Junk email is any email you receive that you haven’t signed up for or requested. It is also called spam. It is very hard to stop these emails getting through, but Outlook does have some tools to make the task a little easier.
This is a real cat and mouse game, with people who send spam finding ways to get around the tools created to stop spam. Your email provider probably already filters out spam for you, but if unwanted emails are finding their way into your Outlook, there is a second barrier you can turn on, which isn’t 100% effective, but is certainly better than nothing.
In Outlook, select the Home tab and then click on the “Junk” dropdown list which is located in the “Delete” group. Select “Junk E-mail options” and set the email protection level to “High” and click “OK”. Any message that Outlook thinks is spam will be moved to the “Junk E-mail” folder, and links and images in the message will be disabled.
Some legitimate emails may be treated as spam so it’s important you skim through the emails in the junk e-mail folder regularly to check for any emails you want to keep. If you find one, right click it and select “Junk” from the drop down list, and then select “Never block sender”. This will ensure any emails from this source are not blocked in the future.
On the other hand, spam emails may not be picked up by the filter, and they will not be moved to the junk e-mail folder. If this happens, right click it and select “Junk” from the drop down list. Select “Block sender” so that any future emails go directly to the junk e-mail folder.
Remember to never respond to a spam email, or click any links in the message. All this does is confirm to the spammer that your email address is a valid one. Refer to our article in issue 13 for more information on what you can do to avoid getting spam messages and find other ideas on how to deal with them.
