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How to Block Foreign Spam

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› Outlook › Email › How to Block Foreign Spam

Last reviewed on August 29, 2018     50 Comments

A frequent question users ask is how to block foreign spam:

I'm receiving email that looks like it comes from Russia (funny looking letters). I keep adding the addresses to my block senders list however I seem to be getting more and more of them. I would like to make a rule to just delete them all, but I cannot find the letters anywhere to type into the rule.
Can we make a rule in which Outlook 2010 can auto-delete any emails that contain Asian characters

Sure, you can create a rule to delete messages containing these (and other) character sets. You can also set the junk filter to delete mail that uses certain character sets.

But first, I'll address the use of the blocked list: Don't bother adding spammers to it. Because most spammers use an address once, you're only filling up the list with bad addresses. The blocked list should be nearly empty. Set the Junk Email filter on High and let Outlook take care of spam; use the Safe lists to whitelist addresses as needed.

Junk Email Options

If you use Outlook 2003 or newer, you can set the Junk email option to filter mail either by the top-level domain or character set. If you don't correspond with users in certain high spam countries or who would be using alternate character sets, you can configure Outlook to filter all messages from the top level domain or that use foreign character sets.

Open the Junk Email Options dialog and go to the International tab. Block most of the encodings, but not ASCII or Western European, possibly not Latin 3 and 9 and any others that would be used by people from other countries that you correspond with.

Set the character encoding

Note: If the message (spam) doesn't have a character set in the header, this filter won't work.

The lines in the message header will look something like either of these two lines:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Language: en-us

The top level domain list blocks mail sent from addresses ending in a two-character country code (.de, .us, .ru etc). Because most spammers use .com addresses, this filter is less useful.

Find the Junk Email Dialog:

In Outlook 2010, the Junk email options is Home ribbon in any mail folder; in Outlook 2003 and 2007, look on the Tools, Options dialog.
Expand the junk mail button to find options

Note that Outlook 2010 maintains separate junk mail settings for each account.

If you have multiple accounts and deliver the mail to different Inboxes, select an Inbox and review the junk mail settings, then repeat for each Inbox. If you use one Inbox, select a message from one account and review the settings, then select a message from another account and check the settings.

Create a Rule for Foreign Spam

Users of all versions of Outlook can create rules that look for foreign characters in message bodies. Copy a few of the most common characters from a spam message and paste them into a rule. You only need about 8 to 10 letters from each language for maximum spam filtering.

To create a rule

First, locate a message with the characters you want to filter on and copy one or more characters.

  1. Open Rules Wizard. In Outlook 2010, look for Manage Rules & Alerts on the Home ribbon, Move section, under the Rules button. In Outlook 2007 and earlier, Rules & Alerts is on the Tools menu.
  2. Click Add Rule.
  3. Choose Apply rule on messages I receive near the bottom of the dialog.
  4. Click Next to move to the Conditions screen.
  5. Select the "with specific words in the subject or body" condition.
  6. Click on "specific words"in the lower part of the dialog and paste the characters in the Specify words... field. Click Add.  If you copied multiple characters, delete all but one character, then click Add. Repeat until all characters are added.
  7. Click Next to move to the Actions screen.
    rule-for-spam
  8. Select "delete it" and click Next. At this point, the rule should look something like the rule shown in the screenshot.
  9. Click Next if you want to add exceptions to the rule or run it on messages in your Inbox, otherwise, click Finish to return to the Rules Wizard dialog.

More Information

  • Add EU to the International Blocked TLD List
  • Automatically Cleanup Outlook's Deleted Item and Junk Email Folders
  • Blocking Mail From New Top-Level Domains
  • Bulk Add Addresses to Safe and Blocked Senders Lists
  • Don't Get Caught In a Phishing Hack
  • Empty Multiple Deleted Items Folders using a Macro
  • Icon is not correct on the Junk Mail Folder
  • Junk Email Filtering isn't Working in Outlook
  • Junk Mail Filtering in Outlook
  • Office 365 Fraud Detection Checks
  • Outlook's "Not Junk" option isn't available
  • Rules and Tools to Filter Junk Mail
  • Samsung smartphones move email to the Junk folder
  • Sending Autoreplies to Spammers
  • Should You Respond to Junk Mail?
  • Understanding the Safe and Blocked Senders lists
  • Using Outlook's Junk Filter with Multiple Accounts
  • Using Outlook's Junk Mail filter
  • What Moved a Message to the Junk E-mail Folder?

