I’m biting my nails as I write this. I’ve just disabled all the Outlook rules I created to catch and get rid of spam.
Until now I’ve used 14 separate mailbox rules, containing hundreds of conditions, to catch incoming spam e‑mail, flag it as such, and either delete it outright, stick it in a “Might be Spam” folder, or bounce it back to its originating address. When you get an average of 10,000 spam messages per day across all your e‑mail addresses like I do, you need something to handle them, to separte them from the legitimate mail. Outlook did that for me, albeit with my constant vigilance analyzing uncaught spam and updating the mailbox rules to catch them in the future.
Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder if I need those rules. My “Spam,” “Might be Spam,” and “Deleted Items” folders contain virtually no spam. Rather, Outlook seems to have more false positives on legitimate mail. I still get as much spam sent to me, but it never gets through to my Outlook inbox. Spam Arrest, which I’ve been using for 9 months now, catches nearly all of it. At left you can see the breakdown of my mail, how much Spam Arrest catches and filters out.So, I’m taking a chance today. I’ve turned off all the Outlook spam filtering rules to see what happens. If I don’t get any spam today, I’ll leave the rules off and see how tomorrow goes, and the next day, and so on.
You must be logged in to post a comment.