Slashdot Mirror
Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam
Magmar writes "The team at Microsoft has decided to restrict free users from using Outlook and Outlook Express for managing email. This is going to be reserved for those who will pay for their accounts. The reason given for restricting the WebDav access of Outlook and Outlook Express is to prevent spammers from abusing the free service."
Actual link to article - http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1652391,00.as p
Not to be a grammar/spelling nazi, but wtf is -
"Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts..."
More like (FTA)-
"We are seeing customers consuming more storage than we anticipated, and we're bringing more storage online," she said.
I would think this wouldn't have gotten past the eds...But in any case, hope this clears things up.
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
How will keeping people from reading their email help reduce spam? Hotmail already limits you to sending ~100 messages/day.
Isn't that a little like Borders announcing they're cutting back on books?
/still waiting for Yahoo IMAP
I don't see any information about the snag with expanding Hotmail account sizes anywhere in either of the two links provided. In fact, all I see when I follow the first link is a generic summary page with info on a wide variety of articles: could you rectify this so that it points to an actual article?
Just read access, and you have to use your own ISP's server for outbound SMTP?
Additionally, Microsoft announced in this article that the upgrade of free email accounts from 2 MB to 250 MB had run into a snag with Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts.
Complete sentences people. This statement doesn't even parse lexically, let alone make sense.
I'm going to assume the poster meant '... not anticipating the amount of storage that users with free email accounts would utilize' or something to that effect...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
How does receiving by WebDAV help spammers that much?
So much for hotwayd, the only reason I kept my hotmail account.
"Records show we have 100 million users. Finance records show 75 million are non-paying. We will need at *least* 18,600 TB of storage.
-- My Sig is a P228.
How could they not anticipate the storage needed? Take the number of accounts that had 2 megs and add 250 to that, and then figure in the projected growth for a however long. Not really that difficult..
Doesn't matter that we are talking about MS here: Anything that can be done to cut the flow of spam, certainly has it's merits. I will give MS credit for at least attempting to deal with the problem before it gets worse.
Anybody know if this affects programs like Mr. Postman, which takes your email and puts it in a mail client (I check my Hotmail account in Thunderbird)?
Or request GMail invites -- there's tons of them floating around.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The storage is probably being used up from all the spam the hotmail users receive from other hotmail users. Thus they have finally decided to restrict the free accounts.
Google doesn't support IMAP or POP either, so you could just a easily say "The team at GMail has decided to restrict free users from using Outlook and Outlook Express for managing email."
The ability to check my MSN mail in Outlook is one of the last remaining reasons I have for holding unto that account and not switching to gmail as my primary-secondary email (ha!). I wonder how many other people are in the same boat as me.
Gmail is much better. I had originally tried to prove this... but my experiment proved difficult.
I had originally created a recipe at tech-recipes detailing my search for the best spam-blocker. However, the hotmail account enhanced filter blocked all good mail as well. I don't see how people ever used hotmail setup this way.
I had started this experiment by filtering all email to one of my domains and echoing it to all the web email accounts. I could compare the numbers to see who was best. The major problem was the all the web mail people started blocking email from my domain because it looked like I was sending in a lot of email. Geesh.
Is there any easy way to run this experiment?
"with Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts."
/. troll babelfished thier press release, and found this secret message.
/., and use google to englishize them.
I think I know what this says, it seems to change whenever I read it.
"Hotmail Hopes To Block Spam with New Fee"
babelfish.av.com Bullshit -> English > Microsoft want to charge more people, and realised that they can do this by stopping outlook and hotmail working together for free. When the new Asok type intern said people might be upset, they look around and saw that thier secret hidden spam division were using outloko to send hotmail users spam. A few days later when the penny dropped they gleefully crafted some press released to give to the whoring IT news community. Unfortunately a
OK so babelfish isn't good at 1:1 translations.
Have you seen how good babelfish and google translating is now? *impressed* I write all my posts in klingon, like any true
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
with Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts.
Not anticipating storage?? Surely all they have to do to determine the storage needed is:
No. of people * 250megs?
Ahhh, yes "we'll give you lots of storage, but don't expect people to use it". What stupid planning.
Of course people are going to use the storage you give them. With the number of attachments, high volume mailing lists, and using email as a backup for important documents, people are using more and more storage all the time.
Sounds like they screwed up again.
BTW - I have a few gmail invites, let me know if you want one.
