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Everything sent to WinAddons lands in one place: support@winaddons.com. We publish no other address and reply from no other address, so mail that claims to be from us and comes from somewhere else deserves suspicion; forward it to us and we will tell you whether it was genuine. The inbox is read by the editors themselves, not sorted by software into a folder nobody opens, and because readers write from every time zone it is checked through the day rather than during one office’s working hours.

A word at the front of your subject line gets your message to the right person faster. When your message concerns a specific article, include its link; headlines change after publication, links do not.

Words that route your message

  • CORRECTION: something we published is wrong. Give us the link, the exact sentence or figure, and if possible the document that proves the point: the KB article, the build’s release notes, the store listing, the advisory, the filing. This is our fastest queue, and our corrections policy describes what happens once your message arrives.
  • TIP: you know something about a Microsoft product, service, decision or deal that has not been reported. Say what you know, how you came to know it, and whether we may write back with questions.
  • PRESS: announcements from companies, studios and developers. Put the release in the body of the message as plain text; unsolicited attachments from unknown senders are not opened. A release starts our reporting; it never finishes it.
  • ADVERTISING: display placements or sponsored content. Our advertise page sets out what we run and what we turn away, and reading it before writing saves everyone a week.
  • PRIVACY: your personal data, under our privacy policy, including requests to see it or delete it.
  • COPYRIGHT: takedown notices and counter-notices under our DMCA and copyright policy.
  • GENERAL: everything else, from reactions to our coverage to the sections you think we are neglecting.

What makes a good tip on this beat

A tip with a document attached is worth ten without one. The message center notice that contradicts the public announcement. The support article that was rewritten overnight with no note. The store listing that went live before the reveal. The Insider changelog line nobody explained. The known issue Microsoft has not yet acknowledged, complete with KB number, build number, error code and the steps that reproduce it. The Azure incident that ran longer for your tenant than the status page admits. Screenshots are welcome, with the build and channel they came from, and with anything that identifies your organisation or your account blanked out before sending.

Every tip is read. Not every tip can be pursued, and none is published on its own; our fact-checking policy explains what has to be confirmed before a claim becomes a story. A tip points us at the door. We still have to open it.

Confidential material

If you work at Microsoft, at a partner, at a customer or at a supplier, and what you want to send could cost you your job, look after yourself first. Write from a personal account on a personal device; never from a work laptop, a work network or a managed phone. Begin the subject line with CONFIDENTIAL so the message is treated as such from the moment it arrives, and keep the sensitive part out of the first email; we will reply and settle on a safer channel before anything identifying changes hands. Sources are not named to anyone: not to advertisers, not to lawyers, not to the companies they work for. The conditions under which we grant anonymity are in our editorial standards, and if protecting you is beyond us, you will hear that before you send, not after.

What this inbox is not

WinAddons reports on Microsoft. It is not Microsoft, and it is not a help desk for anything Microsoft makes. We cannot recover a locked account, reset a password, refund a store purchase, bring back deleted OneDrive files, unban a console, repair a failed update on your machine or push a support ticket up the queue. Microsoft’s own support channels and admin centers exist for that, and they will get you further than we can. Never send us account credentials, product keys, tenant identifiers or recovery codes; if they arrive, they are deleted unread.

What we can do is work out why something is failing for many people at once. If an update broke your machine, tell us the KB number, the build and the error, and tell us how you know that others are seeing the same thing. That is not a support request. That is a story.

Security findings

If you have discovered a vulnerability in a Microsoft product or service, take it to the Microsoft Security Response Center through its coordinated disclosure process rather than to us. We will not publish exploit details or proof-of-concept code before a fix exists, a rule set out in our editorial standards, so sending them to a newsroom achieves nothing except widening the circle of people who hold them. Once the advisory is public, we are keen to hear from researchers about what the fix covers and what it leaves open.

How quickly we answer

Correction reports get a same-day acknowledgement and are usually settled within one business day. Tips are answered when we have a question to ask or a story to show you; silence means we lacked the capacity, not that the tip was worthless. Press and advertising mail is dealt with inside a few business days; privacy and copyright requests are acknowledged within two and completed inside the periods their policies set. If you have waited longer, send the message again with the same subject line. A lost email is far more likely than a deliberate snub.

Before you press send

Ordinary email is not private, which is why the section on confidential material exists. Letters and comments offered for publication may be shortened or tidied, and we will tell you before your name appears. Correspondence is retained only while the matter it concerns is live, as our privacy policy explains, and nothing you write to us goes onto a mailing list or to any company we cover.