Forum Discussion
Outlook Groups: who can send an email?
In my personal Outlook email account, I created a Group, me as the Owner, everyone else as a Member without Trusted Sender rights. However, at least one of the Members is able to send emails to the Group? Why have a Trusted Sender category if a mere Member can send emails to the Group? Thanks.
3 Replies
In an Outlook Group, being a member normally includes the ability to send messages to the group. The Trusted senders list is not usually an “only these people may send” list. It is used to allow selected people to bypass restrictions or moderation that apply to other senders, especially people who are not members.
Check the group’s Settings or Email/Send permissions page and look for the actual sending scope. If it is set to allow members to send, then every member can post to the group, as expected. To stop a particular person from sending, remove that person from the group or change the sending scope to owners only, if that option is available for the group type.
If the goal is a one-way announcement list where only the owner can send messages, an Outlook Group may not be the best fit. Use a group type or mailing list that supports owner-only posting, rather than relying on the Trusted senders setting.
Surya, OK, I get it now. Yes, I thought Trusted Sender applied to my personal Group, not "outsiders".
This is what prompted the question: Members of my personal Group received a Group mailing which was an obivious phishing attempt (promotional email for Louis Vitton purses) and the Sender was identified as my Group Name (paperroute). However, being suspicious, when I clicked on the paperroute name, it showed an individual's gmail account who was not part of the Group. Again, at the time of occurrence, the Group had no Trusted Senders listed. So, how would this outsider be able to send all the Group this phishing email? Thank you !
hi GeneL56 I think the confusion here is between being a member of the group and being a trusted sender.
In Outlook Groups, the "Trusted Sender" setting generally controls whether messages from outside the group are treated as trusted or allowed through certain moderation/filtering rules. It doesn't necessarily mean that only trusted senders can send messages to the group.
If someone is already a member of the group, they may still be able to send messages to the group even if they aren't listed as a trusted sender. The trusted sender setting is more relevant to how messages from non-members or external senders are handled.
So, in your case, the member being able to send an email to the group may actually be expected behavior. If your goal is to prevent specific members from sending messages to the group, the available controls may be more limited depending on the type of Outlook group you're using.
It would be useful to confirm whether this is an Outlook.com personal group or a Microsoft 365 group in a work/school tenant, as the behavior and available settings are different.
