Microsoft’s Outlook and Hotmail spam filters are currently broken

If you’re noticing an increased amount of spam email in your Outlook or Hotmail account this morning, you’re not alone. Microsoft’s spam filters for its Outlook.com email service have been experiencing issues over the past 12 hours, and the company is attempting to fix the problems. “Some users may be receiving excessive spam mail,” reads a warning on Microsoft’s Outlook.com service status site.

Microsoft says it is currently implementing two fixes to solve the issue. “One will provide short term relief preventing spam reaching your inbox,” reveals Microsoft. “The second will be a longer term fix which should stop spam reaching our infrastructure.” Microsoft is currently in the middle of migrating its Outlook.com backend over to its Office 365 service, but it’s not clear if this migration is related to today’s spam issues. A quick scan of Twitter suggests the problem is relatively widespread, with many messaging the official Outlook Twitter account and not receiving a reply. We’ll update you accordingly once Microsoft has implemented its fixes.