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Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

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Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#131

Post by JohnFen »

ghaff wrote: post #71
13of40 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the signals they use for classifying spam is people clicking "Report Message->Junk" in Outlook, so it's probably a constant battle with people who forget they signed up for something and call it junk.

People forget they signed up for something, didn't opt-out, got on some list from a conference they attended, etc. and just report as Spam even though there's an unsubscribe link. Frankly, the vast bulk of the email in my Spam folder isn't egregious fake medicine and the like. It's mostly low quality mailing lists, much of which isn't much different from what ends up in my inbox.

> didn't opt-out, got on some list from a conference they attended

I would totally consider emails I received because of either of those things as spam. If I get an unsolicited email, it gets reported as spam regardless of the presence of an opt-out link. I wouldn't click any link in an email that came from someone I didn't opt into getting email from.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#132

Post by JohnFen »

Tagbert wrote: post #73
rollcat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, my first reaction was, "seems to work as designed". The fix isn't to whitelist, the fix is to make their own emails more relevant (or easier to unsubscribe from).

I’ve known people who use the spam button for any email they do’t want right now. They say “it’s easier” than hitting the “unsbuscribe” link or they say “if I hit unsubscribe they’ll just send me more email”. It’s hard to maintain a rational filtering system under those circumstances.

> “if I hit unsubscribe they’ll just send me more email”

This is likely true if the email is from a spammer.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#133

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

drowsspa wrote: post #129
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being this obnoxious The comment contained a grand total of three words. If someone has this initial reaction to those words in this context, perhaps they should consider their priors.

You see, that's a problem. I'm left-wing. I'm part of minorities. I won't give up my political convictions and side with reactiona... I mean, conservatives because I'm annoyed by this focus on the raw words and not on intention. Yet, just remarking this is enough for insinuations like yours.

I made no mention of your political beliefs; that is simply how you chose to interpret my words.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#134

Post by rkagerer »

zvolsky wrote: post #9

The fact that Microsoft doesn't just whitelist their own domains speaks to their commitment to strict security measures and good engineering culture. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

Now that it's hit the HN front page and will presumably be drawn to light of some managers, it will be interesting to see if the behavior remains the same in a few weeks.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#136

Post by anonn77 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
zvolsky wrote: post #9

The fact that Microsoft doesn't just whitelist their own domains speaks to their commitment to strict security measures and good engineering culture. Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

They can and do whitelist all sorts of things for special cases. Microsoft is good at what they do, but they are a pragmatic company. My guess here is that some junk folder routing is on client side, or the user flagged junky email from the same infrastructure as junk. Or, O365 tweaked some settings to address the issues with spammers using Outlook infrastructure that bypasses spam controls.

I’m not sure, I created a brand new Outlook email account a while back and the welcome email went directly to spam. That just seemed kinda dumb to me.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#137

Post by brightball »

wizofaus wrote: post #125
brightball wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For advancement and adoption of standards to help combat this stuff, yes they have indeed. Yahoo as well. Most other companies seem interested in selling band-aids to repeated cuts than preventing the cuts in the first place.

But there are still no truly widely used standards to ensure emails are actually from the claimed sender. Many of the most popular phone-based email apps (including Google's) don't even show the from/reply-to addresses by default, and often make it hard to determine what URLs embedded links refer to.

Verifying they are from the actual domain is a huge step in the right direction though.

Beyond that, there’s still plenty of work to do but the surface area covered by wide spread DMARC adoption is huge.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#138

Post by nunez »

This was the breaking point for me leaving Microsoft 365.

I was losing a ton of important email because Microsoft would flag it as junk.

And even though I had complete admin rights over my tenant, I had no idea how to disable junk mail entirely.

(Also, fun fact, MS _still_ only gives you a 50GB mailbox! Google's at, like, a terabyte per user now...)

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#140

Post by dw-im-here »

98codes wrote: post #90
CamperBob2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do people not like about Teams? I just started using it with a contract customer and it seems fine. Does what it says on the proverbial tin.

You running 64GB or 128Gb of ram?

I have 128Gb RAM, it's not enough to make ms teams remotely close to acceptable because the UX is still like a parodical mashup of every bad idea microsoft has ever had.
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