Admins Accuse Microsoft of Hotmail Cap

kurmudgeon writes "The Register is fielding reader tips that Hotmail has placed Draconian limits on the number of Hotmail recipients who can receive an email. The first 10 Hotmail addresses included in a mass email go through just fine, according to these reports. But any additional addresses are returned to sender with a message that reads: "552 Too many recipients." (Microsoft denies it has placed any such restriction on the number of senders.) This would appear to be a violation of RFC 2821, which states: "Rejection of messages (for excessive recipients) with fewer than 100 RCPT commands is a violation of this specification."

Too many?

[shine-shine]

Oof.

"552 Too many first posts."

I'm shocked

[Zashi]

Microsoft isn't following standards? I'm the rest of the slashdot community is just as surprised as I am. I mean, microsoft is a company we've come to trust, to do no evil, to side with the consumer and the technical community at large. I'm sure this is just an honest mistake, one we will not see again.

*incoherent wheezing and laughter*

What's the bid deal?

[jtroutman]

There's been a fix [google.com] for this problem for a while now.

Dont worry!

[Ariastis]

No sweat guys, for 19.99$ per year, you can become a member of the Windows MSN Live Hotmail Benefactor Plus Live rewards program!

Benefits include :
1) Spam whomever you want, bypassing all spam filters!
2) Send e-mails to more than 10 recipients (Also called the "I run a mailing list you fucktard" option)
3) Free "Upgrade to Vista (Please)" coupon.

Oh NOES!

[geekoid]

Now microsoft will get hammered by the Standards police.

Re:What's the bid deal?

[jtroutman]

That should, of course, have read "What's the big deal?", but I've had a head cold for the last week.

"Admins Accuse Microsoft of Hotmail Crap"

[cliveholloway]

Heh. Am I the only one who misread the headline and thought, "How true".

Re:RFCs are not laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone buys Microsoft, God kills a kitten.

Re:People still use hotmail?

[alien9]

Yes.

I use it due to integration with messenger IM.

Despite the fact I use gaim/pidgin most of time, the email/IM integration provided by their service led me to the decision of keeping my account, which is the same long before hotmail was purchased by microsoft.

I think the service fits my needs, to provide a reliable account for registrations/memberships elsewhere.

The lack of baynesian spam filtering (such has gmail and others) is a shame.

The interface (yes, I tried Live) sometimes simply sucks.

The storage and transfer limitations could be a problem for anyone lacking scp or such file transfer tools.

I said, _could be_. Email lost its credentials as serious transfer and communication tool.

Some of us may remember when Bill Gates stated that SPAM issue elimination was simply a matter of time [cbsnews.com]. I gave them few credence then... and nowadays, email is clearly depicted as an unreliable, flawed tool.

Ordinary people can be kept safe by white-listing methods which figures out annoyances to me. They cay rely on such filtering to avoid Enlarge Their Penises NOW!!!

I would put my coins on a bit more intelligent solution to handle spam. There are a lot of solutions along with gmail or inova.net. The management of messages by AI systems which carries out the trash is a requirement to make email a reliable and trivial tool again... and not the scam nest it has been featured into.

This kind of announcement clears out what is the real level of microsoft improvement attempts - incredibly naive, blatantly stupid, moron-shaped company policies.

But, wait..

At all, who the heck would need to forward the message to 10+ recipients? In hotmail accounts? Oh... spammers. The less skilled and no less annoying of them. The ones who include my address in religious spiritual good intentioned chain letters.

Turns out microsoft is doing the right thing. The intelligence involved in their approach of bulk mail fits the targeted ones'.

The obligatory checklist

[Random832]

Your company advocates a

(x) 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
(x) 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
(x) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) 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
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) 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
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) 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.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid company for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!