Email & Other Alerts
"New Outlook": Possibly NOT What You Think It Is
Outlook for free, woohoo! . . . or not
“Outlook for Windows”, also known as “New Outlook”, is available for free on the Microsoft Store. However this is not the same as Outlook 365 or the stand alone version, Outlook 2021. It is also not–we repeat NOT–a full, complete version of MS Outlook. There are four main reasons why we do not recommend this app for our clients.
- IMAP only, no support for POP3 accounts, which we recommend for use on desktops and laptops.
- No true Archive function, so it can’t help if you hit your disk space quota.
- No Access to Older Mail, so you can’t just copy mail from an old machine and read it on a new machine.
- Progressively Slower Sync Times if you have large amounts of mail on the server.
For more details, read on…
According to one Microsoft MVP, in a nutshell, “Outlook for Windows” is “Outlook on the Web” wrapped in an app framework that happens to support external IMAP accounts. It is intended to be a replacement for the free email/people/calendar apps that come with Windows 10 and 11. It is not intended to be a replacement for a full version of MS Outlook. This presents 3 major issues for our users.
- No POP3 Accounts – “Outlook for Windows” does not support .PST files. Because PST files are where Outlook stores email data for POP3 accounts, this means it cannot support a POP3 account. Since POP3 is what we recommend that clients use for desktop and laptop computers, we do NOT recommend using this app as your primary email program.
- No Archive Function – Because it does not support PST files, “Outlook for Windows” also does not have normal Archive or Auto-Archive functions. This means that it cannot manually or automatically move files from live IMAP folders, which live on the server, to a local storage folder and therefore cannot help reduce server disk space usage for IMAP users. If you run up against your usage quota, your only option would be to manually go through and delete older email in order to free up space.
- No Access to Older Mail – Also without PST file support, you can’t just copy a PST storage file from an old computer to a new computer and open it with “Outlook for Windows” to view your old emails.
- Progressively Slower Sync Times – As the number of email messages and folders grows, Outlook takes longer to synchronize what it displays to you with what’s out on the server. This is because for each and every folder you have, Outlook must confirm with the server the existence and status of each and every message. For 50 or 100 MB of mail, this probably happens pretty quickly. For multiple Gigabytes of mail, this could take a while.
How do I know which Outlook I have?
So how do you determine whether you have “Outlook for Windows” or a full version of Outlook? The quickest way is to look at the main Outlook screen. If you have a normal, full, desktop version of MS Outlook, either stand alone or 365, toward the top left of the main Outlook screen, you should have tabs for File, Home, Send/Receive, View, and Help, similar to the image below.
If you have “Outlook for Windows”, then your main Outlook screen probably looks more like this next image with tabs only for Home, View, and Help.
If you wish to use the latest version MS Outlook for email, contacts, and calendars, we highly recommend that you purchase the stand-alone version, the latest version of which is 2021. This is a one time purchase as opposed to an ongoing subscription, and should not require the use of a Microsoft account. As of 02/27/2024, the cost of MS Outlook 2021 stand alone version from Microsoft is $160. If you also need Word and Excel, you can get MS Office Home & Business 2021 stand alone from Microsoft for $250. You may be able to find Outlook and/or Office from other sources for less, BUT you should check product reviews and verify the reputation of the seller before making a purchase.
01/23/2024 – Bogus QR Codes in Emails
01/23/2024 – It has come to our attention that scammers are now using pictures of QR codes in emails. Before QR codes, you were able to simply hover your mouse over a text link, an image link, or even a button in an email. Your email program would display the URL to which you would be taken, and you could easily see if that URL matched the business entity mentioned in the email. However QR codes do nothing when hovered over because as far as the computer is concerned, they’re just pictures. However when you scan them with your mobile device, it can take you directly to the URL embedded in the QR code, and that URL can be a fake, phishing or other malicious website.
