Deleting Spam/Phishing Email off the server when found.

E8NDave

Hello,

I am having an issue with Phishing emails coming to one of my email accounts. Bitdefender catches and marks it and moves it to my deleted folder on my PC which is awesome. I have 4 other devices that I get email on and with the email being left on the server, I still get those emails on those devices. I am wondering if there is a way to configure Bitdefender to delete the bad emails from the email server when the client determines they are bad? I am using Outlook as a client on my PC.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

-Dave

Alexandru_BD

Hi Dave,

When it comes to spam or phishing emails, there are a few interesting articles worth checking in the knowledge base, maybe you'll find something insightful there:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/52799/

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2158/

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2146/

There's also Email Protection, a premium feature that comes with several Bitdefender plans and you can read more about it here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/91168/

Now, for your specific use case, Bitdefender's antispam works in the mail app, while server-side removal depends on how the mailbox itself is configured in Outlook and at the provider. So, I think what needs to be done next depends on how your Outlook account is configured. Microsoft notes that only POP3 accounts download mail to the PC; with IMAP and outlook.com and gmail-type accounts, the mail stays on the server until it is deleted there. With IMAP, deleting a message in Outlook should normally sync that deletion back to the server, so other devices also stop seeing it. According to Microsoft, IMAP keeps mail on the server and synchronizes status changes.

If we are looking at IMAP, I think what you can do is confirm the email in question is being moved to the account’s server-backed deleted items or junk folder, not to a separate local data file. Open the same mailbox in webmail and check whether the phishing message appears there after Outlook processes it. If it is still present in webmail, the deletion is not happening server-side. Then perhaps you can create a server-side rule in your mail provider or Outlook on the web to delete or junk obvious phishing/spam before other devices download it..

If the account is POP3, based on the Microsoft documentation available, this says POP3 has options to leave a copy on the server, delete after a set number of days, or delete from the server after you delete it in Outlook. In this scenario, if you want the phishing messages to stop reaching the other devices, the most useful POP3 change is usually to disable "leave a copy of messages on the server”, or enable "remove from server when deleted from deleted Items” if available.

I hope this helps.

Regards