I have always been a bit obsessive about SPAM email — whether it’s reporting SPAM to service providers or tracking down SPAM sources to block them at our server.
The problem is Outlook doesn’t play nicely with SPAM reporting because forwarded junk emails and copy/paste junk emails don’t contain all the headers that service admins AND SpamCop need to process them. While you can view the properties of a problem email and copy the headers then paste them back into a forwarded email, that’s super tedious and it also “breaks” the integrity of the email. Another option is to use SpamCop’s two-pane web submission feature where you copy/paste the headers and copy/paste the body into their online form. Again, super tedious.
To automate the process somewhat, I have used various add-ins with Outlook such as the SpamCop Reporting Tool, SpamSource and SpamCop Submitter. All worked brilliantly by giving you a one-click method of forwarding SPAM. Sadly, none of those are supported any more so they either don’t work or are not compatible with later editions of Outlook. However, I do not give up easily on my mission to root out and report SPAM. So let’s look at two ways to do it.
1. Using the Microsoft Junk Reporting Add-in for Office
Microsoft makes a SPAM reporting tool for the desktop editions of Outlook. You can download it here. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18275. It actually works as advertised and integrates fully into Outlook’s own junk email filtering system. When you report an email as junk, it attaches the entire email including headers and sends it to ‘abuse@messaging.microsoft.com’. Now if you just want to report junk to Microsoft, you need not do anything more (other than be aware of the gotcha below). But what if you want to report the same email to SpamCop? Well if you’re fast on the click, you can open the email from the Outgoing folder in Outlook and edit it to add your SpamCop reporting address to the “To” or “BCC” field. (SpamCop submission addresses take the form “submit.<your-account-hash>@spam.spamcop.net” and they are unique to each registered user.)
Registry hack to add SpamCop to junk reports.
If you’re comfortable editing the Windows Registry, you can add additional email addresses to the reports you send. I learned this by searching the registry for all things related to the Junk Email Reporting Tool and found these keys:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Junk E-mail Reporting\Addins]
"BccEmailAddress"="submit.xxxxxxxxx@spam.spamcop.net"
"ProductCode"="355DFC93-115B-4F37-B6BC-40964997F187"
"ProductVersion"="10.2.112.0"
"MaxMessageSelection"=dword:0000000a
"LoggingLevel"="Verbose"
"InstallDir"="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Junk E-mail Reporting\"
"ReportingSchemaVersion"="1.0.0.0"Note the BccEmailAddress key. It’s a simple string value and all you have to do is pop your personal SpamCop reporting email address into it (don’t include the quotes). Now every time you send a junk email report using the tool, it will BCC the report to SpamCop. If you have another address you’d like to include as well, simply put it in the same field separated by a semi-colon (eg. xxxxx@spamcop.net;address2;address3). I used to include spam@uce.gov but the FTC has closed that mailbox and there is no direct reporting address for the US government any more.
The gotcha – SPAM reports = SPAM
There’s always a catch isn’t there? In this case it’s going to be your mail service provider. If you are using a hosted mail solution (like we do at GELDNER.COM), all outbound email goes through the host’s mail filters (Halon in our case). Guess what? Your spam report will often get rejected by the host as SPAM. Unfortunately, the Junk Reporting Add-in doesn’t circumvent this flagging. The solutions are not pretty but they work:
Use a Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook.com account as your default email account
The Junk Reporting Add-in does NOT provide any way of changing the sending account. It will ALWAYS send from your default account. If you send through your ISP, it may block the report as SPAM. However, in my experience, Gmail, Hotmail and Outlook.com do NOT block the sending of spam reports to the Microsoft Abuse address or to SpamCop. So the easy solution is to use one of these accounts/services as your default email account. That may not be ideal for you so the second solution is to catch the email before it gets sent and to change the from address to one of the above services. That also means you need to turn off Outlook’s “Send immediately when connected” feature. You’ll find that in Options / Advanced.
Let me know if other services like Roadrunner, TWC, Spectrum, Yahoo, AOL, etc. likewise don’t filter SPAM reports and I’ll include them here.
2. Use the SpamCop Add-in for Outlook
Now if you don’t want to edit the registry to stuff your SpamCop reporting address into the Microsoft Junk Mail tool, then you can use Matthias’ SpamCop Add-In. You install it like the MS Junk Mail tool however it only reports to SpamCop and there’s no CC option. Unfortunately, just like the MS tool, it reports all spam through your default mail account. You can’t configure it otherwise. Also, you have to use it’s dedicated toolbar button. There is no integrated “right-click” option. Regardless, it’s a worthwhile option if you don’t want muck with the registry. It also works on MS Outlook versions from 2010 – 2019.
Hope this long-winded post helps you in some way. Any other thoughts, please comment below. We do read them all!