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

Anonymous
2023-10-11T03:47:38+00:00

In the past 2 hours alone, I have received at least a dozen spam emails written in random words. For example “isnt a said tone Then it level in very he possible 54 u443 hkother” They are coming from apparent one-off gmail, live, hotmail, and other accounts. And the so-called junk filters are catching NONE of them. I get most of my email on mobile devices, so I’m not using the desktop Outlook app, and thus I can’t adjust the level of spam filtering. To be honest, I pay for Microsoft 365 and I find it ridiculous that (A) the default outlook.com spam filters are not catching them, and (B) I can’t adjust the spam filter so it does catch them. Microsoft, quit dinking around with AI on Bing and put it to work in your own spam filters!

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-12-10T00:51:17+00:00

    Hi Cory,

    I'm not sure if you're using Outlook in Windows or you're visiting Outlook live online,

    I use Outlook online,

    online, under-settings>email>junk email, scroll down that page to the bottom and check the box for: Filters "Block attachments, pictures and links for anyone not in my Safe senders and domains list"

    a save dialogue box should appear that you click to save this new setting,

    I imagine there is a similar option in Outlook for Windows but I don't have it installed so I can't walk you through it,

    for Outlook live online this link should take you right there:
    https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/options/mail/junkEmail

    with attachments, pictures and links blocked the sender of the spam email won't know you've opened and viewed it, you can add the sender to your blocked senders and domains list and report it for phishing without it triggering further spam emails,

    try this one thing and see if the amount of spam you receive starts to slow down.

    any legitimate email you receive you can click on "I trust content from xyz" at the top edge of the email and it will be added to your Safe senders and domains list.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-12-10T02:00:14+00:00

    Followed your instructions, hopefully this will put an end to this B.S., thank you!

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-12-10T09:22:31+00:00

    I had MS admit that there is a global issue Levi, text below.

    Dean, I want to inform you that it is a global issue which has badly affected our users, and we have already escalated the issue to tier-2 team and our engg. are already working in this issue.

    But I also want to inform you that it was recently resolved, but again we are getting this issue, so I can say that we are very close to resolve the issue, but right now we have a solution which has resolved many cases, let me help you on that.

    To resolve the issue, we need to reset the junk filters so that we can trigger the server, so that then server will reset the junk filter setting and then your issue will be resolved.

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-12-10T11:57:51+00:00

    The "canned fix" didn't work

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-12-10T16:44:45+00:00

    After getting 40 plus spam mail every day and contently reporting them for the past 4 weeks. my outlook did an update to the new outlook also did this on my phone app it looks as though Microsoft might have sorted it out for the past week i am only getting 1 or 2 each day long may it last.

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