Increase in Unwelcomed Email Activity

The techs have noticed an increase in calls regarding spam getting through, not just for our clients, but for us, too! 🚨 The bad actors are using AI 🤖 to get better and better, and given the time of year, there’s just a lot more solicitation going on. In response, we’ve decided to tighten our spam-filter scores 🔒. We thought we’d share a little about how this works and what we’re changing.

When an email comes in, the anti-spam software is checking for key words, number of links 🔗, embedded items 📎, and more. Based on how many red flags 🚩 it sees, the software assigns a score to the email. Anything above the set limit will be flagged as spam and either sent to the Junk folder 🗑️ or will be quarantined 🔐. For your reference, the default setting from Microsoft is 7. The lower the number, the harder it is for an email to get through.

Which is the other side of the coin… ⚖️ This means that some perfectly legitimate email messages may be flagged. This may be inconvenient 😕, but it is even less convenient to have so many messages get through that shouldn’t have. We are lowering the allowed score across our clients to stay ahead of this uptick ⬇️. You’ll still be able to check your Junk folder, and you’ll still receive quarantine messages so you can check what has been restricted. If you don’t have the quarantine digest turned on, we’ll turn it on for you as part of these changes ✅.

Caution: ⚠️ When you release from quarantine, be very careful. Many of these bad messages look very ‘good’ 👍 so proceed with caution, or call for assistance 📞.