Yes, that's what I'm thinking. I have 3 hotmail accounts and the only reason I use them is because I can log in conveniently from Outlook Express. If I could still use OE, that would be a large incentive to keep them! (plus now instead of 6 megs of storage I have 750!) But if I can't use OE then it's a large incentive to use gmail (which I've mostly switched to anwyay, combined with the IMAP server on my linux box)
I'm sure everyone else has noticed that the reason quoted for doing just about anything in the real world lately has been "to defeat terrorists". In fact, that's why I handed my latest project in late at work. It seems Microsoft is starting a trend to make spammers the cyber-equivalent of the terrorist scapegoat in the real world. This seems to me to be plain and simple that because of GMail, Microsoft can't use a ridiculous amount of storage (2 pitiful megs)as an incentive to pay them money that now they're looking for other features to take away to encourage people to pay up. I have a free Hotmail account and do use the Outlook Express option. It's a nice enough feature with plenty of annoyances, which is why I'm glad I switched my primary email account to Gmail some time ago.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Well, in times whhere you can get 1GB mail storage for free with a sleek interface and pop3 access (informally) announced Hotmail seems to make as much sense as, uh the Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
...but it might be like Borders announcing that every time you buy a book, you don't have to have a dump truck back up to your door and dump 2 tons of flyers all over your front lawn...
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
Wow... this move is a really surprising one for Microsoft. I mean, charging for something that used to be free? It's so out of character for them.
I think it is nice for them to look out for the little people. I mean, without them to protect us from spammers, what would we do? OK, so they make a little money in the process, but I know that they don't really care about the money. Trust me, I know Microsoft, and the decision only to let paying members use Outlook and OE for access to their Hotmail accounts has NOTHING to do with money. They are just trying to make the Internet a safe and happy place for everyone.
GO MICROSOFT!!!
Oh, and I was being sarcastic.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
I got my first Hotmail account in '94, I think it was. Great service then, even my non-computer-literate parents loved it, but nowadays it's got nothing on the other e-mail providers out there. Hotmail's got a cruddy, hard-to-use GUI and they annoy the hell out of you with pedantic "warnings" about the need to upgrade to their ridiculous pay service so you don't lose e-mail, contract herpes, etc. Hotmail does a good job of proving that "you get what you pay for," but Microsoft seems intent on not going beyond a certain level of usability in Hotmail - add space, take away Outlook funtionality - and I don't see how making it harder to use the free service will win them paying customers. I also don't see how any spammer who's actually making a buck won't just upgrade and keep on spammin' - or just use another service. (Something tells me the spammers who're using Hotmail aren't quite the cream of the crop...) Hotmail gives Microsoft a great advertising base, I guess, but the only reason I use that old account now is for sites that need a confirmed address. Yahoo's been much more reliable and I can actually see and use my 100 mb inbox there.
This is pretty much the death knell for hotmail for me. If I can't automatically download the crap in my mailbox once a month, that's all she wrote.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I've had my account since HoTMaiL first came online, before Microsoft bought it. And now for the first time ever I find out there is WebDAV access... just as they announce that it's gonna be killed. Dammit, gimme back my karma!
25 complaning about the grammar in the article
50 complaining how much Hotmail sucks and why not just use Gmail
50 complaining about how much Outlook sucks and why not use a open alternative
75 complaning about how much Microsoft sucks
2 haikus
24 calling for the death penaly for spammers
8 trying to link to JPEG exploits
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
Is to force people to pay for their 29.95/year premium service.
I guess they've hooked enough people with their free service to make monetizing it worth while.
Suprised they didnt blame this move on terrorists. Guess spam/virii are the new industry whipping boy.
Official GOD FAQ.
This is only a minor setback. First, Web access to Hotmail through Outlook Express is the ONLY reason people like me are using OE in the first place. Now Hotmail is cutting off my last link to using them over Yahoo or Gmail.
This is a major boon for Thunderbird and projects like Yahoo Pops, where Yahoo mail free customers can configure Outlook Express or another superior mail client to HTML Parse their mail to and from a free web account that has a well known instant messanger associated with it.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
This is a joke, it's nothing more than a money grab. Charging people for *how* they access their mail? That's ridiculous. If they were really that bothered about spam they could simply limit the Outlook access to receive only and block sending. Like how an ISP will let you receive your POP3 mail but won't allow you to send if you're connected through a different ISP.
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
I don't see what the big deal is with allowing OE and Outlook to use the webdav on the free accounts. I don't think the vast amount of abuse comes from those clients.
I think it comes from(in order):
1) Spoofing the from. Duh.
2) People scripting access to the site, much quicker than relying on outlook.
As usual, it's a company creating more problems to spit at a problem they aren't going to fix, and indeed can't fix except with really good spam filters, and sender id(tee hee).
Chris
the only reason I use them is because I can log in conveniently from Outlook Express
Wait a minute...
Is your problem hotmail related or Outlook related ?
If you kept using Hotmail despite the spam and the low storage space, I then doubt you should change...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Forgive me for being a bit daft ...
But does this mean I can't use outlook to pop my hotmail anymore?
-- The Dude
That's funny I still have access to Hotmail through Outlook at home and at work. I certainly don't plan to pay for access to Hotmail even though I've had an address with them since I first used the internet in college. All I want is a reliable email service that I can access anywhere through Outlook if need be. I can't stand accessing Hotmail through the MSN portal it is way bloated. I guess this is a good time to start utilize my GMAIL account.
