Forum Discussion
Microsoft To Do Flagged Email List has Created a New Attack Surface for Junk Email
- Update: On January 29, I finally got a response directly from a support engineer on the To Do team! He acknowledged that the issue was being addressed and asked me to keep in touch with any updates. Since then, I'm happy to report that the To Do Flagged and Important smartlists have been SPAM free. The only exception was a temporary, regression on Feb 19 that was repatched within 24 hours.
Now we can enjoy SPAM free To Do smartlists. Note: Any junk mail that made its way into To Do before this issue was fixed will have to be removed manually.
DRFLNY Thank you for taking the time to validate that I'm not the only person in the world seeing this issue. I discovered the Important task smartlist is also impacted by this Junk folder flaw.
I've reported this to Microsoft via multiple channels including here in Tech Community, Feedback Hub and social media such as Twitter and Facebook. So far, it's been completely ignored by Microsoft except for one resource on FB who suggested that I report it to the Outlook team! Despite the fact that it makes zero sense to try and blame this To Do flaw on Outlook, I went ahead and reported it to them as well. The result? No response. I'm starting to wonder if it will take an article in one or more of the large tech publications to get thier attention.
Anyway, there are much bigger issues in the world that need attention. Let's hope for a brighter and healthier 2021 for all of us!
Now we can enjoy SPAM free To Do smartlists. Note: Any junk mail that made its way into To Do before this issue was fixed will have to be removed manually.
this issue still persists. Is there anything that can be done on our end?
JUNK emails now show up in the "Important" list as well as "Flagged email" and "My Day - Suggestions"
mgratton1002 wrote:this issue still persists. Is there anything that can be done on our end?
JUNK emails now show up in the "Important" list as well as "Flagged email" and "My Day - Suggestions"
mgratton1002 Yes, I see this problem has started again after being fixed for about a year (for me at least). But I'm just a regular user like you, not Microsoft support. You need to direct this issue to Microsoft.
Obviously, no one from Microsoft is paying attention here in Tech Community, so it's time to hit the social media (twitter, reddit, etc) and Feedback Hub again. Sadly, Microsoft's social media managers ignored or dismissed this issue for months back then, so the more users mentioning it, the more chance it will be noticed by someone who cares enough to follow up.
Meanwhile, I'll search for the emails I received from a Microsoft engineer after giving up on other forms of asistance and contacting Microsoft support directly. Hopefully that person is still around and on the same team or someone else there will be as knowledgable.
UPDATE: The issue appears to be temporary and has now been resolved. See my response to definedrisk. In my case, all the flagged and important junk emails that To Do imported are dated April 9-11. If that's the case for you as well, then we just have to clean up the mess left behind and hope this doesn't happen again...
Hi Mike- It looks like this issue was cleared up temporarily- I have 400+flagged junk mails in my Microsoft To Do app- which is really a shame, I was hoping to use it but this makes it useless for me. I will have to see if I can report it as you did. If you are still active on this, can you point me in the right direction? Thank you for speaking up about this-
LisaK10 Hello, Lisa. This problem was completely resolved for me back in February 2021. I haven't seen any junk email in my To Do smart lists since then. The fix was on Microsoft's side, so it should have resolved the issue for everyone. Nothing was done specifically to my devices other than updating to the latest version of To Do.
That being said, I did have to manually remove all the flagged and important junk email tasks that made it into To Do before the fix. Check the dates on all those. They should all be from earlier this year (assuming your To Do version has been updated).
This problem has resurfaced AGAIN recently! I have had over 10 spam emails correctly identified as junk but flagged in tasks to-do. Entirely Microsoft related as I am only accessing through to-do.live.com and outlook.live.com
