News

LinkedIn Adds Message Safety Tools And Focused Inbox

The business networking and recruitment platform is cracking down on spam messages and scams.

Published

4 years ago

December 3, 2022

linkedin adds message safety tools and focused inbox

LinkedIn has just made some changes to its direct messaging service to help its 875 million members avoid spam and attempted scams. The business networking site is seeing growth rates of up to 34% a year, with 21 inMails sent every second, so it is keen to ensure that new and existing users are kept safe.

LinkedIn’s first change is the rollout of a new “focused” option for incoming messages, which will relegate unwanted mail to an “Other” box. Switchable automatic spam and harassment detection should help to send spam and legitimate mail to the right places, and a new feature is also available to report unwanted messages.

The company states that Focused Messages will help to present “the most relevant new opportunities and outreach”. LinkedIn says that the feature uses AI algorithms which learn from what you open and interact with to tailor a custom inbox experience.

Also Read: How To Find The Best Remote Work Opportunities In The Middle East

Alongside these messaging additions, LinkedIn says it will also add live captioning to video messages to improve accessibility — a move that is thought to signal the platform’s greater focus on messaging as a more standalone service.

The new features were being tried out in smaller control groups to gauge their effectiveness but are now going global, with all users expected to see the updates soon.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.