Outgoing mails suddenly going to recipients' spam folder & incoming mails going into my spam folder

Question

For the last 2 weeks my outgoing emails have suddenly started being directed to the recipients' spam folders. These are people to whom I've been sending mails, with no problem for years, but suddenly they're being identified as spam. Equally, incoming personal mails are being directed to my spam folder. This only applies to personal emails from friends/relatives. All other emails are unaffected. Why has this suddenly started to happen and what can I do about it? This is particularly frustrating for people with whom I only have email contact as I have no other way of asking them to check their spam folders. With thanks in anticipation.

Answer 1

Hi Andrew Hamling

I understand how frustrating this is, especially because the issue started suddenly after your email contacts had worked normally for years.

Incoming and outgoing messages are filtered separately. Incoming personal emails may be moved to Junk because a sender was accidentally added to the Blocked Senders list, the filtering system classified the message as spam, or the sender’s reputation changed. For outgoing messages, the recipient’s email provider decides whether the message is delivered to the Inbox or Spam folder.

Please try the following steps:

• Open each legitimate message in your Junk Email folder and select Not junk.
• In Outlook, open Settings > Mail > Junk email. Confirm that the affected addresses are not listed under Blocked senders and domains, then add the individual addresses under Safe senders and domains.
• Review your Sent Items, recent sign-in activity, forwarding settings, and connected applications for anything unfamiliar. If you find suspicious activity, change your password and ensure multifactor authentication is enabled.
• Send a short test message without links, attachments, images, or a signature to one affected recipient.
• Ask the recipient to mark the test message as Not spam/Not junk and add your address to their contacts or Safe Senders list.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further updates, thanks.

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