Report Spam Messages and Reduce Junk Mail

The best way to reduce junk mail is to prevent it in the first place, please see this article on preventing junk mail.

That being said, there are always messages that will get through and there are several ways of dealing with these messages, please use some or all of the following to reduce junk mail:

1. Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in

The Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in, is a very useful Outlook add-in that enables each of the users to report the offending message to Microsoft.

By selecting the mail item and then choosing the option of “Report Junk," the mail item will automatically be sent to the Microsoft mail security team for further analysis and investigation to help to improve the effectiveness of our junk e-mail filtering technologies.

Using the Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in

• Download and Install the Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in.
• Report email as spam

In Outlook 2010\2013, the Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in is implemented by additional menu option named: Report junkthat is added to the “Junk” section to be able to report an email as spam. To “mark” mail item as Junk use the following procedure: 

• Choose the mail items you would like to report
• On the Home Tab choose the small black arrow of the Junk option.
• Choose the option Report Junk

A warning message appears and informs the user that the mail item will be reported as spam. Choose the “Yes” option.

When we choose the “yes” option, the following events will occur:

• The mail items that were reported as spam, will be sent to the Junk Email folder.
• A copy of mail items will be sent to abuse@messaging.microsoft.com as attachments, as can be seen in the sent items folder
• An acknowledgement email will be sent back to the recipient.

In Outlook 2007, the option to “report junk” will be added on the top menu option.

2. Outlook Junk option – block sender

Another option that is available for us from “client side” is the Outlook junk component and the option of “block sender” (Add a sender to the Blocked Senders list).

This option is most suitable in a scenario that the spam mail is delivered from a specific recipient email address. In reality, many times the “spammers” mange to send the spam mail by using a different source recipient email address, so the option to “block sender” will not help us in such scenarios.

Add a sender to the Blocked Senders list

In case that you want to block the sender who sends spam mail, we can use the junk menu for blocking this recipient.

• Choose the required mail items,
• In the Home Tab chooses the small black arrow of the Junk option.
• Choose the option Block sender

Additional reading:

• How to obtain the latest Outlook Junk E-mail Filter update
• Overview of the Junk Email Filter

3. Unsubscribe from a mailing list

In case that the user reports “spam mail” and when checking the mail item, we see that the sender is not considered as “spammer” (mail is just a standard advertising email that is sent to a distribution list that the user is on), most of the time the mail will include an option that enables the user to unsubscribe from the mailing list.  So, before we start to use the “heavy artillery," please check if the option of “unsubscribe” exists and unsubscribe from the mailing list.

If none of these options work for a particular sender, then forward the email to help@breeneng.com and we can look at blocking it from the backend.