Well, two weeks after installing Service Pack 2 for Office 2003, with its new Outlook anti-phishing filter, I finally received the first message that Outlook suspected might be a phishing attempt but didn’t move to the Junk E-mail folder. I didn’t notice the Info bar message at first, but when I clicked on a link in the message, this dialog box appeared.
That’s when I looked at the info bar and saw this message.
Nice of Microsoft to protect me from those potential evildoers at microsoft.com! Of course, all I had to do was click to add this domain to my safe list.
This is the sort of stuff that Microsoft watchers like to point to as evidence that the company is clueless. However, I see this from a different perspective. In this case, at least, Microsoft doesn’t get a free pass. The algorithm might have tripped up, but the user gets to make the decision whether to trust this message or not. That’s the right set of defaults.
Still, the irony is noteworthy.
Ed Bott 
It makes you wonder whether it’s better for your SPAM/phish software to be hyper-vigilant (as in this case), or let some things through. I’ve been using SpamBayes for several years with great success, except for the fact that it occasionally yanks a valid email (from someone in my address book, no less). I don’t remember exactly how I got along without that little add-in.
You know what absolutely kills me? I’ve already received a couple emails with hyperlinks whose text was a URL — but the actual URL pointed to something completely different (almost always an IP address, no hostname). This is a no-brainer, but not included. Go figure.