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."
How will keeping people from reading their email help reduce spam? Hotmail already limits you to sending ~100 messages/day.
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.
Yeah, I agree. Disallowing Outlook is clearly a move to encourage people to upgrade. They have that right, but if I'm going to pay for e-mail, I'm going to pay for a quality service.
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.