• Outlook Junk Mail Filter suddenly works poorly

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    pumphouse
    AskWoody Plus
    August 11, 2023 at 11:51 am #2579237

    Windows 10 (up to date) and Outlook PC client provided by Microsoft 365 Family subscription.   No changes in configuration of Outlook recently.
    Within the last few weeks, the Junk Mail filter seems worse than before.   Blatently obvious phishing attempts get through to my inbox while it continues to divert some legitimate emails to the Junk Mail folder.   Also the sheer amount of spam in the Junk Mail folder has way more than doubled.
    I have the level of Junk Mail protection set at “Low” (“Move the most obvious junk mail…”).  I also set the “Warn me about suspicious domains” toggle but it never warns about them.  Does that even work?
    Is there anything I can do on my end?  I do use the “Report Message” add-in regularly, but is anyone reading the reports?

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    • joep517
      AskWoody MVP
      August 11, 2023 at 3:26 pm #2579291

      I find the performance of the Outlook filter to be inconsistent. It will work quite well the suddenly for a period of time all kinds of junk gets through. Have you tried setting the filter level to HIGH?

      As far as the “Report Message” function goes, I believe that the reports are analyzed automatically as they occur. I don’t know the level of human involvement.

      --Joe

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      pumphouse
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    • Susan Bradley
      Manager
      August 11, 2023 at 10:26 pm #2579334

      At the office I bumped up the spam settings because they’ve been inconsistent.  On machines where I can’t control the spam filter levels up on their cloud servers, try this:

      Change the level of protection in the Junk Email Filter – Microsoft Support

      Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

      1 user thanked author for this post.
      pumphouse
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    • Steve Chesney
      Guest
      August 12, 2023 at 8:19 am #2580046

      Thanks all for the replies.   I guess I’ll move the level between High and Low as the tide of spam rises and falls with the moon.   😉

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    • pumphouse
      AskWoody Plus
      October 14, 2023 at 11:55 am #2594089

      FWIW, moving the level to “High” seemingly made no difference. Obvious phishing gets through and legitimate subscribed email gets caught. Sigh.

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      • Jim Cunningham
        Guest
        November 13, 2023 at 11:22 am #2602177

        I’m seeing the same issues, malformed subject lines like this have been getting past Outlook spam filters for months now. The malform appears to change regularly, probably as Microsoft adds one to its spam engine the spammer changes to something different. The key seems to be the very first “letter/special character”.

        ★2ND»ATTEMPT»FOR–U✔️🚨

         

         

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