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Spam The Internet

Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam 427

Posted by michael from the improved-profit-margin dept.
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."
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Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam More

Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam

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  • Here is - (Score:5, Informative)

    by thewldisntenuff ( 778302 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:15AM (#10372640) Homepage
    Actual link to article - http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1652391,00.as p [eweek.com]

    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

    • Re:Here is - (Score:5, Insightful)

      by michael path ( 94586 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:20AM (#10372694) Homepage Journal
      The grammar we're seeing in Slashdot article summaries has become similar to the Cialis ads I see in my mailbox.

      So has the summary content, frankly. There's been more to do with product sales and enhancements of a commercial basis than I've ever seen.

      Though I don't think I'd give it up outright, Slashdot is becoming a harder read lately.

    • Re:Here is - (Score:3, Funny)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      I would think this wouldn't have gotten past the eds...

      You're new here aren't you?

  • How will this help (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pbranes ( 565105 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:17AM (#10372656)
    How will keeping people from reading their email help reduce spam? Hotmail already limits you to sending ~100 messages/day.
    • Sir, you underestimate the fiendish cleverness of spammers!

      Just the other day another SPAM message broke through my SpamAssassin fortress to nestle in my inbox!

      Can't they just send 100 messages each with 200 receipients? And repeat this from their 100 accounts?

      Anyway, as if this will stop them anyway... Pfah!

      • Re:How will this help (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Pharmboy ( 216950 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:26AM (#10373290) Journal
        Can't they just send 100 messages each with 200 receipients? And repeat this from their 100 accounts?

        Almost all spam software considers any message with 200 recipients as spam unless you whitelist the sender.

        The whole idea of their disallowing non-paying customers to use WebDav is to make it harder for spammers to setup multiple accounts to send 100 from each account. I would bet they will lower the amount of email allowed per day for nonpaying customers to something closer to 50 as well.

        It is somewhat easier for them to filter out spammers if they are using the web interface, and they don't need to worry too much about paying customers sending spam since they must provide a credit card, and thus are traceable.

        Not a cureall, but sounds like a very reasonable plan to me. You can say "Pfah" if you like, but would you rather they did nothing? As it stands, I get the LEAST amount of spam through my networks (talking thousands per day) from Hotmail and AOL, which use a more restrictive method for sending mail than most ISPs/mail providers.

        • BCC (Score:3, Informative)

          by macdaddy ( 38372 )
          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.
    • 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.

      • Not for spammers (Score:4, Interesting)

        by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:45AM (#10373479) Homepage
        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.

        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.

    • Re:How will this help (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fdiskne1 ( 219834 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:31AM (#10373336)
      The article says this is to prevent one way the spammers send mass amounts of email. They sign up for multiple free accounts, then create a script that uses the Outlook/Outlook Express connection to Hotmail to send the max number of emails for each of these account automatically. This will slow down how fast the max number of messages are sent if they go the free route by making them use the web email access. If they decide to pay, then M$ makes more money and they can keep track of the credit cards used by the spammers so they can prevent them from opening accounts in the future. Of course, for the truly amoral spammers, they will just steal credit card numbers to use.

      • Truly amoral spammers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by phorm ( 591458 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @01:02PM (#10375743) Journal
        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.

    • It won't, and here's why... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot@@@uberm00...net> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @02:12PM (#10376455) Homepage Journal
      People could still just use Hotmail Popper [boolean.ca] and any POP3 email client (even non-Microsoft ones... Oh, the humanity!) to access their account, and even send messages through it.
    • Sure, this helps the spam problem by making spammers use more difficult interfaces to send lots of Hotmail via multiple accounts, though they'll probably find ways around that. (Obviously forcing them to the web interfaces limit the speed at which you can send spam.)

      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 G

  • Hotmail Cracks Down on Spam? (Score:5, Funny)

    by hendridm ( 302246 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:17AM (#10372657) Homepage
    Isn't that a little like Borders announcing they're cutting back on books?

    /still waiting for Yahoo IMAP

  • How about.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by idiotnot ( 302133 ) <sean@757.org> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:18AM (#10372663) Homepage Journal
    Just read access, and you have to use your own ISP's server for outbound SMTP?

    • Re:How about.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hendridm ( 302246 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:21AM (#10372714) Homepage
      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 [mailsnare.net] service [fastmail.fm].

    • Re:How about.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wangotango ( 711037 )
      Might shock ya how many ISP have some pretty tight restrictions on the amount of outgoing mail they will allow too. Soon it will be all but impossible to operate a local mail server due to blocked ports on your providers end. ISP's are getting mighty damn tough about the boneheaded stuff we all dearly love...LOL

      • tcp/25 SHOULD be blocked (Score:5, Interesting)

        by macdaddy ( 38372 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @10:03AM (#10373700) Homepage Journal
        "Soon it will be all but impossible to operate a local mail server due to blocked ports on your providers end."