Fortunate for Microsoft, blocking Outlook Express et al from Hotmail forces users to use the web interface, which contains plenty of ads. Unless of course the user is a payer..
http://mrpostman.sourceforge.net/ for all, I say.
Is it just me or does it seem that every day brings a story of how Microsoft was unable to correctly predict the magnitude of an upgrade or alteration.
I'm thinking about how Longhorn is delayed and the scope is cutailed. SP2 had delay after delay. Now this cock-up with the upgrade of accounts because they did not think that users would use the space.
Oh gmail, when will you come to our aid?
I should've gotten rid of Outlook a long time ago anyway.
Though I am sure that Microsoft will deny this, when Microsoft purchased Hotmail it was to use as an advertising venue. I.E. they were going to spam you and sell your name to people that spam you. I've open accounts at hotmail and NEVER used them and had them fill with spam. Most of it porn. People got tired of that but without the ability to sell advertising I don't understand why Microsoft bothers.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
although you can't use outlook with gmail yet...
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
i just cheked my mail with outlok 2003..
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
you know what would really help... MS Hotmail not capping the number of address you consider junk. i reached my junk mail filtering within the first week they introduced it. lets see how long it takes for my inbox to reach 250 MB of 1005 junk. cause that's all that will make it there anyway.
Ciao Hotmail! Access from OE was the only reason I've kept Hotmail now that I've got a Gmail account. Thanks MS though for catchin' the spam.
Well, no Outlook Express, no reason to use Hotmail over Gmail. Thanks M$ for the impetus I needed.
And too bad your engineers just couldn't figure that spam problem out.
The biggest problem I see with this, at least for me, is that now I won't be able to save my emails on to the hard drive once my account is full. Even with the purposed increased storage I would like to have a way to archive my emails. Any way to work around this limitation?(other than copy pasting every single email...).Thanks.
Do you remeber the first time you connected to the internet with a new installed WinXP?
This tiny little wizzard tells you to create a free email account at hotmail.com.
After Joe Average got his tracking cookie from hotmail.com, bcentral.com and passport.com, he now thinks he has to pay to fully use the internet!
(BTW his system is already compromised by a worm because his system is not patched!)
What will the European Antitrust Commision think about this new monopoly?
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I just hope that Gmail will soon develop pop3 support for Thunderbird. :(
[Please sign here]
I'm using Gmail now.
*ducks for flying objects*
I can receive mp3s of local bands in my e-mail now...why not?
and the interface is 10x better than hotmails.
I've got a handful of invites if anyone is curious, email me. regalbegal@gmail.com
_g
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
and 1 jackass with a free iPod sign.
hotpop (shareware, for Windows. Still working here at my office);
Gotmail. Free as in everything, for Linux.
There are some more, I just can't pull them off my mind right now.
You forgot the 10 people trying to get a free iPod.
Oh wait ...
*blinking cursor*
Yahoo mail did the same thing around 2 years ago. They used to allow POP3 access to the free mail accounts (although they didn't publicize it very much). They pulled that connectivity a couple years ago, reserving it only for the paying accounts.
I don't see what this has to do with spam - its simply an incentive to get people to send them money.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I guess this is where I should pop in with the obligatory "I got gmail invites." Message me for them...
First, they announce that they aren't going to release more patches for versions of IE earlier than XP, which will hopefully precipitate a greater shift from IE to FireFox (and other 3rd party alternatives). Then they announce that they aren't going to support direct access from Outlook/OE to Hotmail, which may be the only thing in some cases holding people to them over Mozilla, Thunderbird, Sunbird, etc. (More to OE than Outlook admittedly, but there are other calendar applications out there).
I know at least when I was using Outlook Express, one of the last things that kept me holding on was the convenience of checking Hotmail through OE. But after I looked around and found projects like Mr Postman, Blue HTTPMail and a dozen other projects on SourceForge, which let you access Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail from any mail client you want, I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird, and I've never looked back.
At a time when Microsoft *really* need to be consolidating and concentrating on getting people to stay with their systems, the last thing they should be doing is antagonising people time and time again, by trying to try and squeeze more money out of them. Cutting down on spammers is an utterly poor excuse for turning off that service, it's clearly just an excuse to get more people to switch to payed services. Granted they still have enough of a market share to be able to pull stunts like this time and time again, but when they spend the time and effort on FUD campaigns against Linux, while simultaneously making business decisions that could aggravate users into switching to open source apps or even right over to Linux, their business plan seems somewhat contradictory. Sure you could claim that it's really not a big deal which will create dozens of new Linux users, and that's possibly true. But with the JPEG exploit, with the SP2 problems, with the recent patch announcements... these things all add up.
