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!

Outlook | Outlook for mobile | Outlook for iOS | For home

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

108 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T22:52:11+00:00

    This is the third time this has happened to me. Happened about a year ago, lasted for a few days, then stopped. Of course, then the opposite happened and my trusted email that even had rules applied kept going to junk. This time it happened about a month ago, stopped for a few days, and is now happening every single day. It's relentless, and I get plenty of spam in other accounts with other providers, but never this problem. I expect the occasional email to slip through, even repeatedly for a brief period of time, but this is a much bigger problem that Microsoft feels it is too big to care about, so they just don't.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Ron-6928 4,991 Reputation points
    2023-11-17T19:39:53+00:00

    Say what?

    No spam filter can effectively block spam from army of spammers when you are targeted. They will hit you with thousand of junk email every minute, no filter can provide 99% block rate.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T18:24:37+00:00

    That's really not true. The whole point of spam filtration is to identify and block malicious email sent to your actual address. There is no such thing as spam that isn't sent to your address. You would never receive it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T17:59:34+00:00

    I just sat down, in the space of 12 hours 90 in my junk and 15 in my inbox...

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2023-11-17T03:01:48+00:00

    I also found that legit emails were going to my deleted folder. It caused a problem since I wasn't checking for an important email there, I checked the junk folder and had a rule set and it still went to the deleted folder. It seems to have begun when they started upgrading the outlook app.

    I've had a paid subscription for years and it worked well untile about a year ago.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments