Spam filter for Outlook: how to stop junk and scam emails

What Outlook’s built-in filter does

Outlook.com and Hotmail come with a junk email filter. Emails it judges to be junk go into the folder Junk Email instead of the inbox.

• Outlook checks whether a sender is who they claim to be. Microsoft says it marks malicious messages as junk email.
• If Outlook cannot verify a sender, it shows a ? in the sender’s picture.
• Emails in Junk Email are deleted automatically after a number of days. Microsoft’s help pages name 30 days on one page and 14 days on another. After that they cannot be recovered.

Where the junk email settings are

These steps are for Outlook.com in the browser and for the new Outlook for Windows.

1. Open the settingsSelect Settings (the gear), then Mail, then Junk email.
2. Block a senderUnder Blocked senders and domains, add an address or a whole domain. Their emails then go straight to Junk Email.
3. Protect the people you want to hear fromUnder Safe senders and domains, add addresses whose emails should never go to Junk Email.
4. SaveSelect Save. Microsoft says the lists can hold up to 10,000 addresses or domains.

Report a phishing email

Select the email. Above the reading pane, select Report, then Report phishing. In the Outlook app on a phone, open the email, tap the three dots at the top, choose Report Junk and then Junk, Phishing or Block Sender.

Classic Outlook on Windows

In the older Outlook program, Microsoft lists the options under Home, Block, Junk Email Options. According to Microsoft, the protection level there is set to “No Automatic Filtering” by default, and you can make the filter stricter.

How to stop junk email in Outlook: a short routine

1. Report it, do not just delete itA report tells Microsoft that the email was junk or phishing. Deleting tells nobody.
2. Block a sender who keeps writingUse the blocked senders list for addresses that send again and again.
3. Add family, doctor and bank to the safe sendersThen their emails do not end up in Junk Email by mistake.
4. Look into Junk Email once a weekOutlook empties that folder by itself. A real email that landed there is gone afterwards.
5. Never reply to junkA reply shows the sender that somebody reads this address. The same goes for “unsubscribe” links in emails you do not trust.

What the built-in filter cannot do

• Reporting is not blocking. Microsoft states that after a phishing report “the sender is reported but is not blocked from sending you additional messages”.
• A block list only knows addresses. Scammers change their sender addresses all the time, so the next email often comes from an address that is not on your list.
• The new Outlook cannot block senders for accounts from other providers, such as Gmail or Yahoo. Microsoft says to block those at the provider.
• No filter catches everything. Some scam emails still reach the inbox, and they are written to look like real ones.

Where a filter from outside fits in

Outlook’s filter stays on. Guard Mail adds a second check from outside, for the emails that arrive in your mailbox anyway.

1. Connect the mailboxOutlook.com and Hotmail mailboxes connect through a Microsoft sign-in. You sign in at Microsoft and confirm the access. The setup explains each step.
2. New emails are checkedA few minutes after an email arrives, Guard Mail checks it.
3. Scam emails are movedScam and phishing emails go into a folder called “Suspicious”. Spam goes to the spam folder. Everything else stays untouched.

Guard Mail itself never deletes an email. The “Suspicious” folder is never emptied automatically. Mail providers empty their own spam folder after a while, usually after around 30 days, so look into it now and then.

If you want, newsletters, advertising and notifications are moved into their own folders as well. You can also write your own rules in plain language. You keep your usual email program.

To check an email, its sender, subject and text are sent to our servers and to an AI model. The details are in the privacy policy.

Price: $6 a month or $60 a year for up to two mailboxes. Each further mailbox costs $2.50 a month. It is free to try.

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