A few threads had popped up on Reddit that discuss weird popup notifications that have shown up on customers' computers. While receiving a notification from Microsoft is not out of the ordinary (Windows 7 users will soon become familiar with new popups), these looks incredibly suspicious.
Redditor GOARGLE wrote, "I just got two notifications coming from the notification tab that's in the lower right hand corner (next to the time and date). The first one popped up as "Microsoft movies - this test notification' and then 5 minutes later it popped up again as "Microsoft movies - thsi test notification". The typo was there as it popped up." The user went on to explain that clicking on the popup opened the Microsoft News app, but instead of an actual news article showing up, they were greeted with an error message. The misspellings and the error message sound like the work of nefarious hackers, but we aren't quite certain what's going on at this point.
The three notifications that have been reported so far are:
thsi test notification
this is test notification
Test Notification
Now Microsoft support engineer joined in on an
existing reddit thread to explain that a "configuration error" was the source of the problematic (and misspelled) notifications:
Due to a configuration error in the Windows 10 News app notifications (English edition), some customers reported seeing test notifications. This issue was resolved on March 29th via a configuration update for existing versions. We have also released a new version of the app that addresses the issue. The notification does not affect the application or use, and this issue should now be resolved.
What's even more surprising is that it took Microsoft 5 days to make a public comment about an issue that was undoubtedly troubling to users. With that being said, Microsoft might want to start hunkering down and making sure that all of its t's are crossed and i's dotted now that the Windows 10 April 2019 Update is nearly at our doorstep. The last thing that Microsoft needs is a repeat of the October 2018 Update.