First Contact Safety Tip Overview

Introduction

At the beginning of some emails will be a banner at the top with a message that reads “You don't often get email from … Learn why this is important.” This is called a safety tip, and it is added to certain emails by Microsoft in order to raise your suspicions of a new sender’s email address.

Why is it important?

This adds an extra layer of security protection against potential impersonation attacks. It’s a way to create awareness and put the recipient on their guard.

If you receive an email from a new email address trying to impersonate someone you know, you may glance over the name and not notice that this email address is pretending to be a person familiar to you. This could then lead to you communicating with the malicious actor before you realize it’s a scam email.

It may also be an email address that is legitimate, but it should at least make you double check the sender to ensure it is safe.

How does it look?

Single Recipient:

In the Inbox list of emails, you’ll see the safety tip “You don’t often get emails from…” instead of a preview of the email.
Inside the actual email, there will be a small banner at the top with the text “You don’t often get email from <email address>. Learn why this is important”
The “Learn why this is important” link goes to a Microsoft page with details and a short video on how to protect yourself from phishing.

Multiple Recipients:

If the majority of recipients have never or don't often receive messages from the sender, then the affected recipients will receive the tip. It’ll look the same as if it was sent to one person, except the beginning of the tip will say “Some people who received this message....”

When will I see the First Contact Safety Tip?

The safety tip is shown to recipients in the following scenarios:

The first time they get a message from a sender.
They don't often get messages from the sender.

The email could be legitimate or malicious. This includes marketing emails, spam emails, or even scam ones.

How does it know if this sender is a new/infrequent sender?

The First Contact Safety Tip considers the user's email history. It assesses whether the sender is new or infrequent based on your overall communication patterns and then alerting you to exercise caution when dealing with unfamiliar contacts.

How can I make the safety tip go away for known safe senders?

As you keep communicating with a sender, the system will learn that this is a known sender and will stop showing you the safety tip. You can also add the sender to your safe senders list and contacts in Outlook, and you will stop seeing the safety tip for this sender.

To add the sender to your Safe Senders list in Outlook, follow the steps in this article
To save a sender as a contact in the Outlook application, do the following:

Right click on the contact
Click on Add to Outlook Contacts
Fill in the contact details
Click on Save & Close

How can I report a suspicious email?

The impersonation email addresses that are scams should raise a safety tip to help you spot them easier. You should report impersonation and other suspicious emails by clicking on the Phish Alert button in outlook.

Any emails you report using the Phish Alert button will be automatically deleted from your inbox and forwarded to the FCDC Security team for analysis.

Although straightforward, reporting a phishing attempt can significantly enhance email security and safeguard us all. If you report a suspicious email and we confirm it is indeed malicious, we can remove it from all inboxes across the county.

FCDC User KB