Microsoft Deprecating 'Obsolete' SmartScreen Spam Filters In Outlook and Exchange (winbeta.org)

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Microsoft Deprecating 'Obsolete' SmartScreen Spam Filters In Outlook and Exchange (winbeta.org)

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 1, 2016 @09:30AM from the recycle-bin dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from WinBeta: Microsoft is making changes to SmartScreen, a spam content filter, available in Windows 10. These changes will affect Outlook and Exchange users. In Outlook and Exchange, SmartScreen analyzes each email message and rates the email according to SmartScreen's Spam Confidence Level (SCL). These emails are then sent to Outlook's junk folder. Here's a look at the changes to SmartScreen, according to Microsoft: 1. "On November 1, 2016, Microsoft will stop generating updates for the SmartScreen spam filters in Exchange Server 2016 and earlier (2013, 2010, 2007), Outlook 2016 for Windows and earlier (2013, 2010, 2007) and Outlook 2011 for Mac. The SmartScreen spam filter will be removed from future versions of Exchange Server and Outlook for Windows. (SmartScreen is not available in any other version of Outlook). This announcement does not affect the SmartScreen Filter online protection features built into Windows, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer browsers. While branded similarly, those features are technically distinct. These SmartScreen Filters to help people to stay protected from malicious websites and downloads." After November 1, 2016, Microsoft will no longer release spam definition updates to SmartScreen filters in Outlook and Exchange. Your existing SmartScreen spam filters will remain in place; Microsoft will simply no longer provide updates for them.

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Booo! by steppin_razor_LA · 2016-09-01 09:36 · Score: 1

Microsoft's filtering may not be the greatest, but if your upstream spam filters aren't amazing, they work reasonably well.

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Evolution: love it or leave it
1. Re:Booo! by MightyMartian · 2016-09-01 09:39 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  We've been running a Postfix-based SMTP gateway that utilizes SpamAssassin and Postgrey, along with some basic header checks, for years now on the front end of Exchange. I wouldn't dream of actually opening up Exchange on to the Internet.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
2. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 09:47 · Score: 0
  
  they're just eliminating another thing that costs them money to do but brings in zero revenue.. kinda like them firing their beta testers and leaving that job to us through forced updates.
3. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah - basically everyone's doing more direct anti-spam (e.g., this product, which just applies DNSBL and SPF checks, either using IIS SMTP or Exchange SMTP).
  Meanwhile, the anti-spam filtering in Outlook causes emails to end up in the junk folder that shouldn't -- e.g., internal plain-text notifications. (That's actually an issue for business email - if an email doesn't get through to the inbox, we want the original sender to know their email didn't get through, rather than just languishing unread in a junk mail box. ORF will actually reject the spam as part of the initial SMTP connection, meaning false positives are bounced back to the sender.)
4. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 09:49 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed -- but I like multiple layers of defenses (i.e. yes - filter before giving to Exchange, but if it also finds some more things objectionable...)
5. Re:Booo! by Jimbookis · 2016-09-01 09:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They just ditched another cost center and gave another reason they think Exchange admins should put their staff onto rent-seeking hosted cloud Exchange.
6. Re:Booo! by NicknameUnavailable · 2016-09-01 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft's filtering may not be the greatest, but if your upstream spam filters aren't amazing, they work reasonably well.
  You must not have any spammers. The junk filtering stuff built into Outlook is so terrible it makes it a wonder Outlook is genuinely be best email client.
7. Re:Booo! by whoever57 · 2016-09-01 10:36 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft's filtering may not be the greatest, but if your upstream spam filters aren't amazing, they work reasonably well.
  
  I don't agree. In "my"* experience, they are terrible. Go look through your junk mail folder some time and you may be surprised at what is there.
  * Note: when I say "my", I am referring to work-related emails that I send to a colleague that his copy of Outlook regularly categorizes as SPAM.
  
  --
  The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
8. Re:Booo! by guruevi · 2016-09-01 11:19 · Score: 1
  
  Then why the hell are you still using Exchange? You must be the BOFH - mwahaha: the system I manage is neat and concise, the system my users use is a pile of crap.
  
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  Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
9. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 13:04 · Score: 0
  
  Put all your defense BEFORE the final mailstore, wether it's Linux or Microsoft based. No one worth their salt exposes a mailstore to the Internet without a front end filter system
10. Re:Booo! by apparently · 2016-09-01 13:59 · Score: 1
  
  if an email doesn't get through to the inbox, we want the original sender to know their email didn't get through, rather than just languishing unread in a junk mail box.
  Dear fucking idiot,
  Notifying spammers that their spam was not delivered is fucking idiotic.
  Sincerely,
  Everyone sick of cleaning up after idiot IT admins.
11. Re:Booo! by heypete · 2016-09-02 00:42 · Score: 1
  
  Out of curiosity, does your setup provide per-user control over spam/not-spam? That is, can a user flag a false-negative as spam and a false-positive as not-spam so the filters can be automatically tuned? Ideally this would be done by simply moving things into different folders in IMAP (e.g. move something into the Spam folder, it gets flagged as spam. Move something out of the spam folder, it gets flagged as not-spam.) rather than needing a separate web interface. If so, how did you go about setting that up?
  I ask because I've been looking at doing something similar, but haven't found anything that does quite what I want.
12. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-02 00:58 · Score: 0
  
