How do the blocked from your gmail people know that they're blocked?

I’d hope nothing – that is, I’d expect them to get no feedback about it.

But we could test it out… I’ll run a test now.

Ok. I wonder if it is the same with all of them.

With all of what? All email programs?

It looks to me like “blocking” someone in gmail just causes their mail to you to be automatically placed in your Spam folder. It doesn’t let the sender know you’ve done that. I confirmed this by testing blocking another email of mine from gmail and then emailing myself at gmail. I didn’t get any kind of notice that the email had been filtered to Spam.

Other webmail systems and actual email programs I’ve used (e.g. Eudora, Thunderbird) do the same thing, as usually they assume you wouldn’t want someone to know you’re ignoring their email (because they’re spammers just trying to find out if there is a valid email address, and/or they will them know to try sending from a different non-blocked email address).

If you do want someone to know, then you can set an auto-reply, at least on some systems.

The gmail help confirms this is what it does .

And the steps for configuring gmail with an auto-reply to certain users are apparently:

1. Enable Settings->Labs->Canned Response
2. Create and save a Canned Response
3. Edit the filter and on the second page check the box to have it send a Canned Response back to the sender.

@Zaku Thanks! Good to know. By the way yes I did mean all email programs.

But I want to know what they would see in their eamil address box as soon as they type in or paste in in my email address. I mean if nothing appears, or only my name appears, that means they would know they are blocked, right?

You blocking them only has an effect on your email account. It’s really just a name for a filter that simply files their email under Spam when it arrives. It has zero other effect other than when you look at their name/address in your email, it reminds you they are blocked.

On their end, there is no difference at all. There’s no way there could be, because blocking is really just sorting into a folder, and is just something your email program does on its end without communicating to the other server, and is not a part of the email protocol that email servers use to communicate to each other.

(Now, it is possible for some email servers to lie about an email address, by returning, say, a false “email undeliverable” response to certain senders, but that’s not what they’re usually supposed to do (unless they’re reacting to a blacklisted spam email server or something), and not what gmail does.)

@Zaku Interesting. I would want to know if I were blocked though, just so I would stop trying.

Yeah it’s a bit rude unless warranted. I’d hope one could say “please stop sending me email” or at least “I’m blocking your address” rather than just blocking it.

^If this is rude then on Facebook you won’t be able to search for the person who’s blocked you. You’re the one who annoyed someone so I don’t think it warranties any notification on your part.

@imrainmaker I have a really hard time following what you mean.

* Facebook is a different context from email.
* Blocking someone on Facebook also means something different from blocking on gmail.
* How can you connect rudeness to being unable to do anything, let alone search for someone?
* The wording of your second sentence seems mixed up.
* I gather by the second sentence you mean that if you annoy someone, you shouldn’t feel like they’re obliged to let you know they blocked your messages. But not everyone blocks because of annoyance. And not everyone who annoys someone else realizes they’ve annoyed them. In the case of someone knowingly annoying someone else, that would tend to be covered by where I wrote “unless warranted.”

^ @Zaku – I don’t think I’ll block anyone on gmail / any other mail unless annoyed. It does no harm to me in having one more email from a person if it isn’t annoying. Also the mails are reaching me although in different folder so I think it’s not necessary to let the other person know I’m doing that. I agree my Facebook example may not compare well in this scenario!!

I just think not knowing is not good. Don’t you assume that they got the email?