Have I Been Pwned

Question

Have I Been Pwned

Lesley Ross 0

Why am I getting so much junk mail? I am getting hundreds of junk mail every day. I used to get 5-10, now it's hundreds.

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3 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Getting 100+ junk emails a day does not mean Outlook/Microsoft shared your email address with a third party. Email addresses are commonly obtained through data breaches, websites you previously registered with, public webpages, compromised contact lists, or automated harvesting.

If the increase was very sudden. For example, you normally received a few junk messages and then suddenly started receiving hundreds of newsletter registrations, account confirmations, or messages in different languages, you should take it more seriously. This can be a spam bomb, also called subscription bombing. This actually happened to me a few years ago, but with my Gmail address at that time.

In a subscription/newsletter signup-bombing attack, someone enters your email address into large numbers of legitimate websites and mailing lists, often using an automated script. Those websites then send genuine registration or confirmation messages to your address. More importantly, sometimes the flood is intentionally created to hide one important email among hundreds of unimportant ones. In my case back then, it was because my CapitalOne credit card was compromised and was used by someone to make a big order at the Apple store. They were really hoping that the CapitalOne and Apple confirmation emails were hidden among the spam emails that suddenly flooded my inbox. Luckily I saw that. In fact, I also got a sudden increase of text messages confirming newsletter sign-ups from many sources too. Same, they were hoping I wouldn't then notice the alert CapitalOne sent me.

Therefore, if this started suddenly, I would not simply mass-delete everything. Search the messages carefully for terms such as order, purchase, payment, transaction, password, reset, security alert, verification, bank, PayPal, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and the names of any financial institutions or shopping accounts you use.

Such behavior is actually documented.. See the one shared by the Swiss Government: https://www.bacs.admin.ch/en/26w6-en

As for how to stop these emails. Unfortunately there's no easy way. You will have to unsubscribe each one using the link at the bottom of the email. It will take time for this to eventually die down. For my situation with Gmail, it took weeks for them to eventually go back to normal. Even as of today, I still occassionly received some random newsletter sign up confirmation emails.

Answer 2

Hi, @Lesley Ross

Are these spam emails showing up in your Inbox, or are they already going into Junk Email?

If they’re landing in your Inbox, here’s something you can do to start blocking them:

Click Settings (gear icon from top right)
Choose Mail > Junk email.
Under Blocked senders and domains, select Add blocked sender.
Enter the email address you want to block. If you want to block an entire domain (for example, everything from @spamdomain.com), you can enter the domain name instead.
Click "Save" and monitor if the issue will persist.

You can also change the level of protection in the Junk Email Filter using this steps:

In the same Settings (Settings > Mail > Junk email).
From there, you can select the "Strict" option. Please note that this will put all other messages into the Junk Email folder if they are not from the Safe Senders and Domains list. So, I suggest building your Safe Senders and Domains list first to allow known senders into your inbox.
You can also enable the option "Block attachments, pictures, and links from anyone not in my Safe Senders and Domains list" and in option "Trust email from my contacts".
Click "Save" and monitor if the issue will persist.

Also, did this start suddenly today, or has it been happening for a while? A sudden wave like this can sometimes mean your email was exposed somewhere.

Click "Add comment" to let me know.

Thanks!

Answer 3

A sudden jump from a few junk messages to hundreds usually means the address has become more widely exposed or added to spam lists. Microsoft’s guidance also notes that posting an email address publicly, sharing it with sites that resell data, or replying to spam can increase junk mail volume.

What can be done in Outlook/Outlook.com:

Keep junk filtering enabled. Junk mail identified by Outlook is moved to the Junk Email folder.
Block repeated senders or domains:
- Go to Settings > Mail > Junk email.
- Under Blocked senders and domains, add the sender address or the domain.
Add trusted senders to Safe senders and domains so wanted mail is less likely to be treated as junk.
Do not reply to spam, including “unsubscribe,” unless the sender is known and trusted. Replying confirms the address is active.
Be cautious with suspicious messages asking for personal information. Microsoft notes that legitimate companies usually do not ask for personal information by email.
Avoid exposing the address publicly and review privacy settings or preselected sharing checkboxes on websites.

Important limits to expect:

Blocking does not stop spam from being sent; it helps move matching messages to Junk Email.
Junk email in Outlook is retained for 30 days before automatic deletion and is not recoverable.
If the messages are already going to Junk Email, the filtering is working, but the sending volume can still remain high.

If the same domains keep appearing, block the domain rather than individual addresses.