Microsoft Says: Our Way Or The Spam Folder

from the how-nice dept

A year ago, we noted that it certainly looked like a standards battle was brewing concerning various email sender authentication techniques, and wondered if it was going to create some difficulties. Well, here we go. While some of the different standards did eventually merge, no real standard came out of it, so Microsoft appears to be doing what it likes to do in those situations and just ram through its own standard as if it was the default. That's why Microsoft has announced that any email not using their Sender ID system will automatically be put in the junk mail folder. In other words, Microsoft is basically making its email offerings via MSN and Hotmail a lot less useful, since a lot of perfectly legitimate email is probably going to get flagged as junk. This is the best Microsoft can do? Especially after Bill Gates said stomping out spam was his number one priority, and he thought he could do it in two years? When was that? Oh, 18 months ago. It doesn't seem like junking plenty of legitimate mail is the wonderful solution we were told to expect.
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  • identicon
    michael Vilain, 23 Jun 2005 @ 10:09am

    non-profit members would stop recieving email

    I work for a non-profit and manage their web site. About 10% of our members use hotmail for their email address. If hotmail implements this, I (as the webmaster) won't be able to send them email either via automated means or from my email account (my ISP and return email address don't match).

    At this point, I'm investigating what it would take to notify those people to find other email solutions. It's tricky because if I send an email to them now, our ISP could construe that as SPAM and terminate our service.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    thecaptain, 23 Jun 2005 @ 10:42am

    glad glad glad

    SO Glad I ditched my hotmail id last year.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    acousticiris, 23 Jun 2005 @ 12:47pm

    Backfire waiting to happen . . .

    Microsoft has been able to strong-arm their way into creating "pseudo-standards" because it has had such a large share of the market in the areas it tries to do this.
    Unfortunately, I don't get the impression that Hotmail, or MSN are being used by a majority or even a plurality of folks and what's more, the geeks who administer these systems generally don't like these types of tactics.
    It would be really cool if a grassroots campaign sprung up and those of us who operate mail servers at ISPs just decided to stop our servers from communicating with Hotmail or MSN. Users would leave those services quite quickly if enough ISPs joined in. Oh wait, why bother? Microsoft is going to do that for us...
    I think they have a higher liklihood of turning the Junk Mail folder into the new Hotmail Inbox. The ironic part is that if enough admins don't impliment Sender ID, those who did will end up having their messages sent to a folder that no hotmail or MSN user will be watching . . . The Inbox.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Ivan Sick, 23 Jun 2005 @ 7:43pm

      hotmail to block other domains?

      I thought they were already doing this. A couple years ago my hotmail account was my main account. People would get angry with me in person for not responding to their emails [which I had never received]. I noticed they all had yahoo accounts...I made a yahoo account for myself and wrote to my hotmail address. It never showed up. I tried it a few times, same result. I also couldn't get emails from my parents (who use optonline).

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 24 Jun 2005 @ 1:19am

        Re: hotmail to block other domains?

        Hotmail is rediculous. It is another attempt at gates to control the pc market through his bloated out of control software. I use gmail & would never use hotmail again

        link to this | view in chronology ]


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