So eventually I decided that 99% of the mail I want to get comes from people already in my contact list. So I opened the spam option in Outlook and set filtering to high. It allows you to restrict receiving incoming mail from an approved list of mail addresses and from your contacts.
I still get tons of garbage mail. Anybody knows why?
Which version of Outlook are you using? I have 2007, and in the Junk E-mail options, besides the ability to set filtering protection to “safe lists only”, there’s a setting in the Safe Senders tab that says “Also trust e-mail from my Contacts” (along with the Safe Senders list). I don’t use the “safe lists only” setting but it’s different than “High”, which is what you say you’ve set yours at. If you don’t have Outlook 2007, then it’s likely the settings are different.
Outlook spam filtering doesn’t delete before you see it, it just moves it to the Junk Mail folder if it hits the trigger. Is that what you’re seeing?
I’m using Outlook 2003.
Its set to “safe lists only”, and I checked “Also trust e-mail from my Contacts”. Its moving some of the junk mail to junk folder as before, but half of it still stays in my inbox, although those email addresses are not in any of my lists.
I thought that was odd behaviour, so I did some reading of this MS article on the spam filtering. In about the middle of the doc, there is this:
When a message arrives, the Junk E-mail filter in Outlook 2003 evaluates messages in this order:
Determine if the sender’s address is in the Safe Senders List.
Determine if one or more recipients is on the Safe Recipients List.
Determine if the sender’s address is in the Blocked Senders List.
Determine if the sender’s domain is in the Safe Senders List.
Determine if one or more recipient domains are on the Safe Recipients List.
Determine if the sender’s domain is in the Blocked Senders List.
Based on these criteria, a message is either delivered to you or it is handled as junk e-mail.
Could the check of one of those be failing for those messages that go to your Inbox? I understand you said that the emails aren’t on any of your lists, but from the way the spam filter is supposed to work, it must be failing one of those (or think it’s failing one of those). Check for domains (#5) as an important one.
what a poor documentation of a feature
Based how? does it need to fail one check or all. Does it add up the successful checks and sends the message to the inbox if it scores 4 and above?
Also, I don’t understand why it is evaluating blocked lists and domains. The option is 'Safe List Only security level’ so anything not on my safe list should be excluded regardless of it being or not being on a blocked list.
I guess the initial thread title is correct. Its a broken feature with stupid documentation.
This is my understanding of it. It’d be a pass/fail for each as it goes down the list in order. So, let’s say you receive message A:
That’s everything that it does via those checks (i.e. those use your lists to determine whether it’s junk email or not). That has nothing to do with checking whether the message is junk using whatever their junk filter usually does. It’s only for checking against your lists.
Also, I don’t understand why it is evaluating blocked lists and domains. The option is 'Safe List Only security level’ so anything not on my safe list should be excluded regardless of it being or not being on a blocked list.
That’s correct. From Outlook 2007 documentation: “If you receive a large number of e-mail messages, you can alternatively select this option, which will cause any e-mail message that is sent neither from someone on your Safe Senders List nor to a mailing list on your Safe Recipients List to be treated as junk.” It certainly sounds to me that if there’s no safe sender or recipient, it’s junk. Period. It certainly doesn’t seem to work that way for you, though, so I’d have to agree…
I guess the initial thread title is correct. Its a broken feature with stupid documentation.
Unless there’s something that I’m not seeing. Do you have another antispam program/feature on that’s working against the Outlook version? How about any custom filters?