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All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: Chooco on 17 October 2002, 06:22

Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Chooco on 17 October 2002, 06:22: why does MS have Hotmail for free?
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Doctor V on 17 October 2002, 06:25: Get a hotmail account, wait 2 days count the junk mails you get. Is M$ selling hotmail adresses to spammers?

V
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: RudeCat7 on 17 October 2002, 06:36: Same reason McDonald's has happy meals.(a loss leader)

To hook you into a brand name, and bombard you with M$ propoganda every time you check your "hot mail"
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: hm_murdock on 17 October 2002, 07:03: does anybody remember when HoTMaiL was indy? Or is my memory flawed?
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Chooco on 17 October 2002, 21:07: i haven't gotten any spam at all and i've had my email account with them for more than 2 months.
i do NOT have the junk filter on (because it throws 'reply to thread' emails in the garbage) and i do not have any denied senders.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: lazygamer on 17 October 2002, 12:05: I think I agree, Hotmail DOES send your address to spammers. I've gotten a shitload of pr0n spams, it's made me wonder if some porn sites(hint hint) use exploits/cookies to get your adderess. That's probably a little too far fetched for most sites though, MS giving out your addy is a perfect explanation.

I've got plenty of non porn spam too. Hey, I had my account for a very long time, a few years no doubt. In it's earlier times it had low amounts of spam. Nowadays it's a spam magnet. :D

Luckily I now use myrealbox(thanks for converting me!), not one spam yet. I used to think that those spam dudes were just too smart for the Hotmail filter, turns out my filter was probably half decent, it was MS's fault. ;)
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: trickyt on 22 October 2002, 02:12: I have held more than a dozen hotmail addresses, and some have been spammed to death whilst others receive only a few spam. I doubt that M$ really SELLS your address, although who is to say what happens if an M$ employee lands a job with an advertising company. However, the truth is probably a lot simpler. Spammers gather their addresses from hundreds of sources, and there are now some very large compilations of valid e-mail addresses on CD ROM. All you have to do is give out your e-mail address to one firm, or buy a domain name, or leave the address somewhere, like ICQ or a bulletin board, and your address is at risk of being entered on the next free CD Rom of e-mail addresses.

However there is something more obvious. Since virtually every hotmail address that you can think of is taken, spammers can simply GUESS your address. They have millions of words, and numbers that they can combine by computer in every possible way, then they simply elliminate the bounces. Every one, two, and three word combination in the dictionary, as well as all names and numbers have been tested to find working addreses. Your best bet is to try a really weird and unusual combination that won't be eaisily found by a computer, such as [email protected]. All combinations of letters and numbers less than about 10 digits have been tested and tried. A better bet is to have a different address, unrelated to hotmail, where there are too few users to justify guessing names (i.e. not AOL).
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Chooco on 22 October 2002, 07:36: ok cool, i guess i'm just lucky enough to not get spammed up the ass.

weeeeeeee i'm special! (http://smile.gif)
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: X123 on 27 October 2002, 02:34: Microsoft wants to read your e-mmils. Thats why hotmail exists.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Refalm on 27 October 2002, 02:45: quote:
The Jimmy James X 10.3.6 / Bob: does anybody remember when HoTMaiL was indy? Or is my memory flawed?

No, your memory rules because it's UNIX based (http://tongue.gif) .

I can remember it too...

Here are pages in cache:

Before:
1996 (http://web.archive.org/web/19961220074303/http://hotmail.com/)
1997 (http://web.archive.org/web/19970408045703/http://www.hotmail.com/)

After:
1998 (http://web.archive.org/web/19980129081713/http://hotmail.com/)

Now:
2002 (http://www.hotmail.co.jp/)

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Refalm ]
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: TB on 28 October 2002, 16:49: While we're on the subject of hotmail, i encountered a very peculiar thing with it today. Today I finally cast off the shackles of IE and moved to Mozilla (god I love ad-free web browsing), and I had to fire off a quick email from my hotmail account. However I noticed one small difference - in Mozilla the Add/Remove attachments button was missing in the compose mail window........but it was there when I accessed hotmail using IE. Has anybody else encountered anything similar? Oh well, I guess I'll just finally abandon the hotmail account completely and rely totally upon my yahoo one (spam free for nearly 3 years and counting!)

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: TB ]
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: zooloo on 28 October 2002, 18:33: It's free because they can't find a way to screw money out of you - yet.

"...Microsoft launched a
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: foobar on 28 October 2002, 23:16: quote:
Originally posted by zooloo / bob:
It's free because they can't find a way to screw money out of you - yet.

"...Microsoft launched a
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: hm_murdock on 29 October 2002, 05:20: hey, any of you guys remember that free POP3/IMAP thing that some other computer company used to have... their name had something to do with fruit... it used to be really popular then they started charging money for it... oh well...

