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Anti-spam options with the 'new' Outlook

From 1 Nov 2016, only a few weeks away, Microsoft will stop updating their junk email filter in Outlook for Windows and Mac.

What does that mean for you and your Outlook Junk Email settings?

What’s happening?

Microsoft won’t be updating their email spam ‘Smartscreen’ technology any more.  That’s the Junk Email part of Outlook that you control from Junk Email Options:

All spam filters need updating about new types of spam to guard against.   The Outlook filter will still work but it’ll become less effective over time as new types of spam email come out.

That’s OK because the vast majority of people have a better spam filter already, even if they don’t realize it.

Multiple Spam Filters

Microsoft says they are doing this because most people have their email checked for spam emails online at their mail host (ISP, Gmail, Outlook.com etc).  That’s not Microsoft’s real reason for the change, but it is true.

Before an email reaches your computer, it’s almost certainly been checked by spam filters on your mail host.  These online spam filters are often ‘invisible’ to us users with no settings or options available.  They delete suspected spam with no notice to the receiver, even for messages that might not be spam.

This makes the Outlook spam filter less useful or even totally redundant because there are other spam checks that have got there first.

These online spam checkers usually have less configuration options than Outlook’s Junk Email filter and the choices you have in Outlook don’t have any effect on the online spam filters.

‘Safe’ doesn’t count as much

Take the ‘Safe Senders’ and ‘Safe Recipients’ options in Outlook.   These are designed to permit messages from or to certain addresses, even if Outlook’s Junk Email system thinks they are spam.

But ‘Safe Senders’ isn’t any use if the message is being stopped by your mail host before Outlook gets it!

‘Safe Sender’ is often used to approve messages from companies or individuals that are mistaken for spam.  You often see suggestions you put a certain company or newsletter in your ‘Safe Senders’ list.  Office-Watch.com does too.

The options ‘Also trust email from my Contacts’ and ‘Automatically add people I email to the Safe Senders List’ don’t have any effect on the main spam filter on your mail host.  In other words, a message from one of your Contacts or ‘Safe Senders’ could be blocked by your mail host first.

It’s the same problem with ‘Safe Receivers’ when you have multiple email addresses to receive email.    You can tell Outlook that messages to a certain address are OK, but that’s no help if the message has already been stopped by another spam filter.

Blocked Senders

Sometimes you want to delete/ignore messages from a certain organization or person.  Outlook’s Blocked Senders will still work to do that, if the online spam filter hasn’t got to it first.

Any email with a FROM  in the ‘Blocked Senders’ list will be shunted directly to the Junk Email folder.

As you can see above, Peter has just three blocked senders.  One is a company that doesn’t obey its own ‘Unsubscribe’ link.   The other two are enthusiastic but well-meaning people who regularly send Peter messages about their pet topic, hobby or political beliefs.

Junk Email Folder

One option you do NOT want to use is ‘Permanently delete suspected junk email instead of moving it to the Junk Email folder’.

No spam filter is perfect and occasionally it’ll trap a message you want to see.  The Junk Email folder lets you check past ‘spam’ messages and recover anything you wanted to see.

If you choose this option, spam messages are deleted immediately with no practical way to recover a ‘lost’ message.

From time to time select the older Junk Email messages and Delete them.

International

The broad ‘International’ options in Outlook also continue to be effective though they are fairly ‘blunt instruments’.   It’s quite possible that online spam filters have similar settings and will stop these messages before they reach Outlook.

‘Blocked Top-Level’ Domain List … a message from an address with a less common ‘Top’ domain can be blocked.   ‘Top Level Domain’ or TLD is the last part of a domain name.  For example the TLD for Office-Watch.com is  COM,  for  Microsoft.com.au  it’s AU etc.

You can choose TLD’s that you won’t accept messages from.

Sounds like a good idea.  After all, you’re not likely to get messages Niue (.NU) or Tuvalu (.TV) for example.

Problem is, the Top Level Domain that are supposed to be for a particular country but often are used by people all over the world.  .NU and .TV are two examples of domains that are sold all over the world for uses that have nothing to do with the ‘native’ countries.  If you block a particular ‘country’ then you might accidently stop messages from people who don’t live there.

‘Blocked Encodings’ is another broad option available.  This blocks messages that arrive in other broad language types like Arabic or Japanese.

Like ‘Blocked Top Level Domains’ this option isn’t needed much because spam filters will almost always catch messages before Outlook.

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