New Climate Institute Claims Microsoft is “Unjustly” Quarantining Their Emails • Watts Up With That?
Essay by Eric Worrall
Trojan, virus, hack or Microsoft defect?
MICROSOFT ERROR OR EXTERNAL ATTACK CAUSING DISRUPTION TO EMAIL COMMUNICATION ACROSS THE CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNITY
Publication date 27 Oct 2023
Since 17 October, to our knowledge any email with the NewClimate URL (newclimate dot org) in the email body, link, signature, reply header or contained anywhere in an attachment is unjustifiably quarantined by Microsoft email servers without any notice, regardless of who sends or receives the email.
That our own email flow is disrupted is the least of our problems: all Microsoft tenants are afflicted by the same issue when this URL appears in their emails, or any attachments they share, even when we are not a party to the communications.
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I feel a bit sorry for them, having your email system arbitrarily shut down is an unpleasant experience.
But they really should read some help pages on what to do. Microsoft in particular provides clear guidance on what to do if their system accidentally flags you as spam.
Their SPF record looks reasonable:
“v=spf1 +a include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:spf.mandrillapp.com -all”
The SPF record is an entry on your website DNS registration which tells other email servers who is allowed to send legitimate emails on your behalf. New Climate’s SPF record means anything on their own domain server (+a), outlook or mandrilapp.com (a mass email provider) is allowed to send emails on behalf of new climate.
All internet exposed websites are under continuous attack by automated malware bots, so it is possible either one of these bots found a weakness, or they innocently tripped the paranoid hair trigger of one of today’s email systems.
I also ran their site through a malware checker, which didn’t spot any malware. When websites are infected one of the first things which tends to happen is they start sprouting malware on all their web pages. Though sometimes the malware is sneaky and only appears at random intervals, so the malware test is not definitive.
I wish new climate good luck restoring their email system. I believe a big part of the solution to the climate panic is better communication between all parties, so if interrupting new climate’s communications is a deliberate act, it is a deplorable and heinous act which does no good for anyone.
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