Can someone please explain to me why you need Hotmail in the first place? Don't most ISP's give you several free mailboxes? If I did use a free mail service, I don't see how I could complain about any limitations. You get what you pay for, right?
Microsoft has decided to restrict free users from using Outlook and Outlook Express for managing email
For a brief glorious moment I thought that said Microsoft was restricting the use of these two Typhoid Maries in general. But no, it's just a webmail thing... rats.
I'm game! Greg_Kujawa@yahoo.com
Given the huge popularity of hotmail: isn't it possible that this is an attemp from MS to LOWER the amount of active hotmail users? Think about it: they recently have started increasing storage space on all free accounts. Due to the huge amount of spam that hotmail accounts usually attract, it doesn't need to be said that they will will need a HUGE amount of extra space, since a lot of users will manage to take full use of that space. Sure, they'll want you to keep your hotmail/msn adress (for .net and passport functions), but I also think they are now trying to discourage intensive use a bit.
That's ALL I use it for, and I'd gladly use another mail client if they'd allow it.
I've (obviously) got a gmail account, but I've got a couple of hotmail accounts I've had since, jesus, since before Microsoft bought them out.
Time to let go.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I use Yahoo Pops to access my Yahoo account, and Pop Goes The Gmail to access my Gmail account from a Pop Client such as Outlook Express. In general both grabber applications work very well.
Yahoo Pops had some problems downloading file attachments in the 1 mb range. No problems with Pop goes the Gmail so far.
Both of these grabbers run as a Pop Servers on localhost, which means they can't both run on the same machine at the same time. A multi-service mail grabber should be the next step in grabber evolution.
"Richardson said the subscriptions will allow MSN to better find and thwart spammers because the company will have a record of credit card and other identifiable information on account holders."
Do we think spammers are ethical enough to not use fake/stolen ID's and creditcards?
1005? Ye Hote Whenches, 1% nude! Need more fire for yon love dragon? DEAR SIRE--(oh wait, nigerians can't talk english yet...) ABAMO MABI GON CHITKI BOM... Need to lose weight? No, of course you don't, you eat gravel, peasent.
"Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts..."
Has this been edited out? I don't see the original text that is being quoted.
What about Entourage? I didn't see it mentioned. I don't think it uses WebDav either
Seriously now. It takes 1 +mins just for their webpage to come up (on a T1) and using Outlook or Outlook Express? As of 1-2 years ago, it wouldn't work for me at all. And like other Windows users I've reformated my machine at least 2-3 times now since then. This sounds so much like their "Asian" version of Windows XP for $30.
Notice the headline talks about how Microsoft is going to block Outlook and Outlook Express users from accessing Hotmail. What's really being cut out is WebDAV access. The actual press release from Microsoft clearly states that POP3 access WILL continue.
Hopefully Hotmail Popper will still work. Hotmail Popper is a small application that allows you to check your Hotmail account e-mail from a normal POP mail client (such as Eudora, IncrediMail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera, Netscape, etc). Unlike standard mail accounts which allow users to retrieve their e-mail through a POP mail client, Hotmail can normally only be checked on the web. With Hotmail Popper, you can use your favorite POP mail client to retrieve your e-mail from your Hotmail account. In addition, Hotmail Popper allows you to send e-mails through Hotmail's service, as if it was a normal SMTP (outgoing mail) server.
http://www.boolean.ca/hotpop/
i've had enough of MS and I've been waiting for GMail to come around so i can make the switch... if you could help me out im sure it counts as 20 good deads for the day
thanks a lot
-Adam
tacoman_13@hotmail.com
Its a lot easier to send 100 messages a day from Outlook than it is from Hotmail. So if you still want to spam it will take you longer. If you have multiple email accounts to get around the limit then this will reduce the number that you can send.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Gee, Hotmail wants a paid account for me to use Hotmail to generate spam... Now where is that stolen credit card list??
Why people still use systems like hotmail, where you have to try a billion different combinations before getting a semi-rememberable username, crap storage and crap facilities is beyond me.
I've been using myway.com for ages now, 125mb of storage (more than enough for me), and (most useful to myself) the ability to access other pop accounts (really, really handy for when I'm away from home and need to check my home/work email).
It's also free, has no ads, no pop-ups and is super-quick.
(I'm not affiliated with it in any way, I just love it to bits)
it was first come, first serve, thanks for playing!
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
When i first heard it was possible to use OE, i didnt belive it.. i was thinking 'how will they push their ads' ?
I'm not surprised they are 'taking it away' now that people are used to it.. typical drug dealer tactics..
Its got nothing to do with spam, its all about revenue.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I love it when customers say, "Nah, I'm going to switch." If they do that often enough, companies are forced to provide better service or better prices to all of us. Invisible hand, yadda yadda.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Does anyone remember the rumors a few months ago of Microsoft buying out Google? Perhaps this is a plot to drive users away from Hotmail straight into the arms of Gmail. Secret agents working at MS for Google? Or perhaps it's so MS can force Google to do the developement work out of house, work out all the bugs and issues, then when Gmail is out of beta, snap up every outstanding share of Google at any price.
