Why does Microsoft's recently revamped and relaunched Outlook "Report Message" add-in not mention other types of threats?

David Jones 101 Reputation points
2022-01-19T01:08:00.947+00:00

As we all know too well, spam and phishing emails are not the only types of malicious emails we receive in our inboxes. Emails that contain viruses or links to viruses (malicious URLs) and extortion/sextortion emails are two that are both very common.

So, why does Microsoft's message reporting system only mention spam and phishing?

I understand it may be argued that users won't know the difference but that is an weak argument because they should know the difference! With socially engineered emails being the single weakest chink in the armour of just about every organisation's IT security, dumbing down like this is only likely to perpetuate the lack of awareness that users have to have. If you don't even ask them they are only less likely to know.

Also, the response within an organisation's IT processes/systems and policies would/should be markedly different if the email were spam as opposed to extortion based or even phishing and extortion based; never mind if the email managed to get through with a malicious attachment or malicious document URL! If you present users with only spam and phishing I expect most users will submit emails as spam by default, which means significantly more dangerous types of emails are going to be misidentified and your organisation's response is therefore going to miss!

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  1. ChristyZhang-MSFT 20,801 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2022-01-19T09:45:19.223+00:00

    Hi @David Jones ,

    Welcome to our forum!

    Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Many functions of our current products are designed and upgraded according to customer feedback. As demand increases, this problem is likely to be released in the future.

    I have tried to submit the feature request you mentioned in a special feedback collection website. At present, what I can do for you is to submit suggestions for you. You can also make suggestions on that website and hope Microsoft will notice this in the future. Thank you for your understanding and support!

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".
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