I have had my Gmail account since the time of the earliest invites, and my email address is splattered all over the web these days. From site registrations to mailing lists, from stupid forward chains I got pulled into to.. well, you get the idea. The result of this is that I get A LOT of Spam in my Gmail account. Now, to Gmail’s credit, the vast majority of it gets deleted or put into my Spam folder automagically. I’m talking ~1000 emails into my Spam/Trash folder within a 24hr period. It’s ridiculous!

Recently I have been getting more and more Spam directly into my Inbox, so much in fact that I have all but abandoned my Gmail account for a new, personally hosted IMAP server. I had decided that, pending a solution to this rampant Spam, I would have to use something else. Well today I think I found that solution.

I was mentioning on Identi.ca that I wish Gmail had a language-based filtering option. Well, it turns out that they do, and that makes filtering foreign-language Spam a breeze!

Here are the steps I took toward creating a Russian-language filter:

1. Click “Create Filter” located at the top of your Inbox
2. In the “Has the words:” field, enter: lang:Russian
3. Select “Delete it” within the Action List, and (if you have existing Russian Spam) select: “Apply Filter to Conversations below”
4. Click “Create Filter”

I have only tested this briefly, but so far it has worked to filter out and clean up existing Russian (lang:Russian) and Chinese (lang:Chinese) Spam. I’m sure other languages work just as well.

I would suggest, before you “Apply Filter to Conversations below”, that you take a look at the matches. If you are on mailing lists, or have correspondence with international developers or community members, it could match their emails as well. Just be careful you don’t accidentally filter out emails you want!

If you have any other tips regarding Gmail Spam filtering please share them in the comments.