To protect yourself against bogus QR codes, you should always preview the URL, or at least the domain, that is the target of the QR code. iOS users should be able to use the native camera app on an iPhone for this. If you move the camera over a QR Code, you should be able to see at least the domain name that is embedded in the QR Code. If the domain name is not related to the business entity mentioned in the email, you know it’s bogus. Some Android users may also be able to preview the URL embedded in a QR code with their native camera app. For instance on my Samsung Galaxy S10 running Android 12, the native camera app displays the full URL associated with a QR code. If your native camera app does not show you a preview, you should be able to find a QR code scanning app that does on the Google Play Store.
04/21/2023 – Email to Comcast Recipients RESOLVED
04/21/23 – As of today, we believe this issue has been resolved. If you’re still experiencing difficulty getting email to comcast.net recipients, please let us know so we can investigate.
03/24/23 – As of today, I’ve made more calls, talked to more people, have had tickets escalated and re-escalated between their Customer Security Tiers 2 and 3, and still we can’t send email to Comcast addresses. PLEASE ASK YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS, and CLIENTS who use Comcast and to whom you’re trying to send email to call Comcast and complain about this issue. The more actual Comcast customers who complain to them, the more likely this is to be resolved.
03/18/23 – As of Sat 3/18, we still can’t send to Comcast email addresses, and so far, none of the more than a dozen people I’ve talked to have been any help, including their tier 3 Customer Security Dept. I’m still trying to work with them, but in the meantime, please ask your Comcast email recipients to contact Comcast and complain that they cannot receive your email. The more complaints Comcast hears from its customers, the more likely they’ll fix whatever this problem is. If you’d like to give them our mail server IP addresses to pass on to Comcast, they are 174.128.231.36 for idComm.com mail and 174.128.231.34 for all other domains.
03/10/23 – After spending some more hours on the phone today, I was told that no one had touched our trouble ticket over the past 48 hours. Instead of actually doing something, they directed me to a page with a form to fill out to request removal from their block list. Of course I submitted the form and was then informed that it would be another 3 business days before we might be removed. So hopefully things will be fixed sometime Wed, but if not, I’ll be back on the phone. In the meantime, if you have a message you must get through to a Comcast email recipients, we suggest using a “backup email” such as a GMail or Yahoo Mail address.
03/08/2023 – Yesterday we discovered that Comcast appears to be either delaying or perhaps blocking email from our server to their email users. While it’s not definitive from the info in our server logs, we believe that ultimately these emails are not getting through. I spent several hours–pretty much all day Tuesday–on the phone with them trying to get this resolved. By the end of the day, I had talked to 8 different Comcast reps in at least 4 different support tiers, the original issue had been escalated a couple of times, and two “advanced support” tickets had been opened on our behalf. After all that, I was told that the last, highest support tier would contact us in 24 to 72 hours (but probably sooner according to the last rep).
Before contacting Comcast the first time, I checked all known blacklists, and neither of our outbound server IP addresses were in any of those lists. Because we’ve made no changes at this end, at present, our best guess is that Comcast has made some change at their end that has caused their servers to delay and/or not accept mail from ours. I’m hoping that the ticket escalations will result in a positive, if not exactly timely, resolution to this issue.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience while we work with Comcast to get things resolved.
04/24/2022 – PayPal Invoice Scam
I wanted to warn folks of a “new old” scam going around. Looks like it started a couple of years ago and has recently resurfaced. I know because I got one of these emails myself just yesterday morning. The scam is very similar to ones you may have seen before. You get something that looks like an invoice, you get concerned, and you call the number they show in the email. When you call, they lure you into downloading remote control software onto your system and allowing them take control.
Here’s the big problem: The invoice and email themselves are real, actually generated by the PayPal system! Scammers are signing up for real PayPal accounts and using PayPal’s own user invoice system to send these emails to random people hoping they’ll call. Because it’s generated from the actual PayPal system, all the images, buttons, and links are legit, so you cannot tell it’s a scam just by hovering over a link or button. The only thing that’s NOT legit is the phone number they use, which of course is manned by the scammers. The only tell-tale signs would be that you don’t recognize the seller or vendor, and the language of the email is generic. It may speak only of “our product” or “our service” rather than something specific. Now sometimes they’ll throw in some grammar errors too, which often is on purpose. They figure if someone ignores those errors and calls anyway, they’re an easy mark, which is what they’re looking for.
