How to Say Goodbye to Hotmail Spam for Good
Are You Using Microsoft’s Online Email Service?
Before we go further, let us have a look at the email service that you are using. Is it Hotmail? Is it Outlook.com? If the answer is “no” but you are sure that it is a Microsoft-hosted account, could it be Live.com, or MSN.com, or even Passport.com (although these are extremely rare)? If the answer to these questions is “yes” or you access your webmail via Outlook.com, then you’re in the right place.
If you’re using a Microsoft webmail service either through your browser or email client and it is dumping endless spam messages into your inbox, regardless of whether you’re marking them as junk or not, then it’s time to begin the fight back.
Marking Email as Junk: What Should Happen
When you spot junk email in your inbox, it’s easy to just delete it. But this is largely inefficient, as more will come from the same senders, or of the same topic, or using the same format.
A better solution is to use your junk email tool to mark the offending spam message as junk, and therefore prevent its future appearance in your mailbox. Microsoft’s online Outlook mailbox presents us with a tool to mark certain messages as spam, but it is largely in your hands. Unless the messages are completely obvious spam emails, or Microsoft has been previously made aware of them, they won’t be automatically junked.
Worse still, they won’t necessarily be junked in future even if you mark them as such. Microsoft appears to have a very slow (or non-existent) process here. The junk email feature in the Outlook 2016 email client is just as unreliable. Oh, and in the browser, you can’t reliable select multiple messages and mark them all as junk with a single click.
In short, it’s a resounding failure.
Contrast this with Gmail. Messages in a Gmail account are largely uninterrupted by spam. If they are, it is easy to highlight them, and say goodbye permanently to them.
If only there was a way for Google’s far superior junk email tool to work on your Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, MSN (or whatever) account… right? Oh wait!
Use Gmail to Filter Spam From Hotmail
In fact, there's a way to use the Gmail’s spam tool to tidy up your Hotmail or Outlook.com inbox. This is done by making use of Gmail as a client application, literally opening your Outlook.com webmail account with Gmail.
It’s not an ideal situation, but fortunately it is simple to setup. In your Gmail inbox, open Settings > Accounts and Import, find Check mail from other accounts, then click Add a mail account.
You’ll then need to input your credentials, perhaps label the incoming messages, and click Add Account to confirm. Look out for the confirmation code sent to your Hotmail/Outlook account you’ll need to input this in the Gmail screen to finalize the link up.
Once this is done, you can use Gmail’s superior spam management tools to block undesirable and unsolicited emails coming your way!
Read Any Email Account With Gmail
In fact, you can ready virtually any email account using Gmail, so if you’re having spam or convenience issues with your current email service, simply use Gmail to open and read your inbox. Essentially, your email from the “bad” account is being delivered to the “good” account Gmail, with the spam filtered out!
And yes, there are privacy concerns with Gmail, insofar as the proliferation of targeted adverts; these might be considered as irritating as spam itself.