Does gotmail still work on free accounts? =) But seriously. You couldn't make stories this ludicrous up. Microsoft, on their capped-sends-per-day free e-mail service, declares that they want to cut down on spammers, so they eliminate the one feature that most Hotmail lusers love...being able to use it from the comfort of their home, ad-free. Meanwhile, they declared over a month ago that they would upgrade free account sizes [carrot and stick, anyone?], but now, when it comes into effect, only some accounts received the increase in space, and Microsoft cites unexpected capacity utilization. Let me get this straight. Microsoft offers you more space as A) an incentive to not switch services and B) to attract more customers, and then they A) cut off the convenient client interface to Hotmail and B) declare that there have been unexpected usage levels in space, and so have delayed the upgrades. In other words...Microsoft punishes their customers for staying with them and believing them about their upgraded features. Honest. I've seen more financially feasible situations in the Weekly World News.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Like an internet macro program won't be able to send spam.....
It doesn't matter when you have a monopoly building billions in cash.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
How is this different than yahoo?
Personally I think this is in response to gmail. basically in a round-a-bout way they want you to store emails in hotmail because then they can use it like gmail. If they allow outlook to access hotmail, then you might actually clean your inbox more regularly.
I think they plan to use their free service to target more people with ads.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
That's funny, I thought Hotmail was designed for spam. How else does a new, unpublished, totally random account start receiving floods of e-mail? How else to they get you to upgrade?
I know this submission is geared towards windows users but I use Gotmail - it's a perl script that logs into hotmail and forwards your messages to another account or saves them locally. All from the command line.
Nongnu.org
It used to be up till 2.1.0. Download v2.1.0 or you'll have to pay after 100 e-mails xfered.
I've used Yahoo!Pops for years to check my yahoo account (ever since they cut off free access to pop3). Too bad the parent's solution is shareware and not freeware.
Both work great, though. They use the standard HTTP interface like a webbrowser (http-get?) instead of that stupid WebDAV protocol. A little slower than WebDAV, probably, but better than using a browser.
Hotmail has truly sucked for about 3 years now. I hate to be the broken record, but gmail isn't just a hip new thing (like, say, Orkut was). It's a MUCH better system for using e-mail. Hotmail's interface is cluttered, it's bogged down with spam, it's limited to IE, it's slow, and it's got ridiculous limits. How could anyone stick with it?
By the way, if anyone wants an invite, post here. I've got 6 to kill.
Haven't used GMail yet, but I'd always prefer to have a local email client anyway. More features, local storage and offline access.
Guess it's finally goodbye to Hotmail. Any other mail services out there that use WebDAV?
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Excuse my ignorance, but why WebDAV? Isn't it supposed to be just a poor man's implementation of WebNFS, to be phased out for WebNFS for files and IMAP for email?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Hopefully they can find some middle ground where users can download their email to outlook. And can upload replies and forwards back to hotmail, but then are required to write the actual reply or forward in hotmail.
I do security
However, one will not make any money sending 100 messages a day as a spammer. Not even close. Not by a factor of 1000. So the limit took care of the spam. They're using spam as a scapegoat to do what they want. Not surprising or creative, but the public'll buy it.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
those people who use outlook with hotmail who don't want to pay loose this functionality & the "spammers" just pay if they really really want to send spam from hotmail. I don't get it.
I wish to remain anomalous
After all, 640k should be enough for anybody.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
I'd love an invite. Please send to c4@outgunPANTS.com. Please remove PANTS before emailing.
Thank you.
C4
This is what BCC is for. The receiving MTA doesn't have a clue that there were a grand total of 200 recipients. All it knows is that it's receiving a message destined for 2 (exp) users on its system. BCC is only known by the sending MUA and the MTA that MUA uses. Beyond that it's not transmitted.
For pop3 hotmail access there is http://freepops.sourceforge.net/en/. I use it with gmail.
... Microsoft runs an email service, and produces email software, and then says that you can't use their own email software with their own email service? Because it's insecure? What's wrong with this picture?
As I've said many times, unless you're paying for that kind of access you shouldn't be running a MTA to begin with. The days of open and free can no longer exist on the Internet, people. I wish ya'll figure that out, stop bitching about it and move on. When 99.9999999% of the people on Internet are too incompotent to secure a mail server (mail as an example; all others servers can be inserted here) and keep it secure then they absolutely no justification for those ports to be kept open. We're far and away in the minority when it comes to compotent computer administrators. ISPs should not be expected to cater to the advanced skills and desires of 0.0000001 % of their possible customer base. If we want that level of service then we should have to pay for it.
