Google recently added a new feature in Gmail that lets any Google+ user send you an email even if they don’t know your email address. Google’s decision to add the feature was quite controversial, more so because it is enabled by default for all Gmail users. In this post, we show you how you can disable this.

• Open Gmail in your desktop web browser by going to gmail.com, and login if you haven’t already

• Click on the gear icon at the top-right of the window

• Select “Settings” in the drop down that appears:

• In the General tab, scroll down to the “Email via Google+” settings:

• The default selection option will be “Anyone on Google+”. Click on it, and select Extended Circles, Circles or No one depending on whether you want to receive mails from your Google+ contacts or disable it entirely.

If you’ve any questions, please do drop us a line in the comments.