Continuous spam despite putting rules in place

Question

Continuous spam despite putting rules in place

Vision Church Kids Stuff 20

I am getting spam in Chinese despite blocking specific regions and languages. It seems outlook doesn't have a handle on helping keep paying microsoft customers from being harrassed by spamming emails. Can you advise what more can be done?

Hornblower409 15,715 Reputation points

2026-06-27T19:53:05.63+00:00

@Vision Church Kids Stuff said

Continuous spam despite putting rules in place

If the Spam emails are being delivered directly to your Junk folder in Outlook Web, there is nothing you can do to stop them. Rules do not run on email that has been delivered to your Junk folder.

See the Answer by "Robert Sparnaaij Mar 22, 2025" in
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4714875/junk-mail-rules-do-not-work-how-do-you-delete-bloc

And creating a new email alias will also not stop them. An alias is just a "nickname", another way to refer to the same email address. Any mail sent to your original email address or the alias will all be delivered to the same account Inbox and Junk folder.

What you can try is a new outlook.com account. This is a completely separate Inbox, Junk folder, etc. But you will have to tell all of your regular contacts to start using this new account email instead of the old one before you will receive any mail in that account. Please advise if you want to pursue this route and I'll provide additional details.

Answer accepted by question author

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Hornblower409 15,715 Reputation points

2026-06-27T19:53:05.63+00:00

@Vision Church Kids Stuff said

Continuous spam despite putting rules in place

If the Spam emails are being delivered directly to your Junk folder in Outlook Web, there is nothing you can do to stop them. Rules do not run on email that has been delivered to your Junk folder.

See the Answer by "Robert Sparnaaij Mar 22, 2025" in
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4714875/junk-mail-rules-do-not-work-how-do-you-delete-bloc

And creating a new email alias will also not stop them. An alias is just a "nickname", another way to refer to the same email address. Any mail sent to your original email address or the alias will all be delivered to the same account Inbox and Junk folder.

What you can try is a new outlook.com account. This is a completely separate Inbox, Junk folder, etc. But you will have to tell all of your regular contacts to start using this new account email instead of the old one before you will receive any mail in that account. Please advise if you want to pursue this route and I'll provide additional details.

Answer 1

The most effective way to stop this spam is to stop relying on language or region filters and instead only allow trusted senders.

https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/

Go to Outlook Settings → Mail → Junk email, and enable “Only trust email from my Safe senders and domains,” then add your contacts and important domains to the safe list.

Next, create a rule in Settings → Mail → Rules. Set it so that any email from senders who are not in your contacts or safe list is automatically moved to Junk or Deleted Items. This single rule is the strongest protection against Chinese spam and similar campaigns because they usually come from constantly changing addresses.

After that, make sure you always mark unwanted emails as “Junk” instead of just deleting them. This helps Outlook learn and improves the filter over time. With this setup, your inbox becomes effectively whitelist-based, meaning only trusted senders can reliably reach you.

If spam still persists, it usually indicates the email address has been widely exposed over time. The most effective long-term solution is to register a new email alias and use the new alias for registrations and non-essential sign-ups.

Alias setup guide (official): https://support.microsoft.com/Outlook/add-or-remove-an-email-alias-in-outlook-com

Hornblower409 15,715 Reputation points

2026-06-27T19:33:26.9066667+00:00

@TaoLi

It appears you may have conflated Outlook versions in your answer.

You pointed to Outlook Web ( https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/ ) but the rest of your instructions seem to be from Classic Outlook.

you said

Settings → Mail → Junk email, and enable “Only trust email from my Safe senders and domains,”

But the corresponding setting in Outlook Web is:

File -> Settings -> Email -> Junk email
-> Incoming mail handling -> (o) Strict
-> Security options -> [/] Trust email from my contacts

create a rule in Settings → Mail → Rules. Set it so that any email from senders who are not in your contacts or safe list is automatically moved to Junk or Deleted Items.

You can not create such a Rule in Outlook Web and it would be unneeded anyway if "Strict" is enabled.