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Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#71

Post by ghaff »

13of40 wrote: post #66
jamespo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Microsoft are just terrible at classifying spam

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.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#72

Post by wongarsu »

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.

If they don't whitelist and use the rate at which their own emails end as spam to improve their spam filter, that's great engineering culture.

If they don't whitelist and the emails just land in spam without anyone taking notice, that reminds me more of the well-known slightly satirical image of Microsoft's org chart [1]

1: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#73

Post by Tagbert »

rollcat wrote: post #61
InfamousRece wrote: post #17

It’s possible that many users classify them as junk and so the Bayesian filters learn from that. Plus they might actually be junk. The filters are usually content based.

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.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#74

Post by rchaud »

jamespo wrote: post #57
santoshalper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the Azure people are aware and annoyed. I appreciate that the security people are holding the line.

Or Microsoft are just terrible at classifying spam

If they were, they'd still be bleeding users like they did when Gmail came on the scene. That's why I switched; Hotmail 20 years ago did not appear to do any kind of spam blocking at all.

Today, Outlook.com and Hotmail.com combined still have a pretty strong market share.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#75

Post by rchaud »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #10
PaulHoule wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of upside down "virtue signalling" going on. Ads in the Start Menu might not make a lot of money but investors might be impressed that Microsoft is at least trying to make a few more cents here and there. I wonder if Amazon treats employees so poorly not because this is good for business but because it helps Wall Street accept Amazon's loss-making habits (at least they aren't…

So "vice signalling", maybe?

I would love for society to return to using "virtue-signaling" and "vice-signaling" in their original meaning, instead of this contemporary linguistic hell where the former is a derogatory synonym for political correctness.

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#76

Post by layer8 »

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.

Wouldn’t whitelisting their own products also constitute anticompetitive behavior?

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#77

Post by __s »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #62
hbn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code's selling point is that it's a middle-ground between (relatively) lightweight performance of a text editor, and power of an IDE. People are keeping an eye on performance, and they'll stop using it if it just becomes a bloated, master-of-none IDE. Teams' bread and butter is being "good enough" for enterprise. And they're also locked into a lot of bad early decisions they made since they don't want to break com…

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.

The UI isn't smooth. Notifications will appear & then the message won't show up for a few seconds. Scrolling back through history can start flickering all over the place. It takes up a lot of memory

Re: Tell HN: Microsoft classifies own emails as junk

#80

Post by megous »

jamespo wrote: post #57
santoshalper wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the Azure people are aware and annoyed. I appreciate that the security people are holding the line.

Or Microsoft are just terrible at classifying spam

Pretty much.

- Receive new e-mail from MS user at IP X

- Send reply to the same user from IP X

- notice IP is blacklisted, so the email doesn't even end in spam

Great engineering. Users must be excited MS allows them to send e-mail to servers they know are blacklisted, so will not be able to receive the reply from.

Great [honest] engineering would be to just refuse to send the e-mail and tell the user that they are not allowed (by MS) to communicate with this recipient.

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