Windows 7: Blocked Senders In Windows Live Mail

I have many email accounts in Windows Live Mail. I want to block a domain in one account without having the domain blocked in the other accounts. The domain I want to block is Yahoo. I'm getting a tremendous amount of spam from Yahoo on one account only. Is this possible? I've researched the issue online and can find nothing that relates to this issue.



C.B.

I doubt if that is possible since the assumption is that the domain you want to block is the source of the spam, not the account to which it is sent. It looks like your different accounts are from different ISPs and the troublesome account is with an ISP that does not provide spam filtering or it may provide filtering if you set it up on their website. E.g. my ISP gives me three choices: normal filtering, aggressive filtering, and no filtering. If I were to select "no filtering" I would get tons of spam from many sources, not just Yahoo. So I choose "aggressive" and also opt for "quarantine spam" so I can review what has been quarantined on their server without downloading it to my computer.

[Edit: As pointed out by SlartyBart in a future post, it is possible to create a message rule for pop3 accounts that applies to messages "from the specified account"; that account would be the pop3 account that is receiving the spam.]

I'm confused.

Please describe your accounts. If you have one account that gets spam from Yahoo, is it a Yahoo account? If you block Yahoo for that account, you won't get any mail.

Do you have "linked" accounts on the servers (Gmail gets mail from Yahoo, Aol gets mail from Yahoo - etc)?

1st attempts to understand.
If it is a yahoo account and you want to block yahoo - why not just get rid of that account?
Have you attempted to create rules to not download from server for this account?

Thank you, roncerr and Slartybart, for your prompt replies. I have email accounts with sbcglobal.net, hotmail.com, live.com, windowslive.com, msn.com and outlook.com. My ISP is AT&T and I use the sbcglobal.net (AT&T) account as my default account within WLM. The spam is coming from yahoo.com.in and is being sent to one of my outlook.com accounts only. I assume that .in is India, although I don't know for sure. The spam always comes from yahoo.com.in, with a different sender for each spam message. As you know, this is standard practice for spammers, which leaves me with no choice but to block the entire domain.

I shut down WLM, went to the specific email account at outlook.com and blocked the domain yahoo.com.in. Upon reopening WLM I find that yahoo.com.in is blocked for all email accounts. I decided to leave it blocked since I don't know anyone in India. I haven't checked the properties of any of these spam emails and even if I did I'm not competent enough to determine where the emails are actually coming from.

I had thought about creating a rule for blocking the domain but since there is no way to choose a specific account for the rule I can only assume that the rule would apply to all accounts in WLM. I may just shut down the outlook.com account since it's not imperative that I keep it.

I thank you again for your time and assistance. By the way, none of my accounts are linked.

C.B.

@CBM: Thanks -Outlook.com is still in beta, so it's safe to leave it out of the equation. I'm surprised that blocking the domain on outlook.com affects the WLM client - it shouldn't.

If you're certain that they're spam - better off just trashing them, you never know what's inside. Even with many years of experience, you won't find much of any useful by looking at the properties of suspect eMail.

I just checked WLM - in the latest version (WLM 2012) you can create a rule for a specific account (sort of)
and you always could specify a sender (even partial matches)

Select one or more conditions:
| | Where the from line contains people
| | When the message is from the specified account

Select one or more options
| | Do not download it from the server

When you click on the fields of the rule, you can input
From = @yahoo.com.in
Account = outlook.com (or whatever you named the account)

give it a name and save it.

Good luck

I just updated from WLM 2011 to 2012. I do not have the option to apply the rule to the outlook folder, only the sbcglobal.net folder. I have the sbcglobal.net account set as the default and that is the only folder offered when I create a rule. I don't know that much about email clients but I'm almost certain all Microsoft based email accounts get their messages from Microsoft's servers, not AT&T's server. Changing the default to my outlook.com account changes nothing; the only account I can apply the rule to remains the sbcglobal.net account. Am I missing something or am I simply ignorant?

C.B.

C.B. - 2012 is better, glad to hear you updated.

yeah I think there's a disconnect (could be me too though) I've been around eMail forever, but only recently started using WLM.

Rules are global, they get applied to every "account" - they aren't really attached to one account.
Email Rules Tab: Create a new rule for your POP email account(s)
it's (plural) - the conditions and actions defined in the rule determine when and what gets done
So, the example I previously provided should do the trick for you. Minor rules tweaking might be required based on your requirements - you might for example choose to download the msgs and move them to a special folder instead of not downloading them or you might decide to just delete them - there are many options.

The account selection is in the conditions of the rule - mark that condition (from a specified account) and a dialog box should appear with a drop down box where you can select the account for the condition test.

There is one error in my previous example - if you select "Do not download from server" you cannot select "Stop processing more rules" - by not downloading, you essentially stop processing more rules.

Accounts are "linked" to eMail servers. It is wrong to think all eMail goes through MS servers. Take a look at the properties for each of your accounts and you'll see provider specific servers for POP and SMTP for each account.

Oh, make sure you reset sbcglobal.net to be your default. Here's the rule I built


Let me know how you make out or if you just decide to eliminate outlook.com

Hey Slartybart,

I did go back to my sbcglobal account and make it the default. I just noticed that in WLM I can't use rules for IMAP or HTTP email accounts so I guess that puts a stop to my efforts to create rules for any of the Microsoft email accounts. I went to my AT&T mail options and discovered that although I can use my sbcglobal.net account to retrieve and send mail from other accounts those other account must also be POP accounts, so I guess that idea is shot down. I did come upon an article (written in 2009) that stated Microsoft is going to allow POP email accounts to access Microsoft's various email accounts but Microsoft is still using DeltaSync as its incoming and outgoing server so that's out the window also. The article stated that Microsoft was doing this in other countries but not yet in the U.S.

After a little more research I came upon an article that listed third party applications that allow POP email accounts to access web based email accounts but I haven't checked out any of these applications yet. In any event, it wouldn't help me with creating rules unless these web based emails were run through AT&T's servers before going into my sbcglobal.net Inbox.

I'm not obsessed with finding a solution to creating a rule for the outlook.com account. I'll simply delete the outlook email account; however, I'm now intrigued with finding out the method used to access IMAP and HTTP accounts with a POP account. I'm a glutton for knowledge whether I use it or not.

Thanks again for your assistance. I appreciate it very much.

C.B.

CB: All of the MS accounts seem to be various incarnations of Hotmail (Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Live Hotmail, and now Outlook.com). I should have paid more attention.

I also found out that AT&T (SBC) gives you a Yahoo account, they don't actually provide the mail servers or service.

POP3 and IMAP are messaging protocols - POP3 is older and retrieves msg body and header from a server and stores it locally on your machine. IMAP retrieves only the msg header - the msg stays on the server allowing you to read it from different places/devices.

You could try changing the properties of your outlook.com account to use POP3 with the following parameters. The values below should also work for all of the MS mail services - just put whatever id and pw you use for a particular service.

POP3	server
	pop3.live.com
	995
SSL required?	Yes

User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live

SMTP	server
	smtp.live.com
	587
SSL required?	Yes
Authentication required?	Yes

I set up an outlook account when I first read of it - I just set up a WLM account for outlook.com using the POP3 protocol and it all works. There's an option on outlook.com that controls how POP3 deletion commands are processed, I change mine to honor the client - this is just a note for reference, it isn't required.

I also looked at the filtering and blocking on outlook.com itself. You can specify @yahoo.com.in to block all users in that domain (click the tool gear and go to security)

OR.... or, you can tell WLM to not include outlook.com when sending/receiving (on the general tab of the account property page.