So how exactly does stopping WebDav access stop spammers from sending emails via hotmail? If they went through the trouble of writing programs/scripts to send via WebDAV, wont they just switch to writing ones that uses standard HTTP form posts? "Sir, we are losing money on hotmail!" "Well, lets charge the people more money." "But sir, the people will complain if we just charge them money suddenly for something they have been getting for free." "Tell them its to help fight spam, that always works."
you've got spam.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Sheesh, I gotta pay Microsoft before I can spam, what's wrong with this world?
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-29-gates -spamhow_x.htm
Bill Gates stated that he believes the cure for spam is charging for emails.
Ever get the feeling that his trying to manipulate the market to do at this point? Notice how he only offers the service to people who pay for it now?
Even more disturbing is the sender verification his implementing. In reality, it has little benefit in stopping spam because spam will 99.9999% of the time always appear from a valid host. So my only thought is that his aiming to implement the email stamps instead.
Bill gates said himself that "if it didn't sell" (from http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html), he wouldn't do it. I think that pretty much emphasises theres a hidden motive behind this, especially since changing Hotmail to have 200megabyte inboxes instead of 2megs obviously isn't profitable.
Doesnt this imply that Microsoft wants spammers to pay them, in order to use their service to spam? I can see MS execs now: "Hell, we cant stop them. Lets make money off the bastards!"
I have some gmail invites to give out, and whoever replies to this post with their (preferably munged) email address will get one!
I'm doing this because I'm tired of seeing free iPod sig spam, and I'll do whatever I can to ruin it for those jackasses.
a firefox extension for spammer may become reality soon, which could log on as a common hotmail user via firefox and send spam.
why firefox? it is cool and easy to code.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I'd love to be able to get my email over a commercial firewall too... the bureaucratic overhead involved in getting ports opened is not justifiable - making interactions over HTTP via the proxy the only viable approach. I don't like web-mail at all - I'd far rather have my mail app poll for new mail in the background. I've been thinking about running a web server at home (on broadband) and establishing some RPC over HTTP like wrapper for IMAP/POP3 for some time... though I find it hard to believe that no-one has beaten me to the punch. Some transparent proxy for POP3/IMAP4 over HTTPs would be very useful to me.
astalavista
They don't even ask for your life story. Of course now that I've said this on /. they probably are going to get flooded with spammers abusing them.
*doh*
I've used safe-mail for quite a few different purposes, including my return email on /.
Has Slashdot been outsourced to Asia? The sentence structure seems to be about the same quality as one might receive in an e-mail from Dell tech support.
...or maybe this is just the editors' clever way of showing that techs in Asia ARE just as capable of communicating as their U.S. counterparts?
Naaah. Couldn't be.
So that's c4@outgun.com right?
Excellent. Thanks for the informative post.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
This is not just about getting people to upgrade to the premium service... it's yet another "heads I win, tails you lose" offer from Micro$oft. How else do all you freeloaders think you're going to get to see those really useful (& expensive) ads on msn if you never actually visit the web page and login?
Good job, MSN.
Personally, I use Hotmail solely for disposable addresses because I have an app (GetMail) that can retrieve them and forward them on to my real account. I'm assuming this app and others like it use WebDAV, so now to use these throwaway addresses I will have to actually go to the sluggish Hotmail website and check each one of them manually.
I guess I'll have to start using Yahoo mail accounts now. I'd like to start using Spamgourmet, but their site is down today. Coincidence?
The only reason I use Outlook is because of Hotmail connectivity. Now that is being taken away, so I can move to Open Source that much easier, like Thunderbird.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
I'm not normally one to get all emotional and curse, but I am *extremely* fucking happy to hear this. About half my current spam comes from errant hotmail accounts. Here's to seeing the daily spam-count drop like a rock (until the hotmail vs. perl/wget-spam scripting war commences).
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
That's quite a reduction. Yet another something-for-nothing business model proving unsustainable over time...
>> I just hope that Gmail will soon develop pop3 support for Thunderbird.
> Maybe they will develop an interface that works over Trumpet Winsock too! That would be killer!
The one who moderated it as 'Flaimbait' is either humour-impaired or not aware of the significant advantages of IMAP over POP.
In what way is hotmail still relevant?
Wow, they just eliminated the one possible reason I might have to hold on to my Hotmail accounts. Good thinking, Microsoft! :]
Actually, that's not true. In comparison to Gmail, Hotmail's interface is still preferred by me. The only Gmail incentive is the added storage and lack of account expiration (everything else about it seems to have a little less thought put into it). As soon as I switch from my current webhost to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) plan, the choice will be easy: start using IMAP and thus enable the use of SquirellMail for portable reception of e-mail from my own domain!
In anycase, while this may help MS look like it cares about stuff real people care about, it is detractor for folk like me.
Now that they have defacto admitted that their product is the cause of a lot of spam, when can I sign up for a class-action law-suit against them.
