Mitigate Junk/Spam Mail

Owned by Moffat, Ethan
Last updated: Dec 15, 2014 by Karen Park

In some cases, Junk or Spam messages, including Phishing Messages, may make it through the filter. Additionally, legitimate messages may be blocked as Spam or moved into the Junk Folder automatically.

  • If an email was not received, check the "Junk Email" folder in Outlook or Webmail. If the email is not in this folder, contact the CIS HelpDesk with the sender's email address and an approximate time that the message was sent.
  • If a phishing email is received, delete the message and do not respond with any information. 

Tips for Mitigating Junk or Spam Email messages

The following tips are all effective ways of mitigating the amount of spam received in your email inbox.

  • Unsubscribe. Nearly all legitimate bulk email messages provide built-in mechanisms to unsubscribe from advertising based email messages. If a message looks like legitimate advertising or a promotional newsletter and also provides an unsubscribe or opt-out feature, start a regular process of clicking the unsubscribe link in these messages. Email addresses are quite often sold or shared by advertising corporations. Legal advertisers are required by law to respect your opt-out requests.
  • Prize Drawings . Many prize drawings and sweepstake entries are simple mechanisms to gather personal details (name, phone number, email address) for further advertising and marketing. Providing contact information for online prize drawings will increase the amount of spam messages received. Do not enter online prize drawings if you do not want an increased volume of spam email .
  • Don't Click-it. Web-based advertising is very common. The first step in web marketing is to get users routed to an advertiser's web site. The more times a free promotional sample is requested, the more mailing lists an email address will be added to.
  • Create Rules within Outlook . Rules are an effective way of automatically moving spam from the inbox to a different folder. This is sometimes necessary if a marketer requires up to two weeks (or more) to remove an email from their mailing list. For more information on how to create rules in Outlook, see  Creating an Outlook Rule .