        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.

  • Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by merlin_jim ( 302773 ) <James@McCracken.stratapult@com> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:18AM (#10372666)
    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...
  • How does receiving by WebDAV help spammers that much?

    So much for hotwayd [sourceforge.net], the only reason I kept my hotmail account.

    • Re:Spammers....Riiiigggghhhht (Score:5, Informative)

      by gorbachev ( 512743 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:29AM (#10372782) Homepage
      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.
    • Unless they are using a hotmail account as a reply to account and want to continually check it to prevent it from overflowing. Yeah it can be done through scripts etc through the web page I guess, but a 'check every 10 min' through outlook/webdav is more 'normal' behaviour and would be considered less suspicious by hotmail, and is easier to do.
    • They forgot to mention it also helps the war on terrorism.
    • How does receiving by WebDAV help spammers that much?

      Please take a minute to read the article. Spammers are using WebDAV to SEND emails from the hotmail accounts. They are getting around the 100 msg per day limit by opening multiple hotmail accounts, and then scripting a session that divides of the spam load between the accounts. Also, bear in mind that WebDAV allows you to both read and WRITE documents over the web.

      • 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.

  • How could they not know? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lt.Hawkins ( 17467 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:18AM (#10372670) Homepage
    "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.
    • They oversell (overgive?) their storage. ISPs and NSPs oversell their bandwidth. Airlines oversell flights. Callcenters have less operators then customers.

      The question isnt as easy as $USERCOUNT*$MAXQUOTA. The question is how much storage will users use, on average. They got it wrong. Thats not supprising, really.

    • But how many of the accounts are actually being used? Why pay for storage for an inactive account? That's the complicated part.

  • Uhm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by papasui ( 567265 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:18AM (#10372671) Homepage
    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..

    • Re:Uhm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:31AM (#10372800) Journal
      Because they assumed that only a small percentage of users would actually use that 250 MB; in other words, they assumed they could get away with promising 250 MB but have consumers only use maybe 10 MB. Rather like ISPs do with bandwidth: if I have 5 Gbps bandwidth, and I have 10,000 customers, what bandwidth do I promise them? 500 kbps? No, of course not, I promise them 3 Mbps, and if they all try to use it at once, I say "we did not anticipate this level of demand." I'm not saying it's right, of course, just saying that it's not an uncommon practice.
      • It's a fairly common practice with web hosting to oversell. Most places I've seen that do colo/vps actually advertise that you can oversell your storage and bandwidth, as though it were a feature.
  • This [gmx.net] is one of the best free e-mail services out there. Does POP3 as well.

    Or request GMail invites -- there's tons of them floating around.

  • Stops spam, by charging users... quaint (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:20AM (#10372697) Journal
    "with Microsoft not anticipating the storage that user of the free email accounts."

    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 /. troll babelfished thier press release, and found this secret message.

    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 /., and use google to englishize them.

    • Have you seen how good babelfish and google translating is now? *impressed* I write all my posts in klingon, like any true /., and use google to englishize them.

      Yes, I think that Tom Lord [slashdot.org] has already discovered this. At least he must be a Klingon, because I don't think a human being can be so lacking in the social skills department.

  • Are spammers the cyber-scapegoat? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:21AM (#10372711)
    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.

  • Hotmail (Score:4, Funny)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:21AM (#10372712) Homepage
    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 [slashdot.org].

  • You get what you pay for ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by H_Fisher ( 808597 ) <[h_v_fisher] [at] [yahoo.com]> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:24AM (#10372730)
    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.
    • Not to mention the attrocious McAfee Virus scanner they have integrated. I swear McAfee pays MS off to not have up-to-date definition files, so that many hundreds of people can still download well known viruses to become infected, so they go out and buy anti-virus software to remove it or stop another preventable attachment-running-infection.
    • ever tried http://www.gmx.net/ [gmx.net]?

      1GB storage, unlimited hold time (keep mails forever), pop3 access, some sorta media store (where you can upload and manage any files you want, never tried it)
    • '94? I don't think so. It wasn't commercially available until the summer of 1996, Independence Day as I recall, only because a movie of the same name debuted that day as well.

  • Quck summary of next 200 posts (Score:5, Funny)

    by grifter7 ( 73822 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:25AM (#10372743) Journal
    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
  • 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.
  • 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 [gmail-is-too-creepy.com].

