Using wildcards to block Junk E-mail domains
There is a domain which continues to send me Junk E-mail but they change the first part of their email address each time and sometimes also the subdomain.
Sadly, the Outlook Junk E-mail Filter doesn’t capture these emails automatically yet. I see options to safe list the Sender’s Domain but not to block the Sender’s Domain.
Is there a way that I can block all emails coming from this domain via wildcards or something similar?
Actually, it works much simpler than that; You don’t even have to specify a wildcard character at all!
When you open your Junk E-mail Filter Options and go to one of the Blocked or Safe tabs, you can directly specify an address or domain in one of the following formats;
- name@spamdomain.com
- @spamdomain.com
- spamdomain.com
- @sub.spamdomain.com
- sub.spamdomain.com
When Junk E-mail is coming from a sub domain, you usually want to block by using “spamdomain.com” anyway as you probably don’t trust the root domain then either.
Blocking an entire domain and all its sub domains can be done without the need for using special wildcard characters such as an asterisk (*).
Note: If you want to help to train the Junk E-mail Filter, you can use the Junk E-mail Reporting Tool.
Junk E-mail Options
To open the Junk E-mail Options dialog use:
- Simplified Ribbon (Microsoft 365)
tab Home-> ellipsis (…) button on the right-> button Junk-> button Junk E-mail Options… - Classic Ribbon
tab Home-> button Junk-> Junk E-mail Options…
Note: The Junk E-mail Options are controlled on a per account basis. To make sure that you set the options for the correct account, select the Inbox folder of the account that you wish to control before opening the Junk E-mail Options dialog. The title bar of the dialog will inform you for which mail account you are configuring the Junk E-mail Options.
Extra tip: Block country specific top-level domains
In case you have a need to block emails by country specific top-level domains (like .nl for The Netherlands, .de for Germany, .ro for Romania, .cn for China, etc…), use;
- Junk E-mail Options…-> tab International-> Blocked Top-Level Domain List…
