[Elecraft] [OT] Be Advised ... New Microsoft Outlook Email Spam-Filter False-Positives Bug!

[Gary W. Hvizdak]

This past week I emailed someone (Bob in Germany) but he didn't reply so a
few days later I emailed him again.  Upon replying to my second email, Bob
indicated that he never received my first email!

Fast-forward to this evening, while tweaking my next (700 Hz filter)
Reflector post, I sent it to myself on a whim, only to find that it was
misidentified as spam.  Eventually I was able to determine that the culprit
was my callsign on the signature line!

I've already reported this issue to Microsoft, and as luck would have it, I
had previously written the necessary "regular expression" code (see below)
to identify any valid amateur radio callsign, so I provided that as well.
Even though my code should save them many hours of research, coding, and
testing; there's still no telling when or even if this recently introduced
bug will be corrected!

I mention this because it's unlikely mine is the only amateur radio callsign
being misidentified by Microsoft Outlook's spam filter!

73,
Gary Hvizdak
(callsign omitted so that this message isn't mistakenly flagged as spam by
Microsoft Outlook)

--- - - - ---

My regular expression code to identify any amateur radio callsign (hopefully
it won't cause a false-positive) ...

   $us_1x23_2x123  =
"((^[KNW][0-9][A-Z]{2,3}$)|(^((A[A-L])|([KNW][A-Z]))[0-9][A-Z]{1,3}$))";

   $dx_12x23       =
"(^(([ACDLPST][2-9])|([E][2-4])|([H][2-46-9])|([JV][2-8])|([Z][2-3])|([2-9][
A-Z])|([A][M-Z])|([B-JLMO-VXYZ][A-Z]?))[0-9][A-Z]{2,3}$)";

   $dx_23x12       =
"(^(([ACDLPST][2-9][A-Z])|([E][2-4][A-Z])|([H][2-46-9][A-Z])|([JV][2-8][A-Z]
)|([Z][2-3][A-Z])|([2-9][A-Z]{2})|([A][M-Z][A-Z]?)|([B-JLMO-VXYZ][A-Z]{1,2})
)[0-9][A-Z]{1,2}$)";

   $any_call_regex = "~" . $us_1x23_2x123 . "|" . $dx_12x23 . "|" .
$dx_23x12 . "~";