I just cleared the spam folder in my Gmail. It told me that all conversations in the folder automatically delete after 30 days.
Can I change a setting to make that happen immediately?
I don’t believe so. I just checked through Gmail’s settings and there’s nothing for spam in there.
However, you actually don’t want to empty out the Spam label so quickly. IIRC, Gmail’s spam filter relies in part on comparing incoming emails to what’s in your account labeled Spam. The more examples of spam Gmail has to work with, the better it can do its job. Since the filter is generally extremely thorough, I’ve really never noticed a problem with having the spam sit there for 30 days. It’s never affected my inbox.
Right now I have 504 messages labeled Spam, and the only reason I know about them is I deliberately checked the label. 99% of the time it’s all but invisible.
You can set a filter.
Go to your Spam folder and if you’re sure everything in there is spam, check all of the boxes then click on “More,” then select “Filter messages like these,” which will take you to the “Filters” section of your settings. It will have all of the addresses from the spam already in your Spam folder, and from there you can add any additional parameters you want, like anything with the words “Penis Enlargement” in the subject or whatever, and the next page you can tell it what to do with any email that matches those parameters, in this case you’d check “Skip Inbox” and “Delete it.”
Keep doing this every time you get a lot of spam and eventually, you’ll get almost none.
That seems like a lot of work, to tell you the truth. I prefer to not open my email account more than once a month, if I can avoid it.
If that’s the case, then why do you want spam to be deleted after 1 day?
So I NEVER have to look at it. Also I’d like to be able to know that when I mark something as spam, it’s GONE, not just hidden.
And I rarely actually get to avoid my email for that long.
Click “create a new filter.” (it’s at the top of the page next to the search buttons). Put is:spam in the “Has the words” field and click on “Next step”, ignore the warning. On the next page, select “Delete it” and create the filter.
Be forewarned that anything mis-labeled as spam will disappear automatically, which is why they recommend against this option.
Removing spam immediately will also degrade your spam-filtering abilities, perhaps significantly.
Thanks, anson2995.
Do you have a source for that info? That’s not how spam filters usually work.
Emails get sent into the spam folder based not only on what you’ve reported, but based on what other people have reported. If a viagra pitch goes to 1000 gmail users and 300 of them click “report as spam” its gonna get sent from your inbox to your spam folder automatically. Conversely, if a newsletter gets sent to the spam filter and a lot of people click “Not Spam”, it gets moved back from spam to inbox. But if that email has already been deleted, it can b be moved back to your inbox.
The problem with deleting everything in the spam filter right away is that anything falsely flagged as spam is irretrievable. Emptying your spam folder immediately will cause you to lose some messages you wanted. It’s a bad idea.
That should say “can’t be”