My Experiences With Microsoft Outlook.com: Spam, Spam, And More Spam (Opinion)

By Vamien McKalin email: v.mckalin@mobilenapps.com | Dec 26, 2012 01:31 PM EST

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Microsoft Outlook.com is one of the best software products the company released in 2012; however, despite its sleek design and ease of use among other things, the service has a bad reputation of not getting rid of spam from the Inbox.

Outlook is great. I love it to the point where I have recently made it my primary email address after Google went ahead and dropped support for ActiveSync. No support for ActiveSync puts me in a tight position where Gmail and Google Calendar is concerned when synchronized with my Windows-based devices.

Google's battle with Microsoft should have never come to this, users should have never been caught in the crossfire unless we are benefiting in some way.

Making the full-on switch to Outlook.com wasn't that hard to begin with. I'm more a bigger fan of Microsoft than Google, so my investment in Google's ecosystem is not of any significance. The only downside is that many of my contacts tend to use Google Calendar. So, while I can get them to send me emails to my Outlook address; it is a little difficult getting them to send appointments to Outlook Calendar.

Since Microsoft announced the availability of Outlook.com back in August, I have been using it quite a lot. The experience in the first couple of months was great; it felt so much different from the old Hotmail and everything seem to work flawlessly. There were problems, however, one that plagued owners of Windows Phone devices. At the time, the only way one could link their spanking new Outlook.com address with their Windows Phone handset was to reset the device. Big problem right there, but a day came when I chose to close my awesome eyes and wipe my phone, gladly; all my important stuff was already uploaded to SkyDrive, so all was good.

Soon after falling in love with Outlook.com's clutter free environment and the way it allows me to communicate with friends and family on Facebook, along with tapping me into other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, things began to take a nasty turn - I began to experience spam in my Inbox. At first I thought this was OK because there are those rare occasions when spammers mistake the inbox for the junk box because they are not the smartest bunch.

However, I began to realize how often this was happening and, on several occasions, sometimes I have to be clearing my inbox of spam for days. I took a peek at my junk email, only to find out that many spams via the same sources had been caught, but for some odd reason, they are still getting to my inbox.

I am not the kind of person to give my email address out to spotty Web sites, aliens, killer robots, or misguided humans, so to be getting spammed from Christian Singles and some Web site that calls itself Mingle, is crazy. I showed these to my girlfriend and right away, she suggested I take them up on their offer. I smiled at the idea of having two women in my life and how awesome it would be, and then it dawned on me that she must have been joking. Maybe this is my punishment for smiling at the idea, because these same spam messages are still plaguing my inbox to this very day.

What do I do now? I love Outlook.com and despise Gmail. My smartphone and computer both run on Windows, so going back to Gmail is not an option. I could switch to Android or the Apple iPhone, but I'm no big fan of such things.

So here's what I want. What I want is for Microsoft to buckle up and fix this issue. It was a huge problem back in the days of Hotmail, and now the same problem is plaguing Outlook.com. This in my mind goes to show that Outlook.com has only changed on the outside, and the Hotmail lives on in the inside, like a ghost of ancient times, longing to return to the world of the living.

Right now, I am sitting before my computer, patiently awaiting several spam emails in my inbox. I have a feeling the spammers will not disappoint me today, they are not smart enough to do otherwise.