Forum Discussion
Outlook not removing junk emails from one sender
I'm using Outlook 2016 on Windows 11. Beginning on Feb 17, my email spam folder started blowing up with about 40+ spam emails per day, all on "fake medical" topics -- attempting to sell cures for every medical condition that you can think of, and some you would never think of. Then after a couple of weeks, some of them started appearing in my Inbox, not caught by the spam filter. So, I raised my Junk email filter level to High. And whenever an unwanted email still gets through to my Inbox, I put the sender on the Outlook "block sender" list.
But emails from one particular sender keep getting through to the Inbox, no matter how many times I block the address. What else can I do?
7 Replies
This is quite common with Microsoft Outlook 2016, where spammers change the sender address slightly, so blocking one won’t catch the next one.
Better would be to create a rule that filters by keywords or patterns (subject/body), or block the domain instead of just the email which is much more effective.
It didn't take long to test this. Unfortunately, the worst offender is sending 3 or 4 emails every day. Blocking just the domain (healthcarezz.com) didn't work.
Here's a list of what doesn't work: the native Outlook filter, adding either the full email address or just the domain to the blocked sender's list, creating a rule to move emails with either the first part of the address or the domain to the spam folder, creating a server-side (AOL/Yahoo) rule to do the same.
It seems crazy that this one sender is resistant to any technique that I've tried, while all of the other spammers' emails go to the spam folder either without any intervention on my part, or after I add them to the blocked senders list.
The sender address in this case is always exactly 'email address removed for privacy reasons' I created a rule, but it didn't help. I also created a server-side rule (on AOL/Yahoo), and that didn't help either.
I'm about to try blocking just the domain.
I put the sender on the Outlook "block sender" list.
Any chance that the Spammer is using different subdomains in the email address for each email?
e.g. abc.example.com @def.example.com
These will get past even a domain Blocked Senders of example.com because a domain block has to match everything after the "@".
Not in my case. The domain of the unwanted sender is always 'healthcarezz'.
If it is from one specific sender, verify that it didn't land on the Safe Senders list by accident. Also, if there are other addresses on the To line, make sure these aren't marked as Safe Recipients.
If that isn't the case, you can also create an Inbox Rule to delete the message or to move it to your Junk Email folder;
File-> Manage Rules and AlertsNot on the safe senders list, and I have no safe recipients. I created a rule, but it didn't help. I also created a server-side rule (on AOL/Yahoo), and that didn't help either.
The built-in Outlook filter does catch 80% of the spam, just not this one sender, and also it seems to miss a small number of new senders. Out of 40+ spam emails per day, 3 or 4 per day from this one sender, plus about 4 miscellaneous others, end up in my Inbox. I always mark them as Junk, but this one sender seems to be immune.
