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Phishing and suspicious behavior

A phishing email is an email that appears legitimate but is actually an attempt to get your personal information or steal your money. Here are some ways to deal with phishing and spoofing scams in Outlook.com.

Spoof Intelligence from Microsoft 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Exchange Online Protection help prevent phishing messages from reaching your Outlook inbox. Outlook verifies that the sender is who they say they are and marks malicious messages as junk email. If the message is suspicious but isn't deemed malicious, the sender will be marked as unverified to notify the receiver that the sender may not be who they appear to be. 

Here are some of the most common types of phishing scams:

  • Emails that promise a reward. “Click on this link to get your tax refund!”

  • A document that appears to come from a friend, bank, or other reputable organization. The message is something like “Your document is hosted by an online storage provider and you need to enter your email address and password to open it.”

  • An invoice from an online retailer or supplier for a purchase or order that you did not make. The attachment appears to be a protected or locked document, and you need to enter your email address and password to open it.

  • Read more at Learn to spot a phishing email.

  • If you think someone has accessed your Outlook.com account, or you received a confirmation email for a password change you didn’t authorize, read My Outlook.com account has been hacked.

  1. In the message list, select the message or messages you want to report.

  2. Above the reading pane, select Junk > Phishing > Report to report the message sender.

    A screenshot of the Junk button in Outlook.com.

Note: When you mark a message as phishing, it reports the sender but doesn't block them from sending you messages in the future. To block the sender, you need to add them to your blocked sender's list. For more information, see Block senders or mark email as junk in Outlook.com.

Outlook shows indicators when the sender of a message is unverified, and either can't be identified through email authentication protocols or their identity is different from what you see in the From address.

  • You see a '?' in the sender image

    When Outlook can't verify the identity of the sender using email authentication techniques, it displays a '?' in the sender photo. 

    Unauthenticated sender in Outlook

  • Not every message that fails to authenticate is malicious. However, you should be careful about interacting with messages that don't authenticate if you don't recognize the sender. Or, if you recognize a sender that normally doesn't have a '?' in the sender image, but you suddenly start seeing it, that could be a sign the sender is being spoofed. You can learn more about Spoof Intelligence from Microsoft 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Exchange Online Protection in the Related topics below. 

  • The sender's address is different than what appears in the From address

    Frequently, the email address you see in a message is different than what you see in the From address. Sometimes phishers try to trick you into thinking that the sender is someone other than who they really are.

    When Outlook detects a difference between the sender's actual address and the address on the From address, it shows the actual sender using the via tag, which will be underlined.

    A screenshot of the via tag

    In this example, the sending domain "suspicious.com" is authenticated, but the sender put "unknown@contoso.com" in the From address.

    Not every message with a via tag is suspicious. However, if you don't recognize a message with a via tag, you should be cautious about interacting with it.

    In Outlook and the new Outlook on the web, you can hover your cursor over a sender's name or address in the message list to see their email address, without needing to open the message.

    A screenshot of the cursor hovering over a sender's name

Note: This feature is only available if you sign in with a work or school account.

Help Microsoft stop scammers, whether they claim to be from Microsoft or from another tech company, by reporting tech support scams:

https://msrc.microsoft.com/report/

Related topics

Block senders or mark email as junk in Outlook.com

Advanced Outlook.com security for Microsoft 365 subscribers

Spoof settings in anti-phishing policies in Office 365

Receiving email from blocked senders in Outlook.com

Premium Outlook.com features for Office 365 subscribers

Office 365 advanced protection

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