“If you don’t meet the requirements, your email might not be delivered as expected, or might be marked as spam,” Google has warned.
This week, Microsoft 365 admins received warnings from Microsoft about authenticating their outgoing email messages. The announcement comes in response to Google implementing new strict anti-spam rules that are going to affect admins using business Microsoft 365 Outlook accounts to send bulk messages.
In recent years, spam email messages have gotten out of control and email providers have had a hard time preventing the spam from slipping through the cracks.
And like many other email providers, the ongoing issue around unwanted emails had forced Google to now take a harder stance towards the onslaught of spam.
How Spam has Become a Threat to Web Users
There are plenty of reasons why spam emails can be incredibly problematic to those who get them.
In the past, spam was just an overly eager, really annoying marketing technique, but these days spam has become a tool used by hackers and scammers, who use the trust of email recipients to gain personal data.
Spam emails usually contain phishing scams, which are designed to mimic legitimate communication from institutions, or they contain links to malware or viruses. The goal of such emails is to gain certain information from the reader which can then be used to cause harm.
Spam emails can also inundate inboxes to such an extent that it becomes almost impossible to see what is a legitimate message and what is not, causing important emails to go unanswered.
Moreover, having your business email address associated with spam can tarnish your online reputation, impacting your ability to interact effectively with clients.
Microsoft’s Warning to 365 Users
With the new spam rules, website owners and admins are being encouraged to authenticate their domains so that they won’t be rejected by web email providers.
The Microsoft Defender for Office 365 team said “By setting up email authentication for your domain, you can ensure that your messages are less likely to be rejected or marked as spam by email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Outlook.com”.
The team further said that authenticating is vitally important for those who are sending out bulk emails, which might just show up as spam because they are being sent in a large quantity.
Microsoft also used this opportunity to remind users that the 365 service should not be used as a bulk mailing service and said that those doing so were not following the sending limits and as such could be blocked or flagged as high risk.
The company said that those who wish to send bulk emails should rather use their own email servers or make use of a mass mail provider, to ensure that they are able to adhere to the best emailing practices.
Being flagged as spam is a nightmare for businesses as it not only prevents any marketing emails from going through but it can also prevent your day to day business emails from going out to your clients.
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