Really obvious spam/phishing messages not caught by Microsoft’s spam filters.
You’d think that a very short message with only a web link that has an IP number not domain name would go straight to the Junk Email folder but no. On our test machines (Exchange Server and Outlook 2013 with the latest spam filters from Microsoft and set to High) these blatantly spam emails remained in the Inbox.
It’s the latest spam blast going out, taking advantage of the big news stories out of the USA.
In one case, the message was at least tagged as a phishing message like this:
Or this variation that started arriving soon after the tragic news from Texas …
In all cases the message is, rightly, marked as phishing with links disabled. But none of the messages are moved to the Junk E-mail folder which is a bad lapse in the supposedly effective spam filter that people and organizations pay for.
We received many similar messages all with fake From: names and email addresses and a range of IP addresses.
But in another Inbox not even that happens – here’s three of them in an Outlook Inbox with not even the links disabled.
Redmond has worked on Outlook spam filters for years and customers should expect blatant nasties like this to be detected and shunted out of sight. I bet the spammers could not believe their luck when they realized this simple email blast could get past supposedly mature junk email detectors.
Microsoft, it’s really not good enough.
Presumably these spam messages will be properly dealt with by a future release of the Junk Email filter but customers should not have to wait for such obvious nasties to be detected.
