Industry News explains what vendor changes mean for small teams. Tech Tips gives readers checks they can try on their own systems. Company News covers what ALCO is building, publishing and changing. ALCO's newsletter site describes them as technology and cybersecurity developments that matter to businesses, practical advice for keeping your business technology working well, and updates and announcements from ALCO USA Inc.

The signup page describes the newsletter as one email a week. You can browse articles on ALCO Insights at alcohq.com/insights before joining. Recent pieces range from "Microsoft revises the SMTP AUTH timeline" and "Google rolls out a Chrome desktop security update" to "Check one shared folder for stale access," which reviews who can open one shared folder in a single pass.

Three systems decide whether an edition reaches you. ALCO's newsletter system holds your address and the editions you chose. Your mail service decides whether each message lands in the inbox, a tab, Spam, Junk or quarantine. If you subscribe a shared address, your organization's group settings decide whether outside mail is accepted at all.

Choose editions by role

Give each edition to the person who will act on it. A practical split:

  • Industry News for whoever decides on, pays for or administers vendor accounts such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
  • Tech Tips for whoever can actually run a check, which often means an admin sign-in for email or file sharing, plus the time to act on the result.
  • Company News for anyone who works with ALCO or wants to follow what it builds, publishes and changes.

One person can take all three, and choices can change later. Each person should sign up with their own address, because the form takes one address at a time and the confirmation goes to that address. Use a shared address only when a subscription must outlast one person, and only after an admin confirms the group accepts outside mail, as described below.

Sign up and confirm

Visit alcohq.com/newsletter to choose your editions and confirm your email. The same form also appears in the footer of other alcohq.com pages. On either one:

  • Enter your email address. If the form says Enter a valid email address, check it for a typo.
  • All three editions start checked. Clear any you do not want, keeping at least one; with none checked, the form says Choose at least one topic.
  • Select Subscribe. If the form says it is finishing a quick human check, wait; it sends your request as soon as the check passes.
  • Open the email ALCO sends and confirm. The subscription starts only after you do.

The quick human check needs JavaScript. With JavaScript off, the form shows a link to the subscription page on ALCO's newsletter site instead. That page lists the same three editions unchecked, adds an optional name field and also asks you to confirm by email.

If the confirmation does not arrive

Look before you sign up again. Check these places:

  • Gmail's Spam folder, under More in the menu on the left. Select the message and click Not spam; Gmail says future emails from that sender won't go to Spam.
  • Gmail's Updates and Promotions tabs, if your inbox uses them. Gmail lists automated confirmations under Updates, and dragging a message to Primary helps Gmail learn your preferences over time.
  • Outlook's Junk Email folder. Move the message to your Inbox, or select Report and then Not junk where Outlook offers it.
  • Microsoft 365 quarantine, on the Quarantine page of the Microsoft Defender portal, under Email & collaboration, then Review. Select the message, then Release, or Request release if your policy only allows that, before the date in the Expires column.

Do not leave it for later. For personal Outlook.com accounts, Microsoft says messages in the Junk folder are deleted automatically between 10 and 30 days after they arrive. Quarantined messages are deleted for good after the Expires date and cannot be recovered.

On the Quarantine page, sort by Time received or use Filter to narrow the list. The Search box takes a sender's email address or the entire subject, without wildcards, and searches only the current view; Filter searches everything in quarantine. Microsoft notes that a released message is re-delivered, so Outlook shows the release time rather than the original arrival time.

Some quarantined messages never appear on your own Quarantine page, because by default messages quarantined as high confidence phishing or malware, or by a mail flow rule, are visible only to admins. If you cannot find the confirmation, ask whoever manages your Microsoft 365 account to look.

If you subscribed a shared address

A group address can reject the confirmation outright. The rejection notice goes back to the sender, so from your side the message never arrives. Each kind of group has its own rule:

  • An Exchange Online distribution list's default delivery setting, Only allow messages from people inside my organization, rejects outside mail.
  • A Microsoft 365 group answers outside senders with error 550 5.7.193 unless Allow external senders to email this group is selected on the group's Settings tab in the Exchange admin center. Microsoft says it may take up to 30 minutes before outside senders can email the group.
  • A Google Workspace group accepts outside posts when an owner or manager sets Who can post, under Group settings and then General, to Anyone on the web. An admin may first need to turn on Group owners can allow incoming email from outside the organization, which is off by default, in the Admin console's Groups for Business sharing settings.

