My email address got hacked and posted on the dark web opening a floodgate of spam emails months ago -- all phishing scams.
Reporting them as phishing and blocking them significantly reduced the influx.
Now scammers are flooding me with emails that have no sender address, so they are almost all arriving into my inbox instead of being identified by MS as junk.
(Even more unnerving is that they address me by my first name which is not revealed in my email address.)
I report these "anonymous" emails as junk and phishing, but they continue to arrive in my inbox (MS algorithm isn't "learning"),
...and because there is no sender address, I can't block them.
Because I can't block them, I get dozens a day which is maddening and very time consuming to manage.
This is only the third day of this, and I expect it to get much worse.
I have read this 2020 forum thread, and it wasn't helpful, is now locked, and the "help" link provided is dead.
The advisor's suggestion to write "rules" for the spam wasn't useful because the emails all have different subjects with varied formatting, spacing, symbols etc. so that they are all unique (which will dodge rules).
(See attached image for sample of fraction of emails I got today -- every one I receive is different.)
Rules to block/route emails with certain keywords in the subjects (e.g. "claim," "insurance," "confirmation," etc.) could block potentially important emails.
Plus writing rules for each unique email would be pointless and extremely time consuming as they would mount into the hundreds or thousands.
It's not practical or doable for me to only accept emails from a list of "safe" senders. My contact list is enormous, and I get lots of emails from new and important contacts and businesses that I'm unable to know and add ahead of time.
This is my main email address that I've had for over ten years and is connected to all my accounts and contacts, so I don't want to change it (and it'd take way too long to change every account I have).
Is there any hope for dealing with this?
Is there any way to unveil hidden email addresses by looking at some coded page elements, etc.?
What else can I do?
Help, please! Thank you!
Additionally: This is a growing problem since scammers have learned how to get around email blocking.
Why can't Microsoft algorithms learn these emails are junk?
Suggested Simple Solution: Microsoft should allow us to block emails with no sender address since none would be legitimate.
Thanks!
