Stop an email bomb in minutes

If your inbox has filled with hundreds of newsletter signups, welcome emails, and "confirm your subscription" messages in the space of an hour, you're being email bombed. Someone signed your address up to thousands of lists at once, and it isn't random.

The Spam Blocker can mute the whole flood in one action, keep muting it as new lists arrive, and leave the real emails standing. Nothing is deleted and nothing gets unsubscribed by accident.

Stop the flood

What the bomb is hiding

An email bomb is a smokescreen. Somewhere in that pile is an email the attacker doesn't want you to read. Usually it's an order confirmation from a shop where they've used your card, or a password reset or new sign-in alert for an account they've just taken over. The flood is there so you'll delete everything without looking.

That's why the first thing to do isn't cleaning up. It's checking. Search your inbox for emails from your bank, Amazon, PayPal, Apple, and any other account with a card attached, and look for anything you didn't do. Change the password on anything that looks wrong, then come back for the flood. We've written more on what an email bomb is and what to do when someone signs you up for spam.

Unsubscribing doesn't work at this scale. There can be thousands of lists, most are legitimate newsletters that were abused rather than spammers, and some will keep sending for days. Your provider's spam filter won't catch them either, because a welcome email from a real company doesn't look like spam.

How to stop it with Leave Me Alone

The Spam Blocker has a mailing list blocker built for exactly this. Instead of unsubscribing from every list one at a time, it blocks mailing list emails as a category, so the flood is muted while your real mail keeps arriving. It takes about a minute.

1. Connect the account being bombed to Leave Me Alone. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and most other providers work.
2. Turn on the Spam Blocker and the mailing list blocker. Every newsletter, welcome email, and confirmation request is moved to a blocked folder as it arrives, including from lists you haven't been added to yet.
3. Rescue the lists you actually want once the flood dies down. Rescue an email and we'll trust that sender from then on, so your real newsletters come back without the noise.

Blocked email goes to a folder we own, not your provider's Spam folder. Nothing is deleted, nothing is reported, and the emails are all there if you need to go back through them looking for the one that matters.

Bombs usually taper off over a few days as the lists give up on you. The blocker keeps running the whole time, so you don't have to keep checking.

Mute the flood now

What about the thousands already in your inbox?

The Spam Blocker handles new mail from the moment you turn it on. For what's already landed, run the Unsubscriber. It groups everything in your inbox by sender, so you can see the bomb as a list of a few thousand senders rather than a wall of emails, and unsubscribe or block them in bulk.

Before you clear anything, do the check from the top of this page. Search for order confirmations, password resets, and sign-in alerts first. Once you're happy nothing's hiding in there, clear the rest.

Unsubscribing by hand vs the Spam Blocker

Here's how the usual advice stacks up against muting the flood as a category.

	Unsubscribe or mark as spam	Spam Blocker
Time to deal with 2,000 lists	Days	One action
New lists that arrive tomorrow	Start again	Blocked automatically
Your real newsletters	Easy to lose in the pile	Rescued in one click, kept from then on
Reports legitimate senders as spam	Yes, hurting real companies	Never
Order and security emails	Easy to delete by mistake	Left in your inbox

FAQ

What is an email bomb?

Someone runs a script that signs your address up to thousands of newsletters and websites at once, so you get flooded with confirmation and welcome emails. It's also called subscription bombing or list bombing. The point is to bury a specific email, usually a receipt or a security alert, so you don't notice it. Here's the long version.

What should I check first?

Search your inbox for emails from your bank, card provider, Amazon, PayPal, Apple, Google, and anywhere else you have a card saved. Look for order confirmations, password resets, new device sign-ins, or changed email addresses that you didn't do. Change those passwords and contact the company before you touch the flood.

Should I unsubscribe from all of them?

Not by hand. There are too many, most of them are real newsletters that were abused rather than spammers, and you'll be there for days. Block them as a category instead, then rescue the handful you actually want.

Does it delete anything?

No. Everything the Spam Blocker catches goes to a blocked folder in your account, and stays there until you decide what to do with it. That matters here, because you may need to go back through the pile to find the email the bomb was hiding.

Will it block my real newsletters too?

During a bomb it'll treat mailing list email as a category, so yes, at first. Rescue the ones you want from the blocked list and we'll trust those senders from then on. It's far quicker than picking the good ones out of thousands.

Does it report the senders as spam?

No. Most of the lists in a bomb are legitimate companies whose signup forms were abused. Marking them all as spam in your mail provider punishes them and doesn't stop the flood. We move the emails aside without reporting anyone.

How long does an email bomb last?

The heaviest part is usually the first day or two, then it tapers off over a week or so as lists stop sending to an address that never confirmed. The Spam Blocker keeps running the whole time, so the tail end never reaches you.

How much does it cost?

The Spam Blocker is part of the Leave Me Alone Hero plan.