MS blocks Entourage access for free Hotmail users
updated 12:15 pm EST, Thu November 18, 2004
MS Entourage/Hotmail
Microsoft has began requiring Hotmail customers to purchase premium subscriptions in order access email from desktop email clients. Users of Microsoft Entourage, which features direct integration with Hotmail, this morning began receiving alerts noting that they would need to purchase a paid Hotmail subscription in order to access their Hotmail accounts from within Entourage. As noted by MacNN in September, Microsoft said it would from desktop clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, and Entourage in an attempt fight spam. "Microsoft says that spammers have been abusing the Outlook feature and creating false Hotmail accounts using an automated process from which they can send huge batches of unwanted commercial messages."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2004
For your personal safety
I am sorry but it sounds like bullshit to me. It sounds like one of those typical 'we are gonna charge you from now, because for your personal safety it costs us money to protect your personal privacy'.
I take it hotmail has a lot of fancy filters to stop spam being received (still doesn't work too good). Hotmail also prohibits users from sending emails to more than say 50 users at a time (also helps to lower spam being sent). Ok cool.
So the problem here is that using hotmail with Outlook or Entourage allows you to send an email to a spammable number of recipients, and on top of that you can send it from an email address that may or may not be real.
Okay -- so -- how-about microsoft limits the number of possible recipients (yeah I know that sucks if you have a fan-club), or how about they require authentication at the time of sending the email to check and see if the 'reply-to-sender' email address you are using is in fact your valid and real email address. Isn't that the real fix.
Gees, no, .. for some reason I guess that surpasses the talent and money of the world's wealthiest software giant.
Perhaps they should just charge clients to hook up hotmail with entourage or outlook. gees that will work, cause spamming is like delivering flyers through your mail box (some malicious) .. a real spammer, will just pay the nominal fee for such a great method of advertising, distribution and sometimes malicious harm to others (the virus). And the rest of us .. well .. we can just go back to hotmail webmail and watch banner adverts and be constrained by limits of webspace on our accounts.
--> I am not prone to knocking microsoft, and don't even use hotmail personally, but to me this just really sounds like bullshit. Their just following the Yahoo! mail model where you can either pay to receive your mail on your desktop, or you receive Yahoo! advertising along with your mail (that is by the way legal spam that you sign up to).
Gees -- For your own personal safety we have to charge you -- that is the real deal.