.