Is there any point to reporting phishing emails?

Anonymous
2022-11-30T17:50:08+00:00

I'm using Outlook.live and I get upwards of 50 phishing emails a day. I report them all... every day. This has been going on for years. I get the same type and look of email even though the sender address constantly changes. Most are just a few block sentences, centered, no frills, that says Congratulations you won..., Click here for your prize..., Click here for this... Click here for that...

Blocking senders is a waste of time. They are always different. I thought Microsoft would be able to block based on content but I'm getting the same stuff over and over... Same stuff I've reported as phishing for years so it doesn't appear that the hundreds of thousands of emails I've reported are being looked at by anyone.

Is there no filtering on Microsoft's side? If there is, why is it not working... if not why report the phishing emails??

sr

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Account management, security, and privacy

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-09-10T01:54:59+00:00

    So you say reporting is a waste of time. I agree!

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-08-17T09:32:04+00:00

    Thanks to everyone who has joined in this discussion. The general response to my original question seems to be 'no, there's no point in reporting phishing or scam emails'. I'm a bit more concerned about the blackmailing ones, demanding payment in bitcoin. This is serious criminal activity, but it still seems pointless to report it. In fact the last couple of times I tried forwarding to ******@phishing.gov.uk it came back as undeliverable! Has anyone tried ringing 101 to report (UK)? Stephen, aka King Gama, a grumpy old man created by W S Gilbert.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-08-10T19:37:16+00:00

    I get these too, however the gmail addresses can be somewhat cosmetic and spoofed despite their apparently good spam filtering.

    When you send the report to MS, it puts the header information in the email text. The sender IP address can reveal the domain of the host ISP if they are not routing through VPN or other obfuscation. Ive found reporting rogue IP to Amazon AWS to be very responsive and cooperative in shutting down offending IP addresses, not so with Google domain services which doesn't seem to care.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-10T19:05:51+00:00

    Yes, you are also on the malware that most people are on. Go to spam.org and report each one using the view source method which is the only way to stop them. Everything is recorded into a diary, so you can pull up any report at any time , so if you wanna sue , you can get money. The more you report the more money you’re gonna get , so enjoy submitting those **** spammers. Let’s unite.

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-08-10T18:57:05+00:00

    I get emails from "Microsoft account team" that is actually generated from a gmail address. Somehow they are doing something that is disabling the blocking capability directly from the original email, not that it seems to do any good to block spam emails anyway.

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