Stopping Google Drive Spam – The Most Effective Actions to Take

Google Drive is one of the world’s largest storage platforms. Millions of users store their files for personal, school, and business purposes. You can keep up to 15 GB for free and share files easily by just entering the email address of the recipient.

While it’s a convenient storage platform and sharing files is effortless, it allures spam to invade your Google Drive account with unwanted files. Anyone with your email can send spam files that may contain offensive or adult content, or even worse, malware.

Unfortunately, Google Drive hasn’t caught up with this problem as well as Gmail, but you can take actions to stop spam on Google Drive. If you’ve found yourself asking how to stop Google Drive spam, this article will guide you through the process of putting an end to it. Read on to see only what you want to have in your Google Drive account.

Block Spam Senders on Google Drive

The easiest way to stop spam on Google Drive is to block the user(s) that send unwanted files. It’s a simple action that only requires a few clicks yet very effective. Once you block an email address on Google Drive, you will no longer receive spam from the same users.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on blocking spam senders on Google Drive.

• Sign in to your Google Drive account.
• Go to the Shared With Me folder.
• Right click the spam file and hover your mouse over Report or Block.
• Click Block, followed by the email address of the spam sender.

Alternatively, you can click Report and select Spam or Fraud to flag it. This will report the sender to Google, which will inspect the files to ensure the spam files you received aren’t sent to other users.

If you suspect someone is playing a prank on you or the spam is coming from someone you know, enter the email address on a people search site like Information.com. This will help you find out who the email address you’ve just blocked belongs to in a few minutes.

Unblocking Users on Google Drive

The block feature on Google Drive is a lifesaver when it comes to stopping spam. But you may want to unblock users if you mistake genuine files for spam. In these cases, you will want to remove them from your blocked list so you can see the files shared with you.

To unblock users on Google Drive, follow these steps:

1. Go to your account from the top right corner.
2. Click Manage Your Google Account.
3. From the menu on the left, select People & Sharing.
4. Under Contacts, click Blocked and remove the user from the list.

Doing this will unblock the user but won’t remove their files from your spam folder. To remove their files from spam, head over to your Google Drive account and open the spam folder from the left-hand side menu. Choose the files you want out and select not spam.

In this folder, you can also permanently delete spam from your Google Drive account.

Protect Your Google Drive Account From Spam

Taking these actions will stop Google Drive spam– or at least reduce it. But when your Google Drive account is getting bombarded with spam, you will need to do more than block users. Since anyone that has your email address can share a file with you through Google Drive, it’s important to protect it from spam senders.

If you’ve listed your email address on public webpages, like social media, remove them to prevent spam senders from collecting your information. A simple Google search can reveal the public web pages that contain your email address.

Surround your email address with quotation marks (“your-email-address@domainname”) and click search. You can then remove them from your social media profiles or contact site owners and request your information to be removed. This will protect your email address from phishing scams and ensure no unwanted files are shared with you on Google Drive.

Always Report Spam to Google

Now you know how to stop Google Drive spam, but protecting yourself from more in the future is a collective effort. While everything we’ve discussed in this article will keep spam away, you may get one or two occasionally.

When these instances happen, always report before blocking the user. It’s critical for Google to know what files are spam so the necessary actions are taken to prevent more from plaguing other users.