Is there any point to reporting phishing emails?

So the point of reporting them is:

1.) so Microsoft can learn from the email to help protect you in the future.

2.) if it is the blackmail scam or extortion scam they can get the correct people involved if they believe a law is being broken or someone is in danger.

You can do number two yourself if you want to contact the FBI’s cyber team or your local law enforcement.

So it’s a personal opinion, most of these actors are hard to find or in another country so immediate action won’t be taken.

We advise our employees to report any suspicious emails this allows us to investigate emails and see if we can get information like (IP address, servers the message went through, if the scammer left any personal email in the data)

So if you don’t report it “Microsoft will never step up there game” if you do report it, it could help Microsoft get better at spotting spam / phishing emails before they hit your inbox.

Not sure if this answered your question.

(If you get a black mail scam don’t pay it go to law enforcement and report it, and ask for help / next steps. If you pay it they know they can keep getting money from you. The items they have won’t get deleted)

That's interesting in so far as I understand it, but I can't really see an answer to the question "is there any point ...'

The general opinion is 'no'. But what about the blackmailing ones? Surely they are criminal, but how should we deal with them?

(King Gama was a grumpy old man created by W S Gilbert)

Stephen.

So what the “Report” button does is move the item out of your inbox, and sends it to Microsoft so they can further investigate the data included in the email (email forensics). They can then make changes to the application used to try and filter this, but you can’t add information you don’t have so the “scammer” can just change information in the email or even subtle differences in the email address itself.

There is also a difference in spam and phishing so if you report a phishing email as spam the verdict of the investigation could be “not spam”.

Note: I don’t work for Microsoft in any way.

AMEN !! One would think that they'd at react to those pretending to be them. But, I guess we can't complain too much about a free service!

THANK YOU for your additional efforts !! I now know to not bother with sorting through the junk folder to report the ones that are phishing!