Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise?

from the keep-on-attacking dept

I was recently talking to someone who had both a Hotmail and a YahooMail account, saying that he couldn’t understand how his Hotmail account got so much spam, while his Yahoo account received very little. Apparently, spammers love Hotmail, and continually run dictionary attacks against possible Hotmail addresses to figure out which ones are valid. Microsoft, of course, could block these attacks, but doesn’t seem to think it’s worth the effort. Their spam filters do block some of these emails, but they still add up towards the user’s quota.


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Comments on “Hotmail: A Spammer's Paradise?”

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7 Comments
Oliver Wendell Jones (profile) says:

I hate hotmail

I used MSN Messenger as my IM client (I use Sidewinder Gamevoice to voice chat and HAVE to use MSN Msgr). In order to use MSN Messenger I needed a Passport account, and the easiest way to do that is arrange for a Hotmail e-mail address.

On a good day, I get between 10 and 20 spam messages of which about 60% are caught as spam and put into my junk mailbox, the rest get through.

TheCaptain says:

This article misses one IMPORTANT point.

Hotmail has NO, I mean absolutely NO interest in stopping spam from getting to their inboxes. In fact, its AGAINST their financial interests for them to slow down the spam rate. Allow me to explain:

The regular (ie: FREE) user has ONLY 2 Megs of storage space, this was fine until they changed their policy…what USED to happen was that when you went over, you got a warning to delete some mail or they’d do it for you…NOW, they “inactivate” your account and bounce mail (usually legitimate mail I find)..so basically, your option is to check it daily (I get 50-80 on a good day…If I don’t clear it in 3-4 days, its full and inactive) and clear it…OR (Here’s the part where hotmail benefits from spam) the user can pay a fee (I can’t remember, maybe 29 bucks per year) to get 10 megs of storage. Ie: they can check less often, they are sure their account won’t be blocked etc..

So as a company, its in hotmail’s best interest to let spam bombard you and cause your email account to be shut down often because they figure eventually you’ll pay them money to upgrade for more storage space and features.

Personally, I don’t use my main hotmail account (I have several) for anything much, but I don’t want to cancel it because I’ve had it so long (since the first year they offered it), most people I know who want to track me down use that one to reach me, as in the past I used to change ISPs quite often (although now I have a cable modem so I mean slowly change that)

Anti-MicroSucker (user link) says:

Why M$-ShitmailLusers need to be shot:

1. They are STUPID.
2. They forward those DUMB FUCKING EMAILS with THOUSANDS of addresses attached that FEED spammers.
3. They do a lot of one handed typing.
4. They are slaves to herr fuhrer Bill Gates.
5. They are BLIND RETARDS.
6. They find chatting in porn-bot-filled chatrooms amusing.
7. They have no mind; they’re no different than the MTV drones that plague society with their faggoty music.
8. They don’t realize that computers don’t normally crash all the time; only those infected with the M$-Windoze virus do.
9. They use a SPAM-TRAP.
10. They will never learn. No matter how many times it fucks them over their thick skulls never let the simple thought “Hey, this service sucks, I’m gonna try something else” enter.

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