Stop changing the display of email addresses to names on outlook. This is supporting CYBERSECURITY Criminals.

Reported
Anonymous
2023-12-01T19:38:31+00:00

When I type an e-mail address to someone, Outlook changes it to the name in my contacts instead of leaving it alone as the actual e-mail address.

For example, I received an email from an unknown contact (a scammer) whose email address is **removed for privacy reasons**@gmail.com and outlook displays my CEO's name instead of the scammer's email address. How and why is my CEO's name displayed from an email address that has random letters??

The way Outlook is currently displaying names instead of email addresses makes people extremely vulnerable to scams, phishing, malware, and other cybersecurity threats.

Furthermore, I am not the first person to raise this issue. Please see this same issue raised at this link: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/show-the-actual-e-mail-address-instead-of-the-name/09baa36a-b494-456c-901f-475032c72b8d?page=1  Microsoft needs to address this issue and stop giving responses on forums that are unrelated to issue at hand. Instead please ESCALATE this issue to appropriate party responsible for making decisions and TAKE ACTION immediately.

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Settings

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-19T15:39:08+00:00

    I'd like to also add my voice to the objection to this feature.

    Our company uses a ticketing system which is affected by this feature.

    One individual replies to a customer, but the friendly name feature switches the responder to another individual.

    This is not ideal as we have customers replying to the second individual and not the first.

    Can you please implement an off switch? We don't want or need this feature.

    Thanks.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-28T12:43:15+00:00

    I would also like this to be REMOVED as a feature.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-30T18:31:54+00:00

    I would like this feature removed as well, my father is 81 and one of those people who are afraid of touching any settings thinking they might wreck something. He keeps falling for scams pretending to be popular digital currency storage apps and opening attachments containing malware that are pretending to be people in his contacts... Please, at least make a "Seniors Mode" where everything is simplified and doesn't change!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-04-03T03:24:02+00:00

    how the ASDF do we get this feature undone.

    I've had 2 months now where I have a Supplier and a Coworker with the same name and I keep screwing them up.

    And now this month I have a coworker and a CUSTOMER now getting mixed up.

    This is ridiculous.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-04-18T15:52:19+00:00

    Hello Sanjana; Along with you I am raising a voice too against this feature. Here I am telling my story which just happened to me last month and I have posted at another Microsoft page too.

    Last month I was very lucky to save myself and will admit that our laziness and very fast life style almost had me taken by some clever phishing guy.  Whether scammer tracked my bos's phone or whatever - about 15 minutes after me and my boss had very good call about his birthday party - scammer suggested me in email that he (as my boss) wants me to keep a secret of buying and giving gift cards to few special of our management staff ( I never second guess that it was not my boss).  Upon his email request I bought five of $500 each master gift cards.  But when instead of asking me to give it to those staff members he asked to send him card pictures from back and front then - I got suspicious and checked the actual email from where this email was.  So Friendly name was same but email was different and also in my iPhone Siri just gave little warning that it's updating the address - that's it.  It didn't raised the alarm.  Any how after I had alarm I called my boss's another numbers and found the problem.  Just gave little warning replies to phishing guy and he never dared to email me back.  It's a nuisense and now I have to use those cards at home but still costed $48 card buying fee and my time waste to go and buy them.

    After finding it a common issue with thousands on line who are just 5% of actual who raise their voice like me compare to all who are phished actually. 
    I would say whether it hurts Microsoft's ego where bosses want to force public to use " Friendly / Display name" instead of actual email - Microsoft should / please / respectfully give an Option to : disable / hide 'friendly name' / ' Display name ' /  (alias) and allow to display true sender email or Both.

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