Hotmail Goes Whitelist

from the smart-use-of-a-whitelist dept

Thu, Oct 23rd 2003 1:55pm — Mike Masnick

Following on Yahoo's lead earlier this week to implement stricter anti-spam tools, Hotmail is announcing plans to offer a whitelist feature. However, unlike many whitelist systems, I actually like the way this is being implemented. Basically, on the front page of your Hotmail account, you only see emails from people in your contact list - bubbling up (most likely) your most important emails. Then, you can still go into your full Inbox and see what's there. This makes sense, since no mail is lost, no challenge-response is necessary, but it makes it easier to find the emails from people you want to hear from.

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8 Comments

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Armin, 23 Oct 2003 @ 3:05pm

The Bat! has had a similar feature for ages
Not really a new idea though: The Bat! has a similar feature for quite a while now. You have two inboxes, one "Inbox" and one "Inbox (known)". Mails with addresses from your addressbook are automatically moved into the "Inbox (known)" inbox, the rest goes into the standard inbox.
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thecaptain, 24 Oct 2003 @ 7:32am

No Subject Given
How is this different from what they do now?

If you turn on the "Exclusive" junkmail filter only emails from your safe list and your contact list comes to your inbox and the rest go to the junkmail folder.

They've been doing this for a long time now...how's this different??

I mean as it is I see only in my "inbox" the emails from my contact list and safe addresses...then I can go to my "junkmail" folder and see the rest...from the article it looks like they are simply renaming the inbox to "today" and "junkmail" to "inbox" which is just stupid.
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suzi, 24 Oct 2003 @ 9:09am

Re: No Subject Given
I use hotmail set to "exclusive" also and it works perfectly. As thecaptain said, how is this different? Or are the going to charge for the whitelist feature?
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Mike (profile), 24 Oct 2003 @ 9:26am

Re: No Subject Given
Ah. I don't use hotmail, so I have no idea how this is different. It sounds like this is just one more step in between. That is, you have the "exclusive" list, and then an inbox and a junk box, where they store emails they've determined are spam via other sources. So, this is a way of more finely dividing your spam.
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Rob, 13 May 2004 @ 1:26pm

WhiteList
As a succesfull website with loads of users on yahoo and hotmail account's who cant even get their solicited email from us? I wonder about the pros and con's of a whitelist. If there is a white list such as AOL, how does one get his company on it?
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Xboxer, 27 Nov 2007 @ 9:39pm

I am running a website and don't like this at all. New users had their registration emais sent to junk box and the never knew. The result is I lost new members.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2008 @ 6:49pm

sent hotmail box lost items
any solution?????????? please tell me
sent box only saves emails (that I am sending out) to people on my contact list. (currently somehow set up in my sent box)how do I reset it to save all of my outgoing messages???????? i want to get my contacts out of the sent ares and just simply save the emails i mail out daily...
Already did the obvious and put in( to save out going messages..) Not responding.......... problem is to get all my contacts out of the save box... HELP,,,,,,,,,, PLEASE eternally frustrating
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G..Commander, 13 Mar 2009 @ 3:39am

Full white list !
As you will see I use Hotmail, I have a white list that is Full, but have no idea how to that any of the names off
Help anyone
Also made folders to place different mail in some I want to get rid of, but again Don't know how
Help anyone
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