Office 365 - Submit a message as spam/phishing

This document describes how users can help us improve campus junk mail filtering by reporting messages that were not flagged as spam. Doing this sends the feedback to the campus filtering engine and allows us to better identify spam in the future.

Important:

• Before you submit a message as spam/phishing, you should verify if the message is actually spam/phishing or graymail. To manage mail that is not spam/phishing, review the junk email and phishing documentation.

• If you are seeing 'Report Spam' link/action within your message, please remove this add-in - it has been deprecated.

  •  Follow steps to remove/disable deprecated Report Spam add-in:
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      1. Start Outlook.
      2. Double click on any message to open it in a new window.
      3. Expand the "Report Spam" section by clicking it.
                
      4. Click Get more add-ins - you will be redirected to your add-ins.
                    
      5. Select My add-ins.
      6. Scroll down until you see the add-in labelled "Report Spam."
      7. Click on the three dots located at the bottom right of the add-in and select Remove.
      8. Close the "ADD-INS" manager.
      9. Restart Outlook.

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• The "Report spam" add-in is only supported within modern Outlook clients. If you are using any non-Microsoft supported email client (e.g., Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Android/iOS native mail, etc.) or an older version of Outlook (2007/2010), you will not see the "Report Spam/Phishing" link within the toolbar/ribbon. However, it is still possible to report the message as spam/phishing, so that UW-Madison's spam/phishing filtering system can adjust to catch similar messages in the future. To report a message as spam, forward the message as an attachment to report-spam@doit.wisc.edu or use the "To report a message that has been misclassified as spam manually" instructions below. Note: you can attach more than one junk email when forwarding a message to us.

• The recommended method for reporting spam/phishing messages via any Microsoft Outlook client is to use the "Report Spam/phishing" link as described below. Do not use the "Junk" or "Mark as junk" features in any Outlook client as this process will create an automatic rule within your account to deliver future emails from this specific "From" address to your Junk Email folder - because most spam senders change their "From" address frequently, this additional step is usually not an effective way to block spam. Furthermore, there is a limit to the number of addresses that can be added to your Blocked Senders at which point the Blocked Senders tool will no longer function.

To report a spam/phishing message that was not delivered to your Junk Email folder (click on the plus sign to expand the specific client section)

To report a message that has been misclassified as spam/phishing manually

What if I submitted a message as spam/phish by mistake

If you mistakenly submit a message as spam/phish by mistake, do not be concerned - just move the message back to your desired folder from your "Deleted Items" folder.

When a message is submitted as spam/phish using the instructions outlined above, there are processes in place where the message will still be reviewed by our spam scanning vendor to validate if the message is truly spam/phishing. One false submission will not cause the message to be flagged as spam in the future.

If you used Microsoft's spam submission action (and not the steps above), the same results exist, except one additional action should be reviewed/reset - you should review your block list to remove the block filter that was created.

See Also:

• Office 365 (Outlook for Windows/Mac) - Error - Sorry! There was a problem, please try again.
• Office 365 - Known Issues