Junk Mail

Junk email is an unfortunate nuisance we all deal with to some extent, some more than others.   For most of us, the email system does a good or reasonably good job of sorting out spam and clutter from legitimate mail.

When email arrives, there are 3 levels of email scoring:

1) Inbox - legitimate mail.  This is where emails that are deemed to be not spam should go.

2) Cluter/"Other" inbox mail.  This is where low-priority things like legitimate marketing emails from companies you interact with, emails sent to some outside distribution lists, etc will end up.  It's meant for emails that are not spam, but are also not as important as other emails that end up in the inbox.  Things that score in this category are based on your past behavior.  If you have the Focused Inbox option turned on, these items will end up in the "OTHER" tab in your inbox.  If you have the clutter option turned on instead, it will show up in the "CLUTTER" folder. If you have both turned off, then they will end up in your inbox.  No option is better than the other, it's completely a personal preference.

3) Junk Email.  This is where any spam or phishing attempts should end up.

Here's some more information about Clutter.

And some information about Focused Inbox.

In the instance where spam comes into your inbox, you can mark it as junk using the following procedure via OWA (Outlook Web App).

These instructions also include how to deal with the opposite situation, where a legit email ends up in Junk Email.

Marking an email as Junk will move the item to the Junk Email folder, remove it from your inbox, and add the sender to your blocked senders list so any future emails from that person will automatically go to Junk the in future.

Marking an email as NOT Junk will move the item to your inbox, remove it from Junk Email, and add the sender to your Safe Senders list.

Marking as junk from outlook on your local computer works very much the same way.  In the Windows version of Outlook 2016, you can right click on a message, go to JUNK, then BLOCK SENDER.  This will add the sender to your blocked senders list and move it to junk.

There is an add-in that could be installed that would let you report junk email back to microsoft when you mark something as junk, to help make the junk mail filtering better.  This add-in is available for the Windows version of Outlook only.  It's up to you if you want to install it. Contact your local IT support for assistance.

Finally, if you are getting an inordinate amount of spam, it's possible that it could be a rule, safe sender/safe recipient entry, or even an setting change that could be to blame.  If you are having such an issue, feel free to contact Karl Lindauer (or your local IT support) and we can look at your settings to see if there is any other reason that this could be happening.