So if you get ANY email invoices from PayPal, you don’t recognize the seller/vendor, and it doesn’t mention a specific product or service, you should delete the message. If necessary, you can always go to PayPal.com, get the correct contact info, and contact them directly. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES call the phone number in the email. It will only be answered by the scammers.
01/21/2022 – Domain "Listing" Invoice
If you own a domain name for business or personal use, you may receive one of these documents in the mail from “United States Domain Authority” or similar that looks much like an invoice and often does not say “Marketing Services” at the top. This is NOT an invoice, though it is intentionally designed to look like one. The company name is also designed to make you think they’re a domain registrar. They hope you’ll not be paying attention, think this is one of your normal domain related expenses, and simply pay the “invoice” without thinking.
The document pictured here is one SOS4Net received on 01/20/22 and is actually a solicitation. If you pay what they’re asking, they will (in theory) enter your website into their search directory. So we visited their directory to see what people might expect if they pay for this service. Their home page is supposed to show “Featured Business”, but that section of the page never populated in the several minutes we sat and waited. Their Categories page is empty initially but eventually populates with a large, seemingly random list of categories, each one with a large number next to it. The number of listings in the category? Perhaps, but we tend to doubt it. If you go to the bottom of the list, more seemingly random categories show up, and this continues each time you go to the bottom. At least it did the half dozen or more times we tried it. The Browse Listings page often shows only North Carolina businesses regardless of the city/state and category you select.
It’s our opinion that being listed in this directory would do very little, if anything at all, to help your business or boost your website’s ranking in any major search engine, and probably would be a waste of your hard earned money.
09/10/2021 – SSL Renewal Scam!
Hi Everyone! This morning a client received an email notification from “SSL Renewals” saying that the SSL certificate for his website was expiring soon (see sample image below; click to enlarge). The domain name below has been changed for use in the example.
On the surface, everything appears to be quite legit. It showed the correct expiration date, a logo from the correct SSL provider, and convenient “Renew Now” links/buttons. It also suggested getting a multi-year certificate to take advantage of a discount. Even the grammar was correct (for once). Here are the problems…
- Anyone can view the expiration date of your SSL certificate in their browser, so anyone can put it in an email.
- Anyone can save an image from a website, logo or otherwise, and use it in an email.
- Since September 1, 2020, all Macs and Apple mobile devices no long trust SSL certificates issued for more than 397 days. Therefore we no longer offer them for more than a year (sorry bargain hunters) and wait until within 30 days of expiration to do the renewal.
Here are the two best ways to tell if a notification email is from us and is legit.
- Hover your mouse cursor over the From: name, but do not click. The From: email address should appear either in a tooltip next to the mouse cursor or in the status bar of the email app at the bottom left of the app window. If it’s from us, the email address would be something @sos4net.com.
- Hover your mouse cursor over the link or button they want you to click, but again do not click. The actual URL to which your browser would be sent should appear in the app’s status bar at the bottom left of the app window. The URL should not be on the sos4net.com domain because we never have you do the renewal yourself. We always take care of the renewal so you don’t need to worry about it.
If you receive one of these fraudulent notifications, please simply delete it. If you have any questions as to its authenticity, please contact us at 303-796-3000 or techsupport@sos4net.com. Thank you!
05/21/2020 – Bogus WeTransfer.com File Download Notification
Hi Everyone! It’s come to our attention that a bogus file download notification allegedly from WeTransfer.com slipped through our spam filter and into some users’ mailboxes (including ours). And apparently this is not the first time. The latest one says that “info@idcomm.com sent you some files”, which of course we never do. These notifications often look much like the real thing, sometimes even including graphics from the WeTransfer.com website. However if you hover you mouse over any of the individual file items or the Get Your Files link–DO NOT CLICK THEM, JUST HOVER–you’ll see that the target URLs have nothing whatsoever to do with WeTransfer.com or idComm.com.
If you received one of these bogus notifications, please simply delete it. Thank you!