Outlook.com urgently needs an option to block calendar invitations.

I can create inbox rules that block or delete ordinary email based on sender, subject, keywords and other criteria. Yet Outlook.com gives me no equivalent control over calendar invitations.

This makes no sense from a security and anti-spam perspective. A calendar invitation is another form of unsolicited communication — and an even more intrusive one, because it can interact with my calendar, generate notifications and appear on my devices.

Users should be able to configure a simple rule such as:

“Reject/delete all calendar invitations”

or, at minimum:

“Accept calendar invitations only from contacts / trusted senders.”

Microsoft already has the technical capability to identify a message as a calendar/meeting request. This capability exists in Exchange mail-flow rules. Why is the same basic protection unavailable to Outlook.com/Hotmail personal users?

This is not just a feature request. It is an anti-spam and account-control issue.