Over the last few years I have spent a lot of money of MS OS and various virus protection software and ultimately none of it did anything to help me to use their broken operating system.
Now I just use Linux.
Micro$oft shared Hotmail addresses with InfoSpace.com, where these were available for "harvesting" (that sounds sooo quaint!). Somehow these addresses ended up getting spam- even if they were never used. Source
> Some transparent proxy for POP3/IMAP4 over HTTPs would be very useful to me.
Not if your company has an IDS set up to look for people who try to get around the firewall by tunneling through HTTP. Mine does, and you get a nastygram from Network Security if you try a stunt like that. Just a word of warning...
I use Hotmail, the only one left is to have a Passport account. Goodbye Hotmail.
Err, try browsing at a different threashold :D
:P
I browse at -1 cause there are a few offtopic gems that you run across, but lots of cruft. You could browse at 4 and be done reading the comments in 5 mins
So I'm assuming folks that access their Hotmail with Encourage on a Mac must pay to do so now as well?
Oh. Never mind.
I just assumed that meant M$ was closing Hotmail down, since that would be the only real way to de-spam-itize it.
I guess there are some of you who actually use Hotmail for real email, but why? I used to keep a dummy HM account---never checked, of course---as a spam-trap. But in recent years, with decent (and improving) filtering in the better email clients, I don't bother. And I get very little spam.
Another dream turned to vapor...
Best,
Mal the Elder
If course, for the truly amoral spammers, they will just steal credit card numbers to use.
Not a question of morality, more a question of whether they run the risks. SPAM isn't likely to get you hunted down unless you really piss somebody off. Stealing CC'ing generalls pisses off Visa... them having lots of money to deal with CC scammers, and lots of lawyers to sue said scammers into oblivion.
what difference is it going to make if you have to pay for it? will that reduce the amount of spam?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123136&cid=103 48946
I can't upgrade even though I'd like to. They're screwing over customers like myself. And now I can't back up my mail!?! Thanks Microsoft, you just made me completely change to gmail...
btw, microsoft is doing this to screw over all those people using hotmail popper, too.
Me email iz skyewalkerluke at microsoft's free email service.
...As opposed to punishing those of us who've held legitimate accounts for the last 6 years and send perhaps a half-dozen messages a day?
Charging everyday users for spammers misusing the service? Isn't that an incredibly f-cked up con to get more money out of us by tagging it as "helping" defeat spam?
This is ridiculous. (Almost) anyone who has acess to the Internet may use their ISP's smtp server for sending email. Or they might just install their own smtp server themselves.
Since email has no authentication, they might just use random email addresses, they don't need to send it from a hotmail account.
This is all bullshit. It is obvious that they just want to start getting money from their users.
POP access (or WebDAV or whatever) is just not sustainable commercially, there are no adds, there is no revenue, period. It had to go away sometime.
That is unless you start piggybacking adds in the emails. That would be the only sustainable scheme for a free service. I prefer to have adds in my downloaded emails than not being able to download them.
Such a scheme would also give me the confidence that it would never go away because it is based on a sustainable economic model. Ok, never is too perfect, but it has far better chances of surviving and continuing having email download for an extended period of time.
Additional advantage for the provider: if you have a google scheme and use targeted advertising, spam becomes the email provider's ally because piggybacked to the lame spam ad, you will have the more "reliable" (at least in appearance) related "official" google add.
Subject: Enlarge your penis.
RELIABLE Add: Mistress Kuhana, massage therapist in Seattle. (User info used for locating the city)
first come, first serve...
get yours @ http://www.fundisom.com/free-gmail.php
and if you manage to get one - and feel like saying thanks,
there are these ads on that page...
enjoy.
People could still just use Hotmail Popper and any POP3 email client (even non-Microsoft ones... Oh, the humanity!) to access their account, and even send messages through it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Significant advantages?! The only 'advantage' imap has over pop3 is for sharing a mailbox, and storing large amounts of mail on server. For regular (ie 99.9%) mail usage, you just connect every few minutes, check for new messages, download them, and read. A 'significant advantage' would be if the server would notify the client when new mail arrives, so that you don't have to poll.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/28/1 248226
The company I work for wrote a HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip that lets anyone monitor their HotMail Inbox for new messages from their desktop - and see a preview! - without having to manually login to check for new messages.
In creating the HotMail Inbox Watcher, we got the strong sense that the only other companies using HotMail/WebDav were spammers exploiting Microsoft HotMail.
Personally, I would like to see Microsoft support an API for HotMail so other sanctioned applications could integrate with HotMail and continue to increase its value for end-users.
We are trying to work with Microsoft to promote this as an option for third-party companies. The HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip runs in KlipFolio, an open platform for intelligent awareness of changes to remote data. Klips are programed in JavaScript. KlipFolio is free for personal, non-commercial use.