  No, it's not idiotic, it's the smart way to deal with delivery failures for the 10% of email that is not spam. By notifying the sender SMTP server that the message is being rejected, it's on the sender server's head to notify the user. For legitimate senders, they get immediate notification that something went wrong and that they shouldn't assume that the message was delivered.
  The two alternatives are far worse:
  1. Accept then bounce. Leaves you open to participating in joe-job blowback (unless the sender has a tight SPF record).
  2. Accept and quietly round-file (or "quarantine" which ends up being the same thing for most users). You'll end up with emails that were supposed to go through, which didn't go through, and neither the sender or receiver (in the case of a valid email) are aware of the failure. It's user-hostile in the end.
13. Re:Booo! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-02 01:22 · Score: 0
  
  Delivery notifications for messages with forged From fields are annoying.
14. Re:Booo! by MightyMartian · 2016-09-02 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  Believe me, if I had a choice, I wouldn't, but a lot of the organization's infrastructure is built on top of Exchange, and while there are ways to replace various parts of that infrastructure, Exchange-Outlook is the way things have run here for a decade. I'm no fan of Exchange, I think it's a bloated unstable monstrosity that I confess I even feel trepidation applying updates to, but it is here and it is what we use. That being said, now that I'm a partner, I've made it clear that Exchange 2010 will be the last version of Exchange we run, and we'll likely be farming email and scheduling out to the Cloud.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
15. Re:Booo! by MightyMartian · 2016-09-02 03:41 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing that sophisticated, I'm afraid. Spamassasin just flags it as spam and then Exchange filters it into the users' Junk folder. I'd love a more comprehensive solution, but that's likely to mean forking over some $$$.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is just an upsell to hosted office 365 by spacepimp · 2016-09-01 09:59 · Score: 3

Reduce the value of the already paid systems to get people onto the cloud treadmill.
1. Re:This is just an upsell to hosted office 365 by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 10:42 · Score: 0
  
  I don't think so. Those of use that host Exchange locally don't actually care about the built-in filters because we already utilize specialized services for that. I have checks happening at the firewall level, then the gateway, and then it gets to Exchange.
2. Re:This is just an upsell to hosted office 365 by guruevi · 2016-09-01 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  What software do you think their cloud is running? If anything this is an upsell to their own or partners' "security" solutions, Forefront or whatever it is called now.
  
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  Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
3. Re:This is just an upsell to hosted office 365 by spacepimp · 2016-09-02 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  Let me simplify the concept: They won't be removing SPAM filtering from Office 365 for certain. SMB's hosting their own exchange that can't afford or don't want to pay for forefront or other systems will be encouraged to move to office 365 in the cloud because it comes with "free". So hosting your own is losing a feature and hosted/cloud doesn't lose that feature. This is a disparity which promotes one and deprecates another.
Part of a desperate move to new cloud services by surfdaddy · 2016-09-01 10:17 · Score: 2

Just like the Windows 10 nearly forced upgrades, where they can control your machine and monitor you for advertising, this looks like a way to de-content existing software so that the cloud services have more functionality, hopefully driving their customers to the ongoing revenue generation model that Microsoft so clearly wants to grow.
Well, it looks like the desktop is dead, by jenningsthecat · 2016-09-01 10:37 · Score: 2

or at least that's what Microsoft is betting on. I suspect they're planning on neutering and gutting their OS, and Windows 10 is the start of that. They want everything in 'the cloud', where they have absolute control and can pwn your data at will, and where they can charge whatever they want because the only alternative will be other cloud providers with whom they're colluding.

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'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
1. Re:Well, it looks like the desktop is dead, by 110010001000 · 2016-09-01 10:57 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  That is what all the corporations want, including Apple and Google. Eventually the PC will be dead, and you will only be allowed to connect to the Internet with an "approved" device.
2. Re:Well, it looks like the desktop is dead, by Opportunist · 2016-09-01 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  And rest assured that you will think I'm using an approved device to connect to the internet.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
3. Re:Well, it looks like the desktop is dead, by Miser · 2016-09-02 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  The day Microsoft does that, is the day the company I work for abandons their shit as much as we can and switches to something a little more big-iron. Like an iSeries, Unix based, or similar system for our accounting/manufacturing programs. They can cloud it all they want as long as I can run a web browser or terminal emulator to get to the LOCAL system.
  In the back of my mind I really wish some high profile, long "cloud" outage which would bring things back a little more in house and wake people up. Cloud (hosted elsewhere by any other name) is fine if it's the right tool, but this OMG WTF let's CLOuuuddddd everything!!!!!!1 mindset is rather dangerous, IMHO.
4. Re:Well, it looks like the desktop is dead, by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-02 02:14 · Score: 0
  
  Yep, we're going back to the mainframe model just a lot more shiny.
Forced Hotmail to Outlook Live enabled SPAM by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-01 10:59 · Score: 0

MS Web mail was recently forced a change from hotmail user interface to outlook user interface.
1) A Super amount of spam is now in Inbox and even after weeks of marking them Junk and Phishing, they still appear. This is much much worse than with the hotmail interface
2) The screen layout makes it nearly unusable. Cannot see details in mail summary. Cannot see enough of message in preview screen to read message. This is much much worse than hotmail interface.
3) Loading the next email is much much slower
We are not running Win10, maybe that is part of their overall plan: make it unusable unless you upgrade to latest OS.
So what? No Impact by DERoss · 2016-09-02 02:51 · Score: 1

This will have no impact on me. I have never used a Microsoft E-mail application or a Microsoft E-mail service. My ISP uses SpamAssassin in its E-mail server. My E-mail application is Thunderbird, which has a heuristic spam filter.