As technology has increased in our daily lives, so have the number of emails we receive. Managing legitimate emails can often seem like an overwhelming task, not to mention dealing with the many junk messages we receive.  Unfortunately, there is not a national “Do Not Email” list like the “Do Not Call” list. There are several methods you can use to prevent junk mail.

Junk E-mail Filter

The junk email filters job is to evaluate messages to determine if they are spam based on the level of security or protection level that you set up for your inbox.

In the advanced Junk Mail Settings, you can click the “Safe Senders” tab to manually add or remove email addresses or domain names. If there are certain people that you would like to proactively add to your Safe Senders list to ensure their messages are never treated as junk, you can do so by clicking the Add button. Note: by default anyone listed in your Contacts folder will automatically be trusted as a safe sender.

In the advanced Junk Mail Settings, you can click the “Safe Recipients” tab to manually add or remove entries. “Safe Recipients” means that if a message is sent to a recipient in this list regardless of the content or who it is from, it will not be treated as SPAM. This is typically used for items like a listserv or newsletter that are sent to a specific distribution group by multiple senders. By adding the name of the external distribution group to this list, messages received that are sent to that group will never be treated as junk.

In the advanced Junk Mail Settings, you can click the “Blocked Senders” tab to manually add or remove email addresses or domain names. After you block a specific sender, you may notice that you continue to receive junk messages from other people with the same domain name. The domain name is the portion of the email address listed after the @ sign. If you would like to block all messages from a domain you can do so in the junk mail settings. REMEMBER: if you block generic domains like Hotmail.com or Gmail.com, ALL messages from anyone with a Hotmail or Gmail address will be blocked.

Sometime what companies do to try and get around being blocked is to change part of the email address, so that they still get through to your email inbox. i.e. they may send it from junk@junkemail.com one week and the next week send it from junk2@junkemail.com.  To increase the chances of Outlook blocking the unwanted emails or sending it to the junk mail folder, you can create a rule that includes any emails from the that domain. (i.e. @junkmail.com) Below are the instructions for how to Block a domain.

1.       On the Home tab in the delete group, click the Junk drop down menu and then click Junk email options

2.       When the Junk E-mail dialog box opens, click on the block sender tab

3.       Click Add and type the domain only in the text box, @domain.com  (i.e junkemail.com).

4.       Click Ok 2 times