Subscribe individual addresses instead. An admin can change a distribution list's Delivery management setting in the Exchange admin center to Allow messages from people inside and outside my organization, but Microsoft notes that this lets anyone, including people on the internet, email the list.

Ask an admin to trace the message

When the confirmation is in none of those places, the mail logs can show what happened. In Microsoft 365, an admin with the Exchange Administrator role can open the Exchange admin center, go to Mail flow, then Message trace, and select Start a trace. Enter the subscriber's address under Recipients and a time range that covers the signup. The default is the last two days; ranges of up to 10 days return results right away, and longer ranges, up to 90 days, come back as a downloadable report.

Microsoft's message trace FAQ says a new message should take 5 to 10 minutes to appear. Getting status means Microsoft 365 received the message recently and has no other status yet. Quarantined means it is held in quarantine, Pending means delivery is still being attempted, Failed means it was not delivered, and Filtered as spam means it was rejected or blocked as spam rather than quarantined.

Delivered needs a second look. Microsoft's FAQ says a message the spam filter sends to Junk Email or quarantine also shows as Delivered, so open the entry and read its message events.

In Google Workspace, an admin with the Gmail Settings administrator privilege can open Email Log Search, under Reporting in the Admin console, and search by recipient over a custom range within the past 30 days. Google says results arrive within 1 minute to 1 hour and can show whether a message was marked as spam. If neither log shows the message, check the address typed on the form before you try again.

Keep later editions out of spam

Once the confirmation arrives, note the address it came from. Then tell your mail service to trust it:

  • In Gmail on a computer, click Show search options in the search bar, enter the sender's address next to From, click Create filter, check Never send it to Spam, then click Create filter again. The same filter can also send editions to a label.
  • In new Outlook and Outlook on the web, go to Settings, Mail, Junk email, open Safe senders and domains, select Add safe sender, enter the address, then select OK and Save.
  • On the Microsoft 365 Quarantine page, Allow sender, under More, adds the sender to your mailbox's Safe Senders list.

Microsoft says addresses and domains on the Safe Senders List are never treated as junk email. It adds that by default the Outlook Junk Email Filter treats addresses in your contacts as safe senders, so saving the sender as a contact also helps. Google's help for valid mail that lands in Spam also suggests adding the sender to your contacts.

Change or stop an edition

Use the preferences link in a newsletter to update your choices later. ALCO's privacy policy says every issue has an unsubscribe link, your address and topics are kept in ALCO's own newsletter system while you stay subscribed, and you can ask ALCO to remove your address. Its instructions for privacy requests ask you to write Privacy request in the subject or message.

To drop one edition, use the preferences link rather than Gmail's Manage subscriptions, under More in the left menu. Gmail says that tool unsubscribes you from all active mailing lists related to the sender, that it is gradually rolling out, and that the sender can take a few days to process the request.

Blocking is not unsubscribing. Gmail sends all future mail from a blocked sender to Spam and suggests unsubscribing instead from newsletters you no longer want. In Outlook, Report junk moves the message to Junk Email and adds the sender to your Blocked Senders list. Neither one ends the subscription, so the editions keep arriving in Spam or Junk.

Check that an edition is genuine

CISA's warning signs of phishing include urgent or emotionally appealing language, requests to send personal and financial information, untrusted shortened URLs, and incorrect email addresses or links. CISA adds that in the era of AI, some phishing emails have perfect grammar and spelling. If a supposed ALCO edition shows those signs, do not use its links, including the unsubscribe link, which CISA also warns against. Report it as phishing and go to the ALCO website yourself.

