Users of the ever-popular Google free email platform, Gmail, have been taking to the support forums to complain about a sudden influx of sexually explicit spam messages. Thankfully, many of the complaints (1,2,3) seem to suggest that emails containing pornographic content, up to 50 other 60 a day, according to one user, are filtered as spam and sent straight to the junk folder where they belong. Although this is a testament to Google doing its job to protect users from such content in their Gmail inboxes, some users are concerned that they can still see it when they check the spam folder for email sent there by mistake. There is, however, an easy solution to this dilemma. Here's what you need to know and do.

Let's start by stating that sexually explicit spam isn't a problem that afflicts Gmail users alone. Users of any email platform will likely have been on the receiving end of such disturbing adult content spam at one time or another. However, given that Gmail has some 2.5 billion active users, according to Google, it's no surprise that users will be a target or that those being targeted will look to support forums for help.

The good news, as I have already stated, is that in the vast majority of cases that I have seen reported, the spam filtering tools behind the scenes at Gmail have been working as intended: these explicit messages are being flagged as spam and moved to the spam folder where they will be deleted after 30 days.

This doesn't appear to be enough for some people, however, as they have been asking for ways to stop or block the explicit spam from arriving in the first place. Google does have various technologies in place to do just this, including new authentication rules for senders of bulk email to Gmail addresses, and AI-powered spam filtering. There are even sensitive content warnings coming to users of Google Messages, to show how seriously Google takes unwanted explicit content. But how do Gmail users deal with removing sexually explicit spam from sight, even in the spam folder?

To reiterate, Gmail's spam filters are already catching the sex spam and sending it to your junk folder. After 30 days, it will be deleted. If that's too long to wait or you want it removed from your sight immediately as it arrives then there is one way to accomplish this, but at the risk of catching some genuine email simultaneously. In the case of the most recent complainant in the online Gmail support forums, all of the sexually explicit emails were coming from domains in Russia. They didn't have any genuine email coming from Russia, so the solution here is to add a filtering rule that would redirect all email from a .ru domain to the trash. Because of the danger of missing genuine emails, I would recommend this as a last resort, and even then, I'd suggest deleting the filter after a month or two, as the spam campaign will likely have moved on to a new bunch of Gmail addresses by then. This 1 step solution wouldn't work if the spam was originating from a .com or other address that is more commonly seen in your Gmail inbox, of course, but it's there as an option for dealing with the Russian spam at least.