;)
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: enigma on 29 October 2002, 10:29: I heard someone mention Mozilla... Ive heard they are nutorious for using Spyware in that product... is that true? I heard it on The Screen Savers [ www.thescreensavers.com (http://www.thescreensavers.com) ] on TechTV [ www.techtv.com (http://www.techtv.com) ] Just wanted to know if it was true..
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: voidmain on 29 October 2002, 10:39: Spyware in Mozilla? Not likely since it's open source. Now Netscape might be another story, and you can bet it's true in IE. And don't listen to anything Screen Savers or TechTV have to say, they are owned by the cofounder of Microsoft. Although they did have Richard Stallman on the other day. But I think it was more of a way to show how much of a goof he is rather than getting his important message across. They used to do a LOT of Linux, that is until Paul Allen bought them out.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Calum on 29 October 2002, 12:23: quote:
Originally posted by Got Root?:
I heard someone mention Mozilla... Ive heard they are nutorious for using Spyware in that product... is that true? I heard it on The Screen Savers [ www.thescreensavers.com (http://www.thescreensavers.com) ] on TechTV [ www.techtv.com (http://www.techtv.com) ] Just wanted to know if it was true..

nutorious?

sounds like it might have been a joke. mozilla is the least likely browser to ever contain spyware, for the reasons that void main just gave.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: lazygamer on 29 October 2002, 18:59: Hey guys, do you think the Hotmail spam filter is either very shoddy, or randomly fails to work intentionally?
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: TB on 29 October 2002, 23:34: quote:

Posted by lazygamer:

Hey guys, do you think the Hotmail spam filter is either very shoddy, or randomly fails to work intentionally?

That's a bit of a rhetorical question, isn't it? "Microsoft" and "fails to work" are two parameters that compute very nicely.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: enigma on 4 November 2002, 21:49: thats why i asked. it wasnt a joke, but now it sounds like one.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Calum on 4 November 2002, 13:46: i think microsoft's policy of hiring people who have not lived long enough to gain any skills, or a social life, let alone the ability to give a shit, is a factor in how shoddy their services are. (they don't make software now, didn't you know? they make services.)
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: pkd_lives on 27 November 2002, 22:24: So I can't find the link for the old net based mail comparison I was doing. It is gone to the archive in the sky, so I'll resurect this one as it is vaguely relevant.

For the record the largest amount of spam I received was 973 in one day (if memory serves it was 2nd October), and in case you need details, it was exactly the same piece of spam, and it completely filled my account, I guess more was sent but hotmail wanted to charge me money to receive that additional spam.

So I am personnally convinced that hotmail must sell on e-mail addresses, or have extremely lax security measures, because even the account that came in second (Verizon on my old DSL) received less in a month that an average day of hotmail. And the verizon account got used as a internet posted CV address - so you can imagine how much started to come through there.

Now I went back today and lo and behold - my time has expired and I have less than 30 days to activate it (I let my others go as they were just spam monitors) - but this one holds a special place in my heart as the straw that broke the camels back in my hatred for M$. So should I keep it, should I use it to fight M$ or just let it go, my final link, the last hold of M$ directly on my life.
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Doctor V on 28 November 2002, 04:53: use it for a junk mail drop box
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Fett101 on 28 November 2002, 10:06: Amazingly enough. I used hotmail for an online venture, and I still check it quite often. The lack of spam amazes me. Esp. since I plastered the address in several places. Meanwhile, my angelfire address get's at least 8 pages of spam a day... :mad:
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Sage on 29 November 2002, 15:59: quote:
Originally posted by TB:
While we're on the subject of hotmail, i encountered a very peculiar thing with it today. Today I finally cast off the shackles of IE and moved to Mozilla (god I love ad-free web browsing), and I had to fire off a quick email from my hotmail account. However I noticed one small difference - in Mozilla the Add/Remove attachments button was missing in the compose mail window........but it was there when I accessed hotmail using IE. Has anybody else encountered anything similar? Oh well, I guess I'll just finally abandon the hotmail account completely and rely totally upon my yahoo one (spam free for nearly 3 years and counting!)

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: TB ]

The rich toolbar is also missing. Feels like ms owns teh fooken net :/
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Pissed_Macman on 6 December 2002, 04:02: I have a simple solution for the hotmail problem: DON'T USE THE BLOODY THING!!!!
Title: why does Hotmail exist?
Post by: Kintaro on 6 December 2002, 06:20: http://chatroom.fuckmicrosoft.com:8000/bobhub/email.html (http://chatroom.fuckmicrosoft.com:8000/bobhub/email.html)