    This is a major boon for Thunderbird [mozilla.org] and projects like Yahoo Pops [sourceforge.net], 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.

  • Money Grab (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Oakey ( 311319 )
    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.

    • Re:Money Grab (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      Charging people for *how* they access their mail? That's ridiculous.

      Unless, of course, your funding model for free accounts is built around people seeing adverts on the HTML interface, something that WebDAV interfaces bypass...

      Cheers,
      Ian

  • abuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alatesystems ( 51331 ) <chris&chrisbenard,net> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:26AM (#10372756) Homepage Journal
    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
  • Citing a rise in spam abuse, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division has ended free access to its Hotmail Web-based e-mail service through the Outlook and Outlook Express clients.

    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 Hotm

  • Ads, alternative(s) (Score:2, Insightful)

    by baafie ( 765151 )

    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/ [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?

  • M$ doesn't know what to do with hotmail. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nlinecomputers ( 602059 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:29AM (#10372784)
    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.
  • 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.

  • Off to Gmail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by galtenberg ( 646020 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:36AM (#10372839)
    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.

  • Monopoly??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NoSuchGuy ( 308510 ) <do-not-harvest-m ... dot@spa.mtrap.de> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:38AM (#10372859) Journal
    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?

  • 2MB was a joke (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JawFunk ( 722169 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:38AM (#10372863)
    Personally, I signed up for hotmail when I needed a free email account and disliked the current format and disfunctionality of yahoo!mail. Since then however, hotmail dropped from 10MB to 2MB, and I can't even send myself 2 pictures. Ridiculous. This caused me to migrate away from hotmail back to yahoo, and this past weekend scored a gmail account, which doesn't force you to pick and choose what to keep before you have to put a VISA on file with hotmail.

    I just hope that Gmail will soon develop pop3 support for Thunderbird. :(

  • Alternatives: (Score:2, Informative)

    by JayJay.br ( 206867 )
    Really, I haven't taken my time to see if any of these below is different. However, there are other ways to access a Hotmail account from an email client.

    hotpop [boolean.ca] (shareware, for Windows. Still working here at my office);

    Gotmail [nongnu.org]. Free as in everything, for Linux.

    There are some more, I just can't pull them off my mind right now.

  • Same as Yahoo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:43AM (#10372907) Journal
    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

  • Do Microsoft have a deal with Mozilla? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XeRXeS-TCN ( 788834 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @08:46AM (#10372934)

    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 [sourceforge.net], Blue HTTPMail [sourceforge.net] 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.

  • 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.

  • Of course this is a litmus test (Score:3, Informative)

    by TheAncientHacker ( 222131 ) <TheAncientHacker@nOSPAm.hotmail.com> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:00AM (#10373071)
    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.

  • Hotmail Popper (Score:2, Informative)

    by gmenhorn ( 602062 )
    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

    • Re:Hotmail Popper (Freeware Version) (Score:5, Informative)

      by BobPaul ( 710574 ) * on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:30AM (#10373329) Journal
      It used to be up till 2.1.0. Download v2.1.0 [zdnet.be] or you'll have to pay after 100 e-mails xfered.

      I've used Yahoo!Pops [sf.net] 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.
  • Gee, Hotmail wants a paid account for me to use Hotmail to generate spam... Now where is that stolen credit card list??

  • *cough* Myway.com *cough* (Score:3, Interesting)

    by keefey ( 571438 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:10AM (#10373162)
    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)
  • 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.

  • So use an alternative (e.g., Runbox) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:12AM (#10373182) Homepage Journal
    If you don't like what Hotmail is doing, switch to an alternative. If you're willing to pay a little anyway, there are lots of good services available. One is Runbox [runbox.com]. I make no money from them; I'm just a happy customer. Google mail is obviously a possibility (though they're only in beta testing right now).

    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.

  • 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.

  • We don't care about Outlook... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rincebrain ( 776480 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:13AM (#10373193) Homepage
    Does gotmail [nongnu.org] 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.

  • Gmail is not a fad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) * <ascheinberg@gmai ... inus threevowels> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:31AM (#10373334) Homepage
    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.

  • Pity - WebDAV's great for contractors (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Timbotronic ( 717458 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @09:31AM (#10373338)
    This announcement's a disgrace. Blatant move to force users to buy the 'premium' service. I work contracts all over the place and I've had a Hotmail account for years - for the simple reason that WebDAV's great when you're working behind a corporate firewall. A lot of companies block access to external POP3 or IMAP accounts and even more block SMTP out (as they should). WebDAV, which uses good old HTTP port 80 is usually fine.

    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?

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