I created a gmail filter to send any email with the word "Blonde" in it straight to trash. (Most of my porn spam goes straight to the Spam directory already, but I like to keep that directory empty.)

I made a slight miscue when I cut and pasted "Blonde" into the filter, and it ended up being "-Blonde".

Did you know that if you preface any filter word with a hyphen, that filter will then act on every single email you receive, whether or not it contains the key word? I spent four days wondering why nobody was emailing me, not even the porno-spammers, before I discovered all of my "received" emails were waiting for me in the Trash directory.

Who knew?

tanstaafl.

I think if you had received an email with the word blonde in it it would have not ended up in the trash.

Agreed, that would be totally logical to me too.

So what you're saying is that I set up a "negative filter", that is, it would allow only emails with the key word (blonde) to pass through and trash the rest, rather than the other way around.

I'll have to play with that and see...

tanstaafl.

Yes. This is the way Google searches work, and that's basically what you're doing with a filter, searching the incoming mail and applying actions to them. All/most of these tips also apply to filters.