How to stop harassing emails, including from an ex: what actually works

Receiving harassing emails is a particular kind of exhausting. Unlike a phone call you can end or a person you can walk away from, email arrives silently into a space you check many times a day, often at unpredictable hours. When that space is being used against you, everything, even opening your inbox, becomes a source of anxiety.

The instinct is to reply or to block. Both usually feel right in the moment, and both can leave you worse off later. This guide explains what works and what does not, how to stop the emails reaching you directly without destroying your evidence, and what changes when the sender is an ex you may still need to deal with.

What counts as harassing email

Not every unwanted email is harassment in a legal sense, but a wide range of behaviour can qualify, and you do not need to wait for a threat before seeking help. Harassing email includes:

• Repeated unwanted contact: sending dozens or hundreds of messages after being told to stop
• Threatening messages: explicit or implied threats against you, your safety, your employment or your relationships
• Abusive or demeaning content: messages designed to cause distress, demean or humiliate
• Coordinated campaigns: organising others to contact you or flood your inbox
• Persistent contact across new addresses: creating new email accounts after being blocked to keep the contact going
• Monitoring and controlling messages: emails designed to track your movements, control your behaviour or intimidate you into silence

The relationship to the sender matters for context but not for whether the behaviour is acceptable. A former partner, an estranged family member, a difficult client or a stranger can all cross into harassment.

Why blocking alone falls short

Blocking feels decisive. It is the simplest action, it gives you a sense of control and, for a short while, it often works. But for persistent harassment it has two significant problems.

It is easy to get around. A free email account takes a couple of minutes to set up. If someone is determined to reach you, a block on their current address is a minor inconvenience. Within days, new messages may arrive from a different address, and you are back where you started, except now there is a gap in your record. Some senders escalate: being blocked can provoke more contact, not less.

It can destroy your evidence. Depending on your mail service and settings, blocked messages may go straight to junk, be deleted automatically, or never be stored at all. If those messages are part of a harassment campaign, losing them means losing the documented record of what was sent and when. That record can be very helpful if you later decide to apply for a protection order (in the US, a protective or restraining order), make a police complaint or take civil action.

The goal should not be to make the emails disappear. The goal is to stop them reaching you personally while preserving every one of them.

The evidence problem

If you want police to act, want to apply for a protection order, or need to show a lawyer what has been happening, a general account of “lots of horrible emails” is much less useful than a record that shows:

• The date and time of each email
• The sender address or addresses used
• The full content of each message, not just a screenshot or summary
• How many emails there have been and how often they arrived
• That you made it clear the contact was unwanted

Police and courts generally look for a pattern, not a single incident. Even if each email seems fairly minor on its own, a record showing 40 emails over three weeks, sent after you asked in writing for the contact to stop, tells a very different story. A record turns your account of what happened into something concrete.

The time to start building that record is now, not after half the messages have been deleted or the address has been blocked.

Your options: block, filter, back up, relay

1. Block the address

Blocking stops a specific address at the inbox level. It can be enough for a one-off sender who is unlikely to try again. It is not effective against someone who will simply use another address, and it may not keep a record of what was sent.

2. Set up a filter rule

Most email clients, including Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, let you create rules that automatically move messages from a specific sender into a folder without deleting them. Create a folder with a neutral name such as “Archive” or “Records”, set a rule to send any email from the sender’s known addresses there, and open that folder only when you need to, for example with a lawyer or when preparing a police report. The messages still exist, timestamped and complete, but they are not sitting in your inbox ambushing you every morning.

The limitation is the same as blocking: a rule only works for addresses you already know. A new address lands in your inbox as normal, so you have to keep adding addresses to the rule, and you may not always catch a new one before reading something you did not want to read. A rule also does nothing to change the fact that the sender has your real email address.

3. Forward copies to a backup account

Create a separate email account that you use for nothing else, and set up automatic forwarding of any email that matches your filter rule. This gives you a second copy in another location, protected even if something happens to your main account. Keep the login details secure and separate from your everyday passwords. Forwarding the full email is better than relying on screenshots, which are easy to edit and leave out the underlying sender details.

4. Use a dedicated relay address

The most effective approach for persistent harassment is to give the sender a relay address instead of your real one. A relay address sits between the sender and your personal inbox. Their messages arrive there first, where they can be filtered before anything reaches you.

This solves several problems at once. Your real email address stays private. If the sender only has the relay address, any new account they create still sends to the relay, so there are no rules to keep updating. Every message is captured with its date, time and sender details. And if you change jobs, phones or email providers, you never need to tell the sender your new details.

FenceChat works this way. You sign up, get a FenceChat email address, and share it with the person causing you concern. Their messages arrive at FenceChat first and pass through an AI filter: hostile and abusive language is taken out, while anything you genuinely need to receive, such as co-parenting logistics, passes through to your real inbox. Every original message, including the parts that were filtered, is stored in the FenceChat Archive with full timestamps, so if you ever need to show a pattern of behaviour, the record is already there.

