internet apps/networking
11/18/2004, 12:15pm, EST
Thursday, November 18th
MS blocks Entourage access for free Hotmail users
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 disable direct access to Hotmail 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."
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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.
I'm not really sure what all the fuss over gmail is. Its just email with a lot of space. Big f'ing deal. By all the "GMAIL IS GOD" talk, you'd think it somehow actually sent you hookers when you used it or something.
And gmail is great if you want your mail to include ads when you send it out/read it. And if you can get it (guess what, its still not available to the masses - or at least to us 'losers' who don't know anyone to get us an address.)
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).
And I was surprised that Hotmail even had this support. Most of these free services are free because they're getting paid through the ads. They're not there to just use from external sources. Otherwise, where's the benefit to the provider? Oh, let me guess, the same it was for .Mac. All that free advertising that would have driven Apple to the top of the computer world if it were still free...
Oh, and as for this:
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.
Um, the problem wasn't the reply-to-sender was invalid. What would it matter. You sign up for a bogus hotmail account, just use that as your reply-to address. Problem solved. And they can change emails faster than Hotmail can close them down.
And limiting number of recipients isn't a big deal, because you just script the software to send out the mails one at a time, or in blocks of 50 or 100 or whatever the limit is.
Any other great spam-fighting ideas?
As of recently, yes.
"And limiting number of recipients isn't a big deal, because you just script the software to send out the mails one at a time, or in blocks of 50 or 100 or whatever the limit is. "
So limit the number of emails to a lilmited number of recipients then. 50 emails per hour max to ten recipients each max. And only allow 2 concurrent HTTP connections from a given IP address and only 5 distinct logins per hour from a given IP address. They're in control of the servers, they can do pretty much whatever they like. It's relatively straightforward to 'throttle' someone's webmail account if you want to. But it would cost them money to develop and administer. As oppose to forcing people to use paid for accounts, which MAKES them money. MS is a commercial organisation, not a charity. So they lose some users along the way, those users weren't generating much income anyway. It's not a hard decision for a profit making company to make. Nor really do I think they deserve villifying for it to be honest. In the same situation, Sun or Oracle or Apple would probably make the same decision.
Yes.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041110192454841
Try to follow along now.
Sheesh, for someone so disconnected (no friends with Gmail invites?) you sure have a holier-than-thou attitude.
Oh well nice though, its too late for that. There is a whole indrusity built around fighting spam and I don't think they want that.
Try to follow along now.
Sheesh, for someone so disconnected (no friends with Gmail invites?) you sure have a holier-than-thou attitude.
Hey, it was a simple question, not some slam about it not supporting. I don't have a gmail account, so how exactly would I know?
And, sorry, I guess my friends aren't the type stuck to their computers 100 hours a week where the thought of getting a gmail account is enough to wet their pants in excitement (yes, now that's a holier than though attitude-but, then again, the current gmail users seem to act like "I'm one of the chosen, so kneel before me!", so its all even).
--
http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
Greedy bastards...
umijin