How to Block Foreign Spam was last modified: August 29th, 2018 by Diane Poremsky
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Related Posts:

  • Color me clueless, but I just can not understand why people are so fix
    My Pet Peeve: Using Rules to Fight Spam
  • Using Outlook's Junk Mail filter
  • What Moved a Message to the Junk E-mail Folder?
  • Rules and Tools to Filter Junk Mail

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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STEVE (@guest_213995)
September 24, 2019 10:52 pm
#213995

And it dose not work with the latest version PAID GOOD MONEY to block all these scamming junk .Have put blocks on all countries but still coming from USA. They send it with out any way off blocking it some say i sent it a load off CRAP

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fla (@guest_211105)
May 20, 2018 11:33 am
#211105

It dos not work with outlook 2016. Maybe the spammers use better technology which overcome the filters.

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  fla
May 21, 2018 12:29 pm
#211110

Which method were you trying? They should all work - but the international options relay on information in the header, which may be wrong.

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Rae (@guest_199067)
June 1, 2016 8:30 am
#199067

Thank you, this really helped. I couldn't figure out the setting to block characters. After checking out your screen captures I found it easy to change. I had unsubscribed to a few different websites, unfortunately right after I did, I was bombarded with over 200 emails in less than 24 hours - all containing characters I could not block with Outlook. Instead I had to block all countries except U.S.

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Brenda W (@guest_197591)
April 1, 2016 6:43 pm
#197591

The junk mail filter (rule) instruction above does not allow me to copy and paste the foreign characters appearing in the body of the email. The emails (often coming in) have very long domain names in English characters, a from name appearing in maybe Russian characters with a sub ordication name that is similar but different. These are always 3 characters. The body character look Japanese of Chinese yet some look like something made up / picture like. I do not know how to list them in the specific words in a rule becuase I cannot form them from my keyboard and have no idea what they mean. I know is is junk or spam or phishing. Getting several a week and some days 2 ro 3. Can you give me some instructions to help. Using Outlook 2016 desktop and have 6 email account I should write a rule for of this type. Thanks for any help you can offer me.

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Brenda W
April 4, 2016 12:58 am
#197621

You can't select (and copy0 them in the message? That is the easiest way to create the rule as most people don't know how to recreate the characters. After copying, paste into the rule.

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Keith (@guest_205858)
Reply to  Brenda W
April 12, 2017 12:13 pm
#205858

Highlight the character in the email and click it and click copy. In the Rules windows, in Outlook, click in the blank and the press ctrl+v that will paste. I like to use ctrl+c for copy and ctrl+v for paste. For some reason, outlook rules do not allow you to use the Paste, instead use ctrl+v

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Ron (@guest_194185)
October 23, 2015 4:54 pm
#194185

Hello, this stuff is really interesting! However, is there a way to filter outgoing messages on outlook? I want to be sure that no emails containing a specific language (not English), will be sent by mistake. I appreciate your reply.

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Ron
October 23, 2015 5:59 pm
#194187

There isn't a way built into outlook but can create an 'after sending' rule to look or specific words in the subject or body using the method in the Create a Rule for Foreign Spam section. I'd probably hold the message for the max time (120 min) rather than delete it.

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Deb (@guest_193011)
August 30, 2015 11:27 pm
#193011

On October 3 2013 you indicated you can filter all non-com and non-net domains. Is there a way to do this in one command - where only emails from .com, .net domains are received and all others are blocked??

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Deb
August 31, 2015 12:19 am
#193014

Ah... i think it would be easiest to use a run a script run that checked the urls. A plain rule would be able to check for the presence of https:// and add exceptions for .com and .net, but it wouldn't be very accurate (it would look anywhere, including in addresses in the body). A run a script rule could use regex to check the url. Better would be to use an antispam scanner that filtered out urls.

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Deb (@guest_192997)
August 29, 2015 10:17 am
#192997

Hi...a while back yiu says you can filter all non-com and non-net URLs...how do you do this in outlook. 100% of my spam come from these and I want to block them all. Thanks!!

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Diane Poremsky(@diane-poremsky)
Author
Reply to  Deb
August 30, 2015 10:57 pm
#193008

Did i say URLs or addresses? I didn't see where i said it in these comments (but maybe i skimmed them too quickly). I don't recall saying it and need to refresh my memory.

You can block address in the Junk email filter, international settings.

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Allan (@guest_190459)
April 20, 2015 1:30 pm
#190459

FYI Diane,

I think Yahoo is doing all they can to force users into buying their "Premium" email service by doing little or nothing to stop these Spammers.

Same Spammers, over and over again are attacking user's inboxes, even though they are reported as Spam.

As a footnote, you might, just for giggles, open a new Yahoo email account and see for yourself where I'm coming from.

MAYBE, with all your wisdom, you can find a way to stop these Spammers, on Yahoo at least(-;

Allan

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