Learn How Outlook Junk Mail Filter Works to Stop Spam Emails

Email is one of the most popular means of communication nowadays. Therefore, receiving spam emails is also the most common issues faced by the email application users. Moreover, it is really hard for a user to completely stop the delivery of junk emails. But a user can decrease the number of spam in the inbox automatically with the help of Outlook Junk mail filter to stop spam emails. Now, if a user is working in an organization, then most probably the anti-spam filter option is already configured on the Exchange Sever to stop spam emails. However, for a home user, it is necessary to configure the Junk mail filter in MS Outlook manually. Thus, the aim of this post is to help users in determining the most efficient way to stop junk emails.

More About Outlook Junk Mail Filter to Stop Spam Emails

• The primary aim of Junk Email Filter is to move the suspicious spam to the Junk folder directly. However, it does not prevent junk emails from entering into Outlook account.
• In Outlook, the Junk Mail Filter is by default turned on and the protection level is set to Low, to detect only the highly suspected spam emails.
• A user can change the protection level to high also in order to catch almost all spam emails. However, many filters are not much smart to catch every suspicious email but they can solve your problem to some extent.

How to Apply Junk Mail Filter to Stop Spam Emails?

A user can use the Junk Mail Filter Outlook option to stop spam emails. Now, to open the Junk Email Filter option follow the steps mentioned below:

In Outlook 2013 & 2010

1. First, go to Home tab and then, click on Deleted Group option.
2. After that, click on Junk option and then, on Junk E-mail Options

In Outlook 2007

Navigate to Actions >> Junk E-mail >> Junk-Email Options
As the user clicks on Junk E-mail Options button, a dialog box consists of 5 tabs will open i.e.

• Options
• Safe Senders
• Safe Recipients
• Blocked Recipients
• International

All of the above are discussed below in brief:

Option Tab (Select the right protection level for you)

There are four filtering options provided, a user can choose any of these:

1. No Automatic Filtering: This option will automatically turn off the Junk Email Filter but the mail send from the email address mentioned in block sender list will still move to the junk mail folder.
2. Low Level: This option will filter only the most likely junk messages and provide low-level protection
3. High Level: It provides high-level protection, for example, sometimes it filter legitimate emails also with junk emails
4. Safe Lists Only: This option will allow emails only from the addresses mentioned in the safe recipients and safe sender list.

Apart from all this, three other options are also provided i.e. permanently delete suspected emails, disable links in junk emails, and warning about the suspicious emails. A user can choose any of them according to the choice.

Safe Senders & Safe Recipients (Forbid Legitimate Emails as Junk)

The safe senders and safe recipients tabs are the other two tabs of Junk Email Options. A user can add trusted emails addresses in the both lists and prevent them from being treated as junk email.

1. Safe Senders List: In this, a user can add the legitimate message email addresses to the safe sender’s list and prevent it from being as spam.

2. Safe Recipients List: If a user does not want to miss any single sent to the particular email address then, can add that particular email address to the safe recipient list. Using this option, a user can add any number email address to list by just clicking on Add button.

Block Senders List (But it is not the right way to stop junks emails)

This tab is completely opposite of the two safe lists discussed above. In this, a user can add the email address of those senders from which he does not want to receive any email. After using this option, all messages received from this email address is directly added to the junk folder and treated as spam.

However, spammers send all these junk emails from the fake addresses. Therefore, blocking these fake email address does not work. In order to stop these spam emails, one tries to find the real address of the sender by checking the Internet Header and then, try to block it.

International (Block Unwanted Foreign Language Emails)

If a user wants to prevent the emails from the foreign languages then, needs to open the International tab. This tab offers various options that are discussed below:

1. Block Top-Level Domains List: With the help of this option, a user can prevent the email messages from the specific regions or countries. It means if a user selects, IN (India) then, he will stop receiving messages from the email address belongs to India.

2. Blocked Encoding List: With the help of this option, one can avoid all email messages encoded in the specific language that is not understandable by the user.

Conclusion

Receiving spam emails is the most common issue faced by the Outlook users. Therefore, most of the users are searching for a solution to move Outlook spam emails to some other locations. After considering the requirement of the users, we have discussed the procedure to use Outlook Junk Mail filter to stop spam emails. However, this Junk Mail filter option only move suspected spam directly to junk mail folder but prevent them from getting into Outlook.