PLEASE HELP WITH JUNK and SPAM!

I am getting A TON of really inappropriate and obviously spam e-mails. Whatever MSN and Hotmail are currently doing to ensure these do not come to our mailboxes (ANY folder, including JUNK - I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS!) is not working. Can I PLEASE speak to someone about this problem. It's been increasing over the last year and I'm really tired of it. It's not appropriate and these are very clearly not "real" e-mails. I do not have time in the day to block individually. PLEASE contact me about this problem. I'm terribly upset - I probably get 20 to 30 of these a day, if not more.

Pascal

I feel you are failing to provide adequate protection against phishing attempts. I appreciate that under certain circumstances the attacks are sophisticated however I receive a lot of phishing attempts that you really should be able to identify and block.

Let's look at a real-life example. I received an email from "Apple Support" referring to a purchase I apparently made. The email contains a pdf attachment that includes details of the purchased and a link to click should I want to query the purchase. All the markings of a standard phishing attempt.

Now let's look at details in the header.

From: Apple Support <noreply.email.apple.support-564-1609@metrosup.org>
Return-Path: noreply.email.apple.support-564-1609@metrosup.org

And the link in the attachment points to:

https://shop-payment09.com/suspecious-transaction/

How many flags do you guys need before bells start ringing? I would have thought at the very least you'd check the domain in the "From” attribute to check it exists and compare it against one of the many databases out there that rate a domains legitimacy / age etc. In this case the domain is not even registered. I also would have thought that you'd have some sort of logic that says "Hey.. it's another email from "Apple Support" that doesn't come from Apple.com. Maybe we should run some extra checks". Finally I’d expect that you check the link in the attachment which was the ultimate goal of this attackers attempt which again should have raised alarm bells.

It’s not rocket science and I feel you have an obligation to protect your users.

Junkmail filtering on outlook is ineffective to say the least.

Junkmail works in a few ways.
- Robots scan the internet for email addresses.
- Business collect your email for legitimate reasons (like receipts or alerts) but then continue to send unsolicited mail
- by a robot flooding random emails with a readably sounding senders name, a randomised or misleading email address, misleading body content (usually duplicated from an existing reputable website, and requiring the user to interact by clicking a hyperlink or download an executable.

Does this look familiar:
from LinkedIn - Confirm security breach. <linkedin23508xtPRO@LinkedInSecurityTeamTotallyRealfe080x.com.org.it>. BODY: Your account has been breached and needs security update or you will get fined CLICK HERE TO LOGIN.

Rather than looking at outlook as millions of individuals who have to manually block and manage things constantly on their end, act as one giant Junkmail Bodyguard for your users.

This could greatly be improved with a few simple automated steps. NONE of this should affect legitimate email contact.

1:Live domain confirmation:
- Upon having an email passed through Outlook, the senders address domain is run through the Domain name registry. If it is sent from a domain that is not registered, the email is automatically blocked and blacklisted. Outlook will no longer allow that domain to pass to any user.

2: Universal Professional whitelist
- Users can make their own whitelist, but it should be supplemented by a professional whitelist of established reputable companies. This will reduce the load on "Live domain confirmation", and allow legitimate businesses that don't make it through LDC to get their mail through. This pro whitelist should be shared between free email companies to prevent corruption or junkmail companies paying for access.

3. ID check
- Does the "reply to" address match the "sent from" address? A common trick is to mislead where the email was sent from, and get the user to hit reply, which opens a completely different address. Block non matching addresses. Will this effect legitimate email senders? Not if they are on the LDC and UPW. Businesses can easily correct their sending habits to get this mail through, but junkmail/scammers won't be able to adjust so easily.

4: Floodgate
- Business like to collect your email "for your convenience", but what they are really doing is farming legitimate emails to send their marketing junkmail.They also then sell your address on to other marketing companies. The FIRST email from a new legitimate sender opens the floodgate for constant junkmail until you "opt out", which often does not work. That needs to be reversed. When you gut the FIRST email from a new sender (probably a receipt), outlook will ask if you would like to receive more email from this sender.

5 Onetime
- allow users to give a generic outlook email to somebody (say Onetime@outlook.com). That email will self destruct in 24 hours. This is perfect for getting receipts/quotes/that one party invite/that tinder date, that you may not want to know your real address. But have it coded. Ontime1234@outlook.com means you go to the onetime page on outlook.com and enter a code. This one would be 1234. Boom, 24 hours to get that mail out. Onetime1800555210@outlook.com will ask for the code1800555210. After the day is done that space is cleared.

6. Struckout
- Allow users to vote/flag abuse from an email address, and if a domain gets too many complaints it is added to a blacklist. Black listed companies will have to request access to the whitelist again and change their issues.

7 Mr Smith
- are you getting multiple emails from a user, but their email is different each time? Well then run a check for the senders NAME matching multiple addresses and domains. (Amazon, paypal, linked in all get this scam). Block it. Legit businesses can request access to the whitelist.

I've named this junkmail protection suite "<Body>Guard" by Outlook.com.

I am making tonnes of rules to try to cut down on the amount of spam I am getting. I have dozens of rules, saying for certain words to be deleted, but they are still ending up in my Junk Email. The same words being used over and over in the rules, but they are still going through. So your rules are not working what so ever.
I was told that the rules do NOT apply to emails that are you already direct to the spam folder, that your "spam" rules bypass any rules we make ourselves. That's rather annoying. Especially since your rules really don't stop these at all. I'm getting the exact same spam every day for weeks now.

SPAM / AUTO-BLOCK and AUTO-DELETE based on crowd opinion.
- If a X percentage of Outlook users choose to block a particular email sender, THAT email is automatically deleted from your own Outlook email account without you having to see it.
- Users can set the sensitivity, by choosing how aggressive this 'auto-delete' feature performs. That sensitivity can be chosen based on percentage of Outlook users choosing to block OR a number of Outlook users choosing to block OR a combination of both.
- Also, because spammers constantly change their sending address, the system would also auto-delete based on Subject Lines.
Doug in Silicon Valley