Why am I suddenly getting so many spam emails on outlook.com from an apparent AI bot?

Here I just posted on this thread a couple of weeks ago about the out-of-control, clearly junk emails that I am getting in my inbox on a daily basis. And not just a couple, more like 20-40 a day. I have resorted to marking every one of them as phishing. If Microsoft is going to blow up my inbox, I'm going to return the favor. But now, all of a sudden, I am having the exact same problem on another one of my accounts. I'm not getting the same volume, but they're all landing in my inbox. I am still migrating all of my accounts to a new service, and I am including the two other accounts I have with Microsoft. The only thing those accounts will ever be used for again is my Office subscription because as a VBA student, I have to have Excel. This is what happens when a company is too big to care, and I long for the day when they are passed by their competition and go down in flames!

I can sympathise,

I'm now doing Microsofts work trying to find ways end users can stop the tsunami of spam that Outlook allows through,

I'm not sure what format you use Outlook in, a version of a client installed on your PC, via a mobile, or you visit your Outlook account online via outlook.live.com,

for clarity what I propose refers to a mailbox located on outlook.live.com,

but can apply equally to any other email client installed on your PC or mobile, though the wording and options might vary,

spammers know you visit your mailbox and view their email spam before deleting it because when you view it outlook delivers the images in the email from the spammers server and that tips them off,

in outlook.live.com, settings>email>junk email>filters, tick the box: "Block attachments, pictures and links from anyone not in my Safe senders and domains list"

as a consequence any email in your mailbox, inbox or junk mail, should be headed with the warning: "Some content in this message has been blocked because the sender in't in your Safe senders list"

because the pixel tracker isn't being loaded you're viewing the message without tipping off the sender,

if it's a trusted sender you can click on "I trust content from abc@xyz" and they'll be added to your 'Safe senders and domains' list.

if it's phishing spam you can add the sender address to your 'Blocked senders and domains' list,

I hover over the senders address, a panel drops down including the senders address, if you hover over the end of the senders address in the drop down an option to copy the address appears,

copy it there,

open settings>email>junk email, at the top of the 'Blocked senders and domains' list is: +Add, click on that to open the box, paste in the copied address, hit the enter/return key on your keyboard and it should add to the list and a 'Save' dialogue box should open at the bottom,

click that to save the entry,

that email address will never make it into your mailbox again,

if you want to block a specific domain and all email from it then edit the entry from: ******@potato.clam to potato.clam

this will block everything from potato.clam,

obviously you can't block domains like outlook.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, but you can block troublesome websites that send spam with modified sender names,

return to the malicious email and click on the 'report as phishing' button, this will delete the email,

when you've finished your cleanup, go to deleted items, empty folder, then select "Recover items deleted from this folder" which opens a folder containing everything you've deleted and empty that folder,

I'm in the UK, my very first step is to forward every phishing email to The National Cyber Security Centre so that they can examine it and take appropriate action, their reporting address to forward suspicious email to is on the page linked below;

https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing

for the last week I've Blocked attachments, pictures and links from anyone not in my Safe senders and domains list,

forwarded every suspicious email to the NCSC,

added the sender to my Blocked senders and domains list,

added repeat offending domains as domains to the list,

reported the email to Microsoft as phishing via their reporting button,

deleted the email,

deleted the email from deleted items,

deleted the email from recover deleted items,

what was a couple of dozen emails a day has reduced to one or two, which I still treat in the same way.

I receive 30-40 junk emails per day. Most are from the same senders that change a number in their email address they send from. Why can't Microsoft create a filter for this. If I do not look through my junk mail daily, I will have hundreds within days to go through to make sure a legit email isn't in there. I feel like I am doing homework for Outlook all the time. Becoming a useless account.

I've been following this thread whilst engaging in my own battle against excessive malicious email being sent to me,

I can't call it junk email or spam because that is irritating but benign, I stopped opting into online marketing a long time ago, if I do slip up in the UK all legitimate marketing emails are expected to come with a valid, functioning unsubscribe link, which I use,

the only unsolicited email I receive is scam mail of a phishing nature, most of it does get bumped to my junk mail box but some escapes into my inbox,

some is notoriously difficult to delete, it keeps respawning as if it over rides the delete function,

some lacks a sender address making it challenging to block,

in trying to understand how they work I realise they use pixel tracking, they hide an invisible image in the email that Outlook downloads from their server when I open the email and gives away the fact I've opened the email and may also report back other information like IP, time, OS, browser, email client etc.

I installed a browser add-on that identifies these tracking pixels and blocks them,

I've figured out that by selecting the filter option in Outlook.com, settings, email, junk mail, Filters: "Block attachments, pictures and links from anyone not in my Safe senders and domains list"

and also deleting every sender and domain in my "Safe senders and domains" list, I effectively block pixel trackers from being served by Outlook.com if I open an email,

well imagine my surprise, since the 26th of October 2023, the notification emails from MicrosoftAnswers@microsoft.com being sent when there is a reply to a question I'm following include a pixel tracker disguised as the Microsoft logo,

served from; https://answers.microsoft.com  and https://mucp.api.account.microsoft.com

microsoft is using the very same pixel tracking technology that spammers use to torment email users with their phishing emails,

does this conflict with microsofts email filters,

my Outlook.com accounts now regard emails from Microsoft to be 'junk mail' and 'spam', potential 'phishing' attacks,

how exactly does being policeman and villain, at the same time, work?

Please fix this, ive also been getting spammed for a couple weeks now!