In Gmail on a computer, open the message and click the Down arrow below the sender's name. A Mailed by or Signed by line naming a domain means the message was authenticated, and a question mark next to the sender's name means it was not. Gmail notes that unauthenticated messages aren't necessarily spam, so treat a question mark as a reason to look closer. Gmail also suggests hovering over a link before clicking; if the address does not match the link's description, it may lead to a phishing site.

In Outlook, if your organization uses Microsoft's unauthenticated sender indicators, a question mark on the sender's photo means the message failed authentication checks. A via tag means the domain in the From address differs from the domain that signed or sent the message. If your admin has turned on Microsoft's first contact safety tip, a banner saying You don't often get email from, followed by the address, can appear on early editions; it is a prompt to check that address, not proof of fraud.

A passed check shows which domain sent the message, not that it is the right one. Microsoft notes that a lookalike domain with valid DNS records can pass SPF, DKIM and DMARC, so compare the sender's domain letter by letter with the one your confirmation came from.

To report a fake in Gmail, open it, click More next to Reply, then Report phishing. If a real edition was marked as phishing, the same menu offers Report not phishing. In Outlook, where the Report button is available, select Report, then Report phishing; Microsoft says messages reported this way are deleted.

Common mistakes and how to spot them

Each of these leaves a sign you can check for:

  • Subscribing a group address. Nothing arrives and nothing turns up in Junk or quarantine, often because the group rejected the confirmation.
  • Clearing every edition. The form shows Choose at least one topic and sends nothing.
  • Leaving a quarantined confirmation for later. After the Expires date it is gone, and the subscription never started.
  • Blocking an edition or reporting it as junk to stop it. Editions keep landing in Spam or Junk, because the subscription is still active.
  • Using Gmail's Manage subscriptions to drop one edition. Gmail unsubscribes you from all of the sender's active lists, so every edition can stop.
  • Trusting the display name. The name can say ALCO while the address behind it belongs to someone else.

A worked example

Imagine a ten-person accounting office. The office manager, who runs the firm's Microsoft 365 account, signs up for Industry News and Tech Tips, and the owner signs up for Company News only. A staff accountant who wants Tech Tips signs up the staff distribution list, and nothing comes back.

The manager runs a message trace for the list's address and finds the confirmation marked Failed. The list still has its default delivery setting, which rejects outside mail, so rather than open the list to the internet, she asks the accountant to sign up with his own address.

Her own confirmation is in neither her Inbox nor her Junk Email folder. On the Quarantine page she sorts by Time received, finds it among the messages that arrived just after she signed up, selects Release, chooses Report message as having no threats in the flyout, then selects Release message. She selects Allow sender, which adds the sender to her Safe Senders list, and confirms the subscription.

When the first Industry News issue arrives, she checks that the sender's domain matches the one on the confirmation and that Outlook shows no question mark on the sender's photo. She runs each Tech Tips check the week it arrives and files the result. When the owner later wants Industry News too, he adds it from the preferences link in his next issue instead of signing up again.

What to do this week

Work through these in order:

  • Decide which editions each person gets, and who will act on Tech Tips.
  • Have each person sign up with their own address and confirm.
  • If a confirmation is missing, check Spam, Junk and quarantine before anything expires, then ask an admin to trace it.
  • Once it arrives, add the sender to Safe Senders or create a Gmail filter.
  • When the first edition lands, check its sender details and note the domain.
  • Put the first Tech Tips check on a calendar for the week it arrives.

Short answers to common questions

Changing editions does not need a new signup; use the preferences link in any issue. To move to a new address, sign up the new one, then use the unsubscribe link in an issue sent to the old one.

The alcohq.com form asks only for an email address and your editions. The subscription page on ALCO's newsletter site also has an optional name field.

A colleague who wants an edition should sign up rather than rely on forwarded copies, so their choices and confirmation stay their own. When someone leaves, whoever manages their old mailbox can use the unsubscribe link in any issue sent to it.

Where ALCO can help

ALCO USA Inc is an IT services company headquartered in Caldwell, Idaho, with technicians serving businesses across Idaho. Its listed services include Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, email security and user training. If an edition raises a question about your setup, the ALCO help desk is staffed 24 hours a day, including holidays, and calls are answered by a person.

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