Outlook Spam Filters Broken As Microsoft Works On Fix To Unwanted Email

Microsoft has confirmed that its users are suffering from “excessive spam” due to ongoing problems with its email servers but says it is working on several fixes.

According to Microsoft’s own service status page, the servers for its Outlook.com service (which hosts Outlook and Hotmail accounts) are reporting increased levels of unwanted emails reaching users’ inboxes. “Some users may be receiving excessive spam mail,” the company said, adding that it is currently working on two fixes for the problem, the first of which will “provide short term relief preventing spam reaching your inbox.”

The second is a longer-term fix which “should stop spam reaching our infrastructure,” Microsoft said. The problem first arose at 3 p.m. EDT Tuesday and Microsoft said it would give another update of its email server status at 7 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

There is no indication of how the problem arose, but Microsoft is currently in the middle of migrating all its email servers to the Office 365 cloud, which may be one possible cause of the problems. Lots of Outlook and Hotmail users have vented their annoyance about the increased spam on social media and the problem appears to be a global issue according to this heat map of reported issues from the website Down Detector which shows most reports of problems coming from North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.