You can download it at http://www.serence.com/
Regards,... Fred
Serence, Inc.
Life is NP-Complete
Though I don't think I'd give it up outright, Slashdot is becoming a harder read lately.
1 248226
Behold, I have the answer to this problem! Just add the two letters, s and h right after the http:// in the URL, and the article magically becomes readable! Witness, and you too can see the light!
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/28/
Your post advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative (*) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(*) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(*) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of spam
(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(*) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
I don't care what you offer, Micro$oft; I will never ever return! What good is a spam filter when you can't be guaranteed to keep your good messages either?! Adios!
Reasons Being a /.'er and not care about their retaining policies? when I read that link, i turned the invitation down. limited account on hotmail has more guarantees that email is actually deleted by the server after it's deleted by the user.
my 2c
Yeah.. maybe they don't want to serve as POP3 accounts, especially if they add more space. See http://hotwayd.sf.net/
But preventing non-spammer users from using the notoriously virus-prone Outlook interface to read their email reduces the chances that they'll get infected, so their machines are less likely to be turned into spam-sending zombies. This is a Good Thing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If an advertisement falls into an unused email account, is it still spam?
paintball
Hell, There goes 90% of all virii on the net. This is going to be a better solution to the windows "security problem" than Service Pack 2
for everyone that didn't get one, ...0 0b3-95b01d31d5 c 29f-2ba4efcfd1 5 a72-3719135012 5 4b6-e2669a412a
...
say thanks to mr. william
this guy didn't take one, he took 4
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d9ff423cd3-4e3d17
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d9ff423cd3-841b48
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d9ff423cd3-c658c2
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-d9ff423cd3-3abc1a
some people just can't play fair it seems
It's Tuesday, I accessed my Hotmail account, and it works perfectly. Not sure I believe that E-week article.
I re-read the article. Since Hotmail already has limits of 100 messages per day and only one message can be sent to a maximum of 50 e-mail addresses, this seems very reasonable for cutting down on spam.
Again, it's Tuesday, I can still access my Hotmail from Outlook Express - so I do not believe the article one terabyte.
Why don't they just stop people from sending email using that protocol...
Seems to be just an excuse!
Intelligent spammers don't send their spew from Hotmail accounts, neither using Outlook, Webmail OR Outlook Express. All spammers use Hotmail for is for reply boxes (dropboxes) i.e "to receive your free mlm info pack, reply to mlmisdafrigginl33testandbest_64646@hotmail.com today!". They know Hotmail's WebDav interface and the Webmail interface have an outgoing mail limit, so it makes it useless for sending spams.
Most spammers use software that connects to Open Proxys (n00bs using AnalogX on their cable modem) and send spam via the proxys, which in 99% of cases are not logged.
I have never, ever received a spam from hotmail servers other than 419s sent via webmail (!!)
"With Microsoft, you get Windows. With Linux, you get the full house" - unknown
Some hotmail users move their older emails to their PC via Outlook, so that they don't use up all of their 2MB quota.
Microsoft are going to increase the quotas for these users to 250MB, and they would hope that most users won't use much more than 2MB, so that they don't have to buy so much extra storage capacity for "free" customers.
I can understand Microsoft wanting to remove the ability to send email via this Outlook mechanism, but, if they prevent users from downloading and deleting email from their inbox, then those users will not be able to archive their email to their PC, and they will therefore allow their 250MB quota to fill up to almost its full capacity.
Isn't that counter-productive?
Warning heeded and understood :-) There isn't a policy against me doing what I want - just a strong reluctance to fiddle with something which isn't broken for everyone else.
Incidentally - I've discovered corkscrew - which I think I might be able to use with SSL tunnelling to achieve my goals... Not tried yet.
First the term, "Anonymous Coward" is certainly a bitch-ass way of pressuring users to log in.
.
Can't you be more creative than that?
Now on to my comment:
So. .
Microsoft's solution to spamming is to screw millions of the law abiding users of hotmail?
It's crazy moves like these that have created the hatred of Microsoft among computer programmers, website developers, graphic designers, and average computer users.
I contacted the developer of Hotmail Popper and he has confirmed it uses webdav. He's offering refunds to new purchasers.
To read Hotmail using any client (well, at least as long as WEBDAV is provided for retrieving mail):
1. Sign up for a fastmail.fm account.
2. Configure FastMail to fetch your Hotmail account mail (they are using WEBDAV, just like OE).
3. Read your email using any IMAP capable software, or using FatMail.FM webmail interface that is more feature rich than many PC-based email clients.
I wonder if they are going to stop WEBDAV access for reading email, or just for sending.
Why, sure 'nuff... I'm now a happy "customer." Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be as skeptical as I usually am... :-)
Thanks for the tip!
I would sure like one of those gmail invites. electronic mail at diamondjim50 at hotmail.
Thanks