Outlook.com inboxes flooded with SPAM (Feb. 20, 2023)

[German]If your Outlook inboxes (outlook.com, live.com etc.) has been flooded with SPAM today, February 20, 2023, the good news is "you was not alone". Something must have happened at Microsoft and someone switches off the SPAM filters so that mailboxes were flooded with SPAM messages.


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A few hours ago, a user on Microsoft Answers in the Outlook forum opened the thread Why are all my junk emails coming through into my inbox? Started two days ago and asked: Why are all these junk emails coming through into my inbox? Started two days ago. This thread now has six pages of users talking about outlook.com and the spam wave. One affected user from a small consulting firm wrote:

I just started having the same problem. I get a huge amount of spam, so I filter everything. I only allow mails from my contacts list or safe senders. RIght now everything is going into my inbox. This just started.

And another user wrote:

Noticed the same thing. Can't find any mail rules, etc.. this seems to have happened overnight? ALL email going straight to inbox. MAJOR pain in the butt. Anyone out there that has seen or knows how to fix this?? Is this a larger Microsoft issues??

Also on reddit.com there is a thread where a user in the outlook forum asks why so many SPAM mails reach him. Someone describes the situation in the answer like this:

Same happening with me.

Settings > Junk Mail still has Only Trust E-mail From Safe Senders, checked, and the mail going to my inbox has the a banner saying some content has been blocked because it isn't in Safe Senders, so I know that's right. Tested by sending mail from my other non-outlook account (which is purposefully not whitelisted).

My Power Automate isn't even triggering since the mail never hits Junk Mail, so it's not as if the automation is broken.

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).

It looks like Microsoft's online email service outlook.com has had its entire spam filters knocked out. Neowin quotes the following tweet from Brad Sams, who also noticed this.

Outlook.com flooded with SPAM


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There are several media reports about the problem on TwitterI just checked one of my Outlook.com test accounts, there is nothing to see from a SPAM.. Ich habe gerade bei einem meiner Outlook.com-Testkonten nachgeschaut, da ist nichts von einer SPAM zu sehen.

Outlook.com

The last SPAM entry is from December 6, 2022 and claims to be from a bank I don't have a relation with. But before that, there are entries from 2013 – nothing worse to see. Instead, Microsoft is annoying with its recommendation to use Microsoft Edge for Outlook to pick up the emails. Microsoft, I'm not interested in explanations of a new, simplified ribbon. The guys and gals in Redmond's developer cubicles just don't get it.

Meanwhile, Tom Warren writes on The Verge that the problem has been fixed according to the Office status page. Were any of you affected by this problem?


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