Microsoft Outlook Junk Mail Filter Failure
Earlier this week, a problem with Microsoft’s junk mail filters resulted in users of its Outlook mail service (including Hotmail accounts) being flooded with spam. Although the problem only lasted from the evening of the 31st May to the following morning, this was enough time for thousands of messages to reach their targets. Issues such as these have affected web-based mail providers in the past and are sure to affect them again in the future, which is why corporate online spam filtering solutions are still considered as a necessity.
Tight Lipped
Unsurprisingly, as far as regular observers of the Richmond software giant are concerned, Microsoft has so far declined to provide any details about the failure of their junk filters so we are none the wiser as to the root cause of the problem. They did act swiftly to address the issue, implementing fixes within a matter of hours, but many Hotmail and Outlook users received hundreds of spam emails before the fixes were rolled out. The fact that so many emails got through in such a short space of time only goes to show just how important it is to implement independent anti-spam filters to protect inboxes from such messages.
Offers You Can Refuse
Among the messages that got through to the inboxes of Outlook users were many of the usual suspects: online casino offers, Russian brides, get-rich-quick schemes, and promises of larger genitals in a matter of weeks were just some of the special offers that recipients were only too happy to refuse. Anybody who has ever peeked into their junk folder in the past will be familiar with the type of messages that were received and will realise they are nothing new but when they land in your inbox, they can be a real nuisance.
Loss of Productivity
While the majority of personal users see such failures as little more than a temporary inconvenience, and may even find some of the offers they receive rather humorous, for large companies with thousands of email inboxes a sudden influx of spam can have a serious impact on productivity. The time that it takes workers to delete hundreds of spam messages so they can see the important emails in their inbox could be better spent doing something more productive.
Addressing the Issue
While Microsoft say they have implemented both a short and long-term fix, problems such as these are bound to reoccur in the future. Corporate antispam solutions, which run on company intranets or are hosted in the cloud, are one way to ensure that such junk filter failures do not affect your company’s productivity figures in the future and when compared to the loss of productivity that can occur if spam gets through, the cost of such solutions are inconsequential. If you would like to find out just how little it will cost to protect your company email inboxes from such problems in the future, please do not hesitate to contact the MailCleaner team to discuss our range of spam filtering software.