Send one clear written notice

If you have not already done so, send the sender one clear written statement that you do not want further contact. This removes any ambiguity: after your notice, it is clear in writing that they knew the contact was unwanted.

Keep it brief, factual and free of emotional content. State plainly that you do not want to receive emails from them. If some contact is still necessary, for example for co-parenting or to wind up a business arrangement, say exactly what form that contact should take and through which channel.

Then send nothing further. One notice is enough. Repeatedly asking someone to stop contacting you keeps the exchange going and can blur an otherwise clear record. Keep a copy of the notice with the date and time you sent it; it becomes part of your record.

When to involve police

Many people wait a long time before seeking help, often because they feel each individual email is “not bad enough”. The threshold for harassment can be lower than people assume. In an emergency, call 000 in Australia or 911 in the US. Otherwise, consider contacting police when:

• Messages contain explicit or implied threats to your safety or the safety of people close to you
• The pattern of contact is causing you serious fear or distress, and you are changing your behaviour because of it
• The volume is escalating or the tone is becoming more hostile
• The sender has made it clear they know where you live, work or spend time
• Contact is happening across several channels at once, such as email, calls and turning up in person
• Contact has continued after you clearly told the sender to stop
• Other people are being directed to contact you

In Australia, persistent unwanted electronic contact that causes fear or distress can be an offence under state and territory stalking and harassment laws. Using a phone or the internet, including email, to menace or harass someone can also be an offence in Australia. You do not always need a specific threat: a sustained pattern of unwanted contact, especially after you have asked for it to stop, can be enough, depending on the facts. In the US, harassment and stalking are mostly covered by state laws, which vary from state to state, and other countries such as New Zealand, the UK and Canada have their own laws. Police or a lawyer can tell you how the law applies to you.

When you approach police, bring an organised summary of the emails, with sender addresses, dates and the content of key messages, along with the full emails themselves. The more organised your documentation, the easier it is for police to assess and act.

Protection orders and intervention orders

If police action is not available or not appropriate yet, you may be able to apply for a protection order yourself. In Australia these go by different names depending on the state or territory: Apprehended Violence Orders (AVOs) in NSW, intervention orders in Victoria, domestic violence orders in Queensland, and so on. Most orders can prohibit contact by any means, including email. In the US, the equivalent is a protective or restraining order, and the rules vary by state. Our US guide explains the basics.

To apply, you generally go to your local court and make a statement. In urgent situations, police can apply on your behalf. A documented history of the emails, including dates, content and your one written notice, is very useful to bring.

When the emails come from an ex

Harassing emails from a former partner sit in a particularly difficult place. They land in your personal inbox, they are often tangled up with grief, money or children, and you may not be able to cut contact completely. Everything above still applies, with a few additions. If they text as well, see our guide to harassing texts from an ex.

Separate necessary contact from unwanted contact. If you share children, some email contact may still be needed for school pick-ups, medical appointments and changeovers. Rather than leaving your personal inbox open, give your ex a dedicated relay address for co-parenting logistics. Necessary information still reaches you, hostile content does not, and the separation between the two is visible in the record if the situation ever reaches a court.

Say what contact is acceptable. Your one written notice can set out exactly which topics and which channel are acceptable, for example “emails about the children’s arrangements only, to this address”. Anything outside that is easier to identify as unwanted.

Know when to involve a family lawyer. A family lawyer can help if you share children and want contact arrangements formally limited, if you are thinking about a protection order, or if the harassment is connected to property settlement or other proceedings. Bring your documented record; the more complete it is, the more useful it will be.

For more on contact that has moved beyond email, see when your ex won’t stop contacting you.

Workplace and business harassment

If the harassment is coming from a current or former colleague, a client or a business contact, additional paths are available. In Australia, employers have duties under work health and safety laws that can extend to harassment by email. Reporting the behaviour to HR or a manager in writing, and keeping a copy, is a good first step. If you have left the job and are bringing a claim, see managing communication during a Fair Work claim. In the US, the EEOC (eeoc.gov/harassment) handles federal workplace harassment charges, and state agencies can help too.

If the sender is a client, you can end the business relationship. A clear written notice that you are ceasing contact, and that any further communication will be treated as harassment, is sometimes enough to stop it, and creates a clear paper trail if it does not.

What not to do

A few responses feel natural but make the situation harder to resolve:

• Do not reply, even to tell them to stop. Each reply shows engagement and can encourage further contact. Your one written notice is enough. After that, silence.
• Do not delete messages. Even if they are distressing, they are your record. Move them to a folder instead.
• Do not share the emails publicly, on social media or elsewhere. This can create legal risks of its own and make the situation harder to resolve.
• Do not match the emotional tone. A calm, factual record is far more useful than a series of escalating exchanges.
• Do not rely on screenshots alone. Screenshots are easy to edit and leave out sender details. Keep the original emails and forward copies to a backup account.