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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
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?!
"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..
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
So, how does limiting reading of e-mail cut spam?
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
No, because GMail never had that feature.
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.
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!
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
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?
Hotmail's WebDAV interface was, and apparently still is, riddled with holes that prevented spammers from using it in the same way they were abusing the formmail.pl scripts a few years ago.
Microsoft announced time after time that they'd plugged those holes, but every time within a month or two spammers found another hole, and started abusing the Hotmail WebDAV interface again.
There's plenty of discussion on this on news.admin.net-abuse.email over the years.
I don't think it ever was as bad as formmail.pl was, but there were a few high profile spammers specializing in using Hotmail WebDAV exploits.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
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.
Here at Microsoft, we define "spam" as "a non-paying customer". We have implemented innovative new "spam filters" which discard legitimate email which would otherwise have been delivered to freeloaders, but that wasn't as effective at driving away the dead weight as we had hoped. The next step is to raise the fees on all of our free accounts and see how that will positively impact our revenue stream.
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.
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]
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.
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.
Oh well, lets not worry about hotmail! I think its actually a *GOOD* idea that people are prevented from using outlook and or outlook express :) And Microsoft came up with this idea?? Thats two birds with one stone. Bring on the Gmail!
Ps. I still have gmail invites for those that want one.
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.
[Please sign here]
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/
Because Gmail is beta. You are forbidden from saying anything about Gmail while it's in beta.
Before Gmail gets out of beta, they will add a second GB of storage, free POP and IMAP support, and a professional-grade API for mail checking utilities.
Trust me. I heard it from this guy on a message board who saw a link from a blog on a web site that this one guy who delivers coffee supplies to Google once heard this information.
For more information, click here.
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)
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.
What's funny with that is I've been having difficulties getting people switching from OE to Thunderbird as their mail client, because they all complained that Thunderbird didn't let them access their Hotmail account and OE was better at this...
I think Microsoft just made a very good marketing move on behalf of Thunderbird... :-D
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
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
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
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.
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.
Check this out, I've been using it for a while.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
Again, so why turn off *READING* as well? Just deny access to the writing WebDAV methods, other than delete. Turning off sending via WebDAV is buyable as an anti-spam technique. Turning off the reading as well is a money grab.
if I read it right, it's only for new users, so I should be safe to keep using outlook express to access hotmail. :D
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!"
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?
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.
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
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