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Resources > Instructions > How a Junk E-mail Filter Works

How the Junk E-mail Filter works

The Junk E-mail Filter evaluates each incoming message based on several factors, including the time when the message was sent and the content of the message. The filter does not single out any particular sender or message type, but instead analyzes each message based on its content and structure to discover whether or not it is probably spam. The Junk E-mail Filter is turned on by default, and the protection level is set to Low. This level is designed to catch the most obvious spam. You can make the filter more aggressive by changing the level of protection. Also, the Junk E-mail Filter can be updated periodically to protect against the latest techniques that spammers use to spam your Inbox.

Junk E-mail folder

Any message that is caught by the Junk E-mail Filter is moved to a special Junk E-mail folder. It is a good idea to review the messages in the Junk E-mail folder from time to time to make sure that they are not legitimate messages that you want to see. If they are legitimate, you can move them back to the Inbox by marking them as not junk. You can also drag them to any folder.

Junk E-mail Filter Lists

Even though the Junk E-mail Filter filters your incoming messages automatically, you can control what is and is not considered spam by using the Junk E-mail Filter Lists. These lists enable you to allow or block messages that arrive from specific e-mail addresses and domains.

There are five Junk E-mail Filter lists

• Safe Senders List
• Safe Recipients List
• Blocked Senders List
• International - Blocked Top-Level Domains List
• International - Blocked Encodings List

Safe Senders List

If the filter mistakenly marks an e-mail message as a junk e-mail message, you can add the sender of that message to the Safe Senders List. E-mail addresses and domain names in the Safe Senders List are never treated as junk e-mail, regardless of the content of the message.

• All of the e-mail addresses in your Contacts are included in this list if the Also trust e-mail from my Contacts check box is selected (the default setting). With this setting, messages from people in your Contacts folder will never be treated as junk e-mail messages.
• E-mail addresses of people who are not listed in your Contacts but with whom you correspond are included in this list if you select the Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List check box. (This check box is not selected by default.)
• A recipient's e-mail address is saved in the list by default only when you create and send a message manually in Outlook, as opposed to the message being generated automatically by a program.
• Personal distribution lists cannot be added by using this check box.
• If you accidentally reply to a spammer's e-mail message (for example, by sending a request to unsubscribe from the spammer's mailing list) while this check box is selected, that spammer's e-mail address will be added to the Safe Senders List.
   
  If you notice the spammer's subsequent messages in your Inbox, you must add the spammer's e-mail address to the Blocked Senders List and remove the corresponding entry from the Safe Senders List. If the same address appears in both the Blocked Senders List and the Safe Senders List, the Safe Senders List takes precedence, and the address will not be considered unsafe.
• If you are using a Microsoft Exchange e-mail account, all of the names and e-mail addresses in the Global Address List (Global Address List: The address book that contains all user, group, and distribution list e-mail addresses in your organization. The administrator creates and maintains this address book. It may also contain public folder e-mail addresses.) are automatically considered safe.
• You can also configure Outlook so that it accepts messages only from people in your Safe Senders List. This configuration gives you complete control over which messages are delivered to your Inbox.

Safe Recipients List

If you belong to a mailing list or a distribution list, you can add the list sender to the Safe Recipients List, so that messages sent to these e-mail addresses or domain names are never treated as junk, regardless of the content of the message.

Blocked Senders List

You can easily block messages from particular senders by adding their e-mail addresses or domain names to the Blocked Senders List. When you add a name or e-mail address to this list, Outlook moves any incoming message from that source to the Junk E-mail folder. Messages from people or domain names that appear in this list are always treated as junk, regardless of the content of the message.

If you have existing lists of safe or blocked names and addresses, you can import them into Outlook.

International - Blocked Top-Level Domains List

To block unwanted e-mail messages that come from another country or region, you can add country/region codes to the Blocked Top-Level Domains List.

This list enables you to block e-mail addresses that end in a specified top-level domain. For example, selecting the CA [Canada], US [United States], and MX [Mexico] check boxes in the list would block messages from e-mail addresses that end in .ca, .us, and .mx. Additional country/region codes appear in the list.

International - Blocked Encodings List

To block unwanted e-mail messages that appear in another language, you can add encodings to the Blocked Encodings List.

This list enables you to block all e-mail addresses in a specified language encoding  (encoding: A method for representing characters in HTML or plain-text e-mail messages, examples include US-ASCII, Unicode (UTF-8), and Western European (ISO). Outlook automatically selects an optimal encoding for outgoing e-mail messages.), also known as a character set. Today, the vast majority of junk e-mail is sent in US-ASCII encoding. The remainder is sent in various other international encodings. The Blocked Encodings List list gives you the ability to filter out unwanted international e-mail that is displayed in languages that you don't understand.

 Notes 

• Unicode (Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium. By using more than one byte to represent each character, Unicode enables almost all of the written languages in the world to be represented by using a single character set.) encodings are not included in the Blocked Encodings List.
• Messages that have unknown or unspecified encodings will be subject to filtering by the regular Junk E-mail Filter.

If you make changes to your profile, you should export a copy of your Junk E-mail Lists before making the changes, and then import the information into Outlook. This way, you will avoid the necessity of re-creating your Junk E-mail Filter Lists.

Filtering for phishing messages

The Junk E-mail Filter also automatically evaluates each incoming message to discover whether it might be suspicious, potentially fraudulent, or part of a phishing attack. For more information see, Enable or disable links and functionality in phishing e-mail messages (coming soon).