junkmail filtering
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.
Dan Todd
shared this idea
5 comments
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Ruth
commented
tons of junkmail, tons and tons of the ****.
Very angry now and its affecting my health, but you just dont care do you? I'm 65 and now setting up a gmail account which I will advise others to do. You have ruined my main email address and now I have to change everything.
Thanks for nothing, as you havent helped but just ignored me. ******** -
Joe Gregson
commented
Safe senders are routinely going into Junk, and the Subscriptions list is full of hundreds of bogus addresses that I never added but that allow Junk to go to my inbox.
These features are working so badly that it would be better to not have them at all. What a mess!
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Anonymous
commented
I have a not net sending me spam how to I get outlook to stop this entering junk files and someone from Costco is using my email address to send me spam!!!!!!!!!! how do I stop this???
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Anonymous
commented
I now get CONSIDERABLY more e-mails in my junk folder than with the prior version, in which I rec'd a few junk e-mails per day (less than 10). Now I get DOZENS every day. If all of them were truly junk, I could just delete them all. But NO.........sometimes Outlook puts an e-mail from a sender, e.g. a retailer I do business with, in my junk folder, so I must look at EVERY e-mail in my junk folder before I delete. RIDICULOUS waste of my time.
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jayy_lybbert@hotmail.com
commented
Allow email rules for sorting junkmail
