<aside> 🥡 Takeaways from this article: If you can’t find an email, check your Junk\Spam folder and your online quarantine. Check these locations at once per month at the very least. Raise particularly dangerous and/or targeted phishing emails and scams to Action Fraud. Think you’ve been scammed or your account has been breached? Open a ticket ASAP.
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<aside> 🦹🏻 You can report and get advice about fraud or cyber crime by calling 0300 123 2040 or by visiting actionfraud.police.uk
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When email was originally designed all those years ago, interoperability was the key concern - this has resulted in a system where anyone can contact anyone else, which is good from a human point of view, but bad at protecting legitimate users from malicious actors.
So today we live in a world where phishing\spam\malware is a daily occurrence.
At the core, both spam and junk mail represent messages that clutter the user's inbox. While junk mail often comes from opt-in services, such as from businesses, spam refers to messages that the user did not opt to receive. When you're crafting a mailing list or sending out an advertisement, it's important that your message not come off as spam. If your address is repeatedly reported as spam, mail providers may begin catching your messages in the junk mail filter automatically.
<aside> ✉️ Essentially Junk is non-essential mail from a company or contact that you’ve consented to receive whilst Spam is non-essential unsolicited mail from a party to which you have no relationship. Spam often contains scams and malware, whereas Junk rarely ever does.
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Consider the origin of the phrase junk mail: those unsolicited advertisements that arrive in a physical mailbox. Your message, while legitimate, may be classified as "junk mail" if it doesn't fit their needs. For instance, a teenager may delight in the email flyers of a store that sells room decor, while her father finds them a nuisance.
To prevent an email from being put into your Junk or Spam folders, locate the email in your Junk\Spam folder, then right-click it and choose Junk > Not Junk. Outlook will then do two things for you:
Outlook moves the items from your Junk\Spam folder, and places it into your Inbox instead
Outlook adds the sender to your safe senders list such that next time they email you, it goes to your inbox instead of Junk\Spam.
Similarly, if you wish to mark an email that’s made it into your inbox as Junk: Locate the email, right-click it and choose Junk > Block Sender. Outlook will then do two things for you:
Outlook moves the item from your inbox or wherever it was located to your Junk\Spam folder
Outlook adds the sender to your block list such that next time they email you, their email will go to your Junk\Spam folder instead of your inbox
While everyone thinks of email when they hear the word "spam," it fits a more broad definition. In addition to the spam messages you get in your email, you can also receive spam messages via text, in an instant message and even as comments on websites. While not all spam messages are a scam, many spam messages are sent with malicious intent.
Spam scams happen to everyone once or twice: you get a message from your bank, claiming that you must "click this link and verify your account information." Whether the scammer in question wants into your bank or your Google account, the goal is the same: a third party tries to trick you into giving them your account information. While junk mail is usually a sort of advertisement from a company that has received or purchased your email address, scams use spam tactics, such as guessing email addresses or buying them, to infect your computer or steal your information.