Outlook 2007 spam filter big oops

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

(Cross-posted from my LJ) 

Something like this should be pretty basic. I'm dreading getting that first Office 2007 call.

I was setting up my Outlook 2007 on my system after installing Vista RTM. Like previous versions, it gives you the option to test your email settings when you're setting the account up by sending a test message. Like always, I did that. After enabling the spam filter, I set out cleaning my mailbox and creating rules, etc. So what happened when I clicked on the test message to delete it?

Type your cut contents here.

Yep. It considers it's own test message to be spam.

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure I had set the filter level from low to high but it still should have recognized itself as being safe.

Comments

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the "high" setting mean that unless the sender is in your contacts or specifically whitelisted, it considers a message to be spam?

And if anyone actually rolls out Office 2007/Vista in an enterprise in 2007 or before a service pack, they pretty much deserve all the support calls they will get. :-/

[jecook]

For office 2003, that answer is NO.

I fed it a corpus of the past seven days in my inbox, about 95% of which Thunderbird (and my own two eyes) saw as spam, and it only classified 150 out of the 500 or so messages as spam.

And the way Outlook is setup, I have to actually open the message in order to mark it as junk, which I find recockulous, considering one of the tactics for spammers to use is to park a image URL with a UID in their markup, which confirms your address as valid.

I will also admit that as of late, spammers are resorting to graphics with their spammy message in them in a lame ass attempt to depeat the filters. Unfortuantely for them, Thunderbird's filters are intellegent to recognize that once you've marked a message as spam, it will mark anything resembling that as spam too. :)

While we have a single vista machine on our network, it's not production, and it's certainly nothing that the support droids like myself have ready access to...

Hell, we still had a few machines running 2K up until a month or two ago still on the net.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't specific enough, I was referring to the "enhanced" junk settings in OUTL 2K7 (although I don't know what the real details are). :-)

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Does outlook not allow you to disable automatic image loading? That's one of the first things I turn off in any Thunderbird install.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

No, there are 4 settings:

No automatic filtering (only moves mail from blocked senders to junk)
Low: Move the most obvious email
High: Most junk email is caught but some regular may be as well
Safe lists only: Only people and domains you have whitelisted by putting them on your safe senders list gets through.

In regards to rolling it out, my employer is supposed to be rushing to get it deployed asap. I think in part because of the enhanced security but also so that we will be able to use our own systems as reference when on the phones. Even locked down, it's better than nothing. Regardless, I support end users so I WILL be seeing these as soon as they're available for sale I can pretty much guarantee. :(

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Oh, there you go, I knew the option existed, so it's good it has a reasonably obvious name. As for the test email then, WTF?

And, ohhhhh, you have to support home users! Bummer. Yeah, I totally understand the need you have to deploy some instances in that situation.

[warsawpact.livejournal.com]

Beautiful.

Let me guess "high" means anything not specifically mentioned as not being spam is spam.

[110billion.livejournal.com]

Not quite (http://community.livejournal.com/techsupport/1213548.html?#t10757228)

[warsawpact.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[tsutton.livejournal.com]

Look in the Junk Mail Option, you might have added the email address as spam.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

Nope. It was a brand new install of both Vista and Office. I hadn't marked anything as spam up until that point.

[110billion.livejournal.com]

There's a way to fix this... uninstall Outlook and install Thunderbird :P