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Hotmail Adds New Feature "My Friend's Been Hacked"
- tshtf 15y agoI've noticed that Hotmail's spam filtering has improved significantly in the past year or two (I still have an old Hotmail account). It may be 7 years to late to compete with gmail for new customers, but it's nice to see these improvements from Microsoft.
- rodh257 15y agoAn added benefit of this is Exchange customers can take advantage of what Microsoft has learnt from filtering Hotmails spam by using FOPE (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/forefront/cc540243 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/forefront/cc540243) as a cloud based spam filter. It's amazing how well it works
- cdcarter 15y agoThe people I know who use hotmail these days all love it. Unfortunately an @hotmail.com email address in my field is just instantly regarded as unprofessional and laughable.
- mattgreenrocks 15y agoIt's strange how people talk about email hosts as if they mean something. By the same token, gmail.com is headed for the same fate eventually.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThey do mean something. Not a lot, maybe, but your choice in email host is a reflection on you, the same as your choice in car or clothes or shoes.
- mattgreenrocks 15y agoAh yes, the belief that powers Western capitalism: your choice in trivial matters somehow becomes part of your perceived identity. What does it mean? Can you answer in a way that isn't couched in the fashion of the day? There was a time when a Hotmail account was not looked down upon. What makes this instant in time so different, besides fashion?
- forensic 15y agoHotmail ruined its reputation in a few ways, but the primary way was how they would embed advertisements in your emails. So if you receive an email from an @hotmail person, you also receive a cute little ad!
- cdcarter 15y agoThat, and it took a bit for Hotmail to catch up on having huge mailboxes. It used to be that if you weren't on gmail or a private provider, you probably couldn't handle getting 3-4 CAD files a day for weeks at a time.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- endtime 15y agoWhat on earth does that have to do with capitalism? And what makes you think your choice of how to present yourself doesn't become part of how others perceive you? You might wish to read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/
- smhinsey 15y agoExcellent link. This phenomenon has been driving me up the wall on another site I frequent and that article captures it well.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
- jrockway 15y agoWhat field?
- cdcarter 15y agoLive entertainment production, and arts administration.
- a1k0n 15y agoOut of curiosity, how does @hotmail.com compare to @live.com, or even @yahoo.com or @ymail.com in the perceptual hierarchy of free email providers?
- 51Cards 15y agoI still have a Hotmail address as my 'spam catchall' address around the web. I've had it since probably 1998 and since a lot of old friends and accounts are still connected to it I'm not letting it go. It continues to serve its purpose well. I've watched Hotmail evolve over the years and honestly the current state of it is pretty good. Considering they are the #1 spam sink on the web I get virtually none in my in-box. Their interface is pretty slow at times but considering I don't live in there I don't mind. I wouldn't write off a Hotmail address as a 'joke' though.. some of those who still have them may have had them a long, long time.
- revorad 15y agoThe people I know who use hotmail these days all love it. I couldn't tell if you were joking, so I just logged into my hotmail account after years. Wow, some things never change. What do your friends love more - the flashing banner ads or the Outlook-style frames with scrollbars?
- synnik 15y agoOh, be serious. I still use my @hotmail.com account extensively. I've had it since before MS bought it, so I think it is more a sign of my longevity online than anything else. Most professional software engineers that I know feel the same way. My experience is that people who judge you by your email tend to be very young and inexperienced software folk.
- carbonx 15y agoI'm in the same boat as you as far as how long I've been using hotmail. I've been migrating more and more to gmail, but I've got that hotmail account tied to so much shit over the years, I'm not even sure what I'd be losing if I ditched it completely.
- citricsquid 15y agoHas anyone ever seen Microsoft confirm a problem with Hotmail itself being "hacked"? I have an account with Hotmail I don't use and haven't done since 2007, I logged in recently to discover it had been sending spam emails. Every single person I know with an active or inactive Hotmail account has the same problem.
- mattgreenrocks 15y agoWhat? I know plenty of people that have active and inactive Hotmail accounts and I don't get spam from them.
- dangrossman 15y agoI have several old accounts, I just logged into a few and they haven't sent any mails. I have family that use Hotmail and don't get spam from them either. Maybe you and your circle all happened to use some of those other big profile sites (Gawker, Sony, etc.) that have had their e-mails and password lists stolen...
- citricsquid 15y agoHm, how strange. I've not used the account for anything other than msn, a google search for it only yields results from 2 forums where I've posted it (in "add your msn" topics) from ~2006 and the password is what was used for a variety of other things at the time, none of which were "hacked", so I always assumed it was the result of an internal Hotmail breach. How strange, maybe it was just me and my friends then. Confirmation bias at work...
- rocktronica 15y agoIs this a testament to the innovation of the Hotmail team or the non-savvy of its userbase? Honest question.
- burke 15y agoBoth, really. It's a sort of clever way to deal with a problem that plagues non-savvy users.
- planb 15y ago>Hotmail will put the account in recovery mode which will cause a password reset. This sounds like it could be easily abused. How will the password reset work if the hotmail address is the only one a user has? What will he need to do to reclaim access to his account?
- contextfree 15y agoin comments to the original blog post, the PM for this feature mentions that the "my friend's been hacked" reports aren't enough by themselves to trigger this, they have to be accompanied by suspicious usage patterns on the alleged hacked account.
- mathrawka 15y agoI think that this is a great idea, but there will need to be a few things in place to make it secure enough for use. - Only friends that communicate "a lot" should be able to report it (and not repeatedly). - If the account's password was compromised, then the attacker will enter the account recovery flow on next login attempt. So the AR flow will need to ensure that the user is not the attacker (SMS and e-mail that are trusted, based on age and usage, is pretty good). But why not just create a system that will alert the user when a successful login was made from a new device on their account? And include an account lock link in the e-mail, so they can quickly lock their account from anywhere with cell phone access.
- drdaeman 15y ago> Hotmail is also working hard to eliminate accounts that have simple passwords such as “12345678″ and “password” by increasing security measures and not allowing simple passwords to be created. Awesome. Not like I use Hotmail, but... So now if someone's password generator just happen to generate "weak" password not containing, for example, a digit (uh, even `openssl rand -base64 12` provides such outputs from time to time) user'll have to step away from usual password generation scheme and create special password just for hotmail.com. Please, for the love of sanity, never ever forbid any passwords (