According to reports from an increasing number of Microsoft customers, Outlook inboxes have been flooded with spam emails over the last nine hours because email spam filters are currently broken.
This ongoing issue was confirmed by countless Outlook users who have reported (on social media platforms and the Microsoft Community's website) that all messages were landing in their inboxes, even those that would have been previously tagged as spam and sent to the junk folder.
"I've received 36 spam emails in my inbox the past 2 hours straight. It's been happening for way too long and it just continues to get worse on an hourly basis," one user said.
"Seems to have begun happening between 10pm and midnight Eastern time (I have a successful junk mail at 10:04pm, and the first inbox junk mail at 12:17am)," another added.
Some say that even checking the "Only trust email from addresses in my Safe Senders and domains list and Safe mailing lists" in Junk Mail > Filters doesn't fix this issue, pointing to the webmail service's filtering being completely broken.
Despite the stream of customer complaints, the Office service status page shows that "everything is up and running."
Microsoft is yet to share a public statement confirming Outlook users' reports that spam filters are broken.
While today the spam filtering issue in Outlook seems to be particularly bad and affecting a massive number of customers, this has been going on for months, with some reporting seeing many spam emails landing in their inbox since at least November 2021.
Microsoft didn't reply to a request for comment when BleepingComputer reached out earlier today.
Update February 21, 00:32 EST: Microsoft has confirmed that spam and phishing emails are landing in the users' mailboxes. The company also says that some affected customers might experience "performance issues such as navigation delays and messaging latency in Outlook.com or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) connections."
Update February 21, 08:06 EST: Microsoft says the spam filter issue has now been addressed.
"We've identified the source of the problem and taken action to fix it. Our service telemetry shows that the problem has been addressed, and we'll continue to monitor this telemetry to ensure the issue remains mitigated," Redmond said.
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Comments
sun-devil99 - 2 years ago
Noticed this morning, a lot more spam than usual (which already has been bad since around end of last year). Today is a US holiday, so of course Microsoft is not going to have any updates.
NoneRain - 2 years ago
You noticed this in your personal acc, or business one?
nauip - 2 years ago
"Microsoft Outlook"
It should be clarified that you meant outlook.com and associated MS hosted free accounts and/or hosted domains and not just plain Microsoft Outlook the application.
It's always better to be more specific than to leave it up to the reader to figure out.
h_b_s - 2 years ago
""Microsoft Outlook"
It should be clarified that you meant outlook.com and associated MS hosted free accounts and/or hosted domains and not just plain Microsoft Outlook the application.
It's always better to be more specific than to leave it up to the reader to figure out."
It would be more helpful if Microsoft didn't purposely reuse, confuse, and blur brands. If anything people confusing their products is their fault.
Hmm888 - 2 years ago
Now they changed the name of Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365. Office 2021 was the last non-subscription (one time purchase) based Office suite which you could install offline and use offline without internet access. Anyone who wants the newer version will need to fork over a subscription. As such, many long-time Office users are migrating over to Google Docs or LibreOffice.
johnlsenchak - 2 years ago
Anybody still using Hotmail or Outlook email is very foolish in my opinion
CJatWork - 2 years ago
Please elaborate. I've been using a Hotmail account for many, many years. It filters the vast majority of spam I receive and I have no problem knocking out the few that get through. This is in spite of the fact that the account started life as a "throw-away". Ok, on some days it seems like the filter was off for a time, but I figure it's that the spammers have found a new way around the filter. Or is it something other than spam? I will admit, I've been disapointed with Microsofts constant changing of the UI. Perhaps one of the Exec's kids must need something to do to justify their checks? :-)
Hmm888 - 2 years ago
"Please elaborate. I've been using a Hotmail account for many, many years. It filters the vast majority of spam I receive and I have no problem knocking out the few that get through. This is in spite of the fact that the account started life as a "throw-away". Ok, on some days it seems like the filter was off for a time, but I figure it's that the spammers have found a new way around the filter. Or is it something other than spam? I will admit, I've been disapointed with Microsofts constant changing of the UI. Perhaps one of the Exec's kids must need something to do to justify their checks? :-)"
MS hasn't been doing a great job over the last few years with their Hotmail/Outlook. Gmail is better but limited in many respects. But it has it's shortcomings too.
What's really disappointing about MS is you need a very good adblocker to prevent the constant ads for Office 365 or Outlook Premium.
Like with Yahoo, some email doesn't get through to Hotmail for some unknown reason despite not having any filters to block them. In contrast, emails do get through and get moved to spam (99% of the time) with Gmail. But German sites are now targeting Gmail, at least in my main Gmail account and you can't block them because they're using unique graphic icons in the subject or from. Gmail filters don't work on them.
Hmm888 - 2 years ago
"Anybody still using Hotmail or Outlook email is very foolish in my opinion "
Ok. I suppose you want us to use Netscape Mail?