How to block people on Google+ from emailing you
One of Google's primary goals, besides knowing more about you than your better half, is to integrate the company's Google+ service into its other services.
Since Google+ is not as popular as Facebook, some say it is a ghost town but that has changed a bit over the past year or so, Google attempts to increase its popularity by making it mandatory for many of the company's other products.
Just recently, Google+ commenting was rolled out on YouTube, the world's most popular video hosting platform, and while Google claimed it would improve the commenting culture on the site, it actually made it worse.
Yesterday the company announced that it has started to integrated yet another feature to make Google+ more appealing to users.
The new Gmail integration means that anyone on Google+ can email you even if they do not know your email address. While your email address is not shared with those people directly, it means that anyone who has a connection to you on the site, meaning has you in their circles, can send you an email without knowing your address.
This works only on the Gmail web client for know and not on other clients (e.g. the mobile app). As long as someone on Google+ has you in one of their circles, they can mail you.
If you have enabled the new Gmail inbox category system, then you will notice that messages from primary contacts, people you have in your circles, land in the primary folder on Gmail. Messages from people that you do not have in your circles land in the social category instead.
If an email arrives, you can decided to block future messages, allow future messages, or report spam and abuse.
The issue
This looks great on paper, as it improves the message sending (even though you could just fire off a private message instead).
We have identified two issues with the new system.
- First, it is opt-out, meaning that it is enabled by default.
- Second, since anyone can email you, you may see an increase in spam or other unsolicited emails.
The fix
You can disable the feature on Gmail. To do so, open the settings on the Gmail website. Here you find the new Email via Google+ option which defines which people can email you via your Google+ profile.
The default is set to anyone, which you can change to extended circles (meaning your connections and their connections), your circles, or no one.
If you set the preference to no one, you effectively eliminate the possibility that someone on Google+ uses the new feature to send you an email.
They may be able to contact you in other ways though on the site itself, for instance via the site's own "send a message" feature that you find on profile pages.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!