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Does outlook.live.com have as good of a spam filter as Gmail, or better?

I get a lot of spam emails, about 5-6 per day, and I currently have about 180 spam emails in the spam folder in Gmail. I pay for Microsoft 365 and MS Office and an outlook.live.com email account provides way more storage than Gmail that I'm already paying for, and I'm probably going to be a Microsoft customer for life, and I want to make the switch to outlook email from Gmail, but I need something that filters all the spam out like Gmail out or I could could not live without it. By spam I mean the kind of emails with malicious links.

So I have 0 emails in the junk folder in outlook email but I haven't really used this account for email much. Once I start out give out its email address to accounts and maybe this number I'm guessing would go up.

TLDR: Is Outlook email's spam filter just as good as Gmail or better? Because I want to make the switch to outlook email.

Also: I'm worried a lot of online services when they want access to your email usually list Gmail as an option. I don't know if I'd be able to use Outlook for this purpose. Thanks.

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They are both awful.

Really? Gmail has workout out okay for me so far. I'm no famous person but I seem to get a fair amount of scam emails that never make it to my inbox thanks to Gmail.

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u/k_dubious avatar

So much worse. My inbox is cluttered with all sorts of obvious bullshit, while real people trying to contact me end up in my junk folder all the time. 

u/fountainofdreams avatar

Based on my experience, Microsoft's email spam filters are awful and there is no way I could use an Outlook.com address full time. (Maybe it's become better?)

Gmail has one of the best spam filters, for better or worse.

u/Jeidoz avatar

If you asking "does those 150 spam mails will not shown in my inbox and automatically moved to junk folder" — yes it will, and it "better" than Gmail.

I have moved from gmail to outlook several years ago. And by default some needed emails may come to Junk folder too and you need to mark them as "needed mail" or create a rule for sender. Sometimes it is frustrating in beginning, but such mails are rare occurrence and mostly produced by outdated SSL certificates or suspicious links made by e-shops or "comfirm email" services.

They are about the same. I use both and I'm getting the same amount of spam.

Once I clicked on a wrong link I was bombarded with 100s of junk email every day. Almost everything was moved to junk folder but since I like to keep it clean I started to mass block the addresses in junk folder and nowadays it's back to 1-2junk emails every couple of days. It took 1 or 2 months to recover from that miss click.

Tbh I have no idea but it’s more about how is your address exposed.

My outlook is completely spam free eg, while my gmail that I use for shopping/registering at random sites are full of spam.

Use multiple emails for different purposes.

u/ChampionshipComplex avatar

They are both similar, and for good reason.

Spam wouldnt exist if it completely failed to get through - so Google and Outlook both get hammered by a similar amount of BS emails.

However Microsoft is slightly better, as it has a much larger investment in Email security, and has more reason to protect the user than Google - Remember Google is 90% an advertising company, so is invested in not blocking content, infact Google actively fight to have you see adverts which we all know are often spoofs and scams.

Microsoft being predominantly a business focussed company with 90% of its revenue coming from us the user for services then its easy to see why Microsoft spend a billion dollars a year to try to safeguard users.

Thats not to say Microsoft is free of spam, because of course its the biggest target, but it does way more than Google in terms of telemetry and discovery across its billions of users.
For business users it offers professional tools for detection/blocking of malicious Emails - And these products do things, like rewrite the URLs of hyperlinks to ensure you dont get taken to any dangerous websites, it will automatically download file attachments and zips, and detonate them in the background automatically to ensure theyre safe before sending them onto you to be opened. So while this tech isnt free in the personal versions of Outlook - The metrics/information gathered from Microsoft to protect business users, feeds into its algorithms and trusts for Email delivery.

Also recently most Email vendors have made massive improvements in their systems, to ensure they check the DMARCs, SPFs of email delivered. What that means is, that whereas in the past - it was possible for spammers/hackers to send emails that pretended to come from other source addresses, that's now impossible - as email systems like Outlook - will inspect the headers, source IP addresses and various DNS records of emails - to ensure that any email is from a trusted/verified source and not misrepresenting where it comes from.

Of course it is impossible to stop someone just registering a site with a name, and sending an email address with a link in it, and if that email/links hasnt been identified yet as malicious - then it will take time before its reputational score causes it to be blocked - But Email delivery is far safer than it has ever been.

If I look at my Gmail account today - I dont see any spam that hasnt been caught for over a month, in my Outlook.livel.com account I dont see any that havent been caught for the last two or three months.

And my mailboxes are not quiet - I have 114 thousand emails in my inbox - I have about 30 emails detected today as spam/junk.

You seem to be saying that Outlook email is better at making sure spam email, especially ones with malicious links, doesn't make it to your inbox and goes straight to the junk folder? Because I might just make the switch to Outlook in the near future when I have some more free time, and import all my Gmail emails to Outlook and change the email address on my (over 600) online accounts to my Outlook email address. I'm a Microsoft customer for Office and Microsoft 365, and it seems like it's going to stay this way for maybe life, so I'm thinking why the heck not. Microsoft saves me a lot of money, and IMO is the best for the browser, providing free Chat GPT 4, among other things, and now maybe this to me.

I use Apple products at home because of the Apple hardware products ecosystem that works really well together, but Microsoft I feel is the wealthiest company on the planet for good reason.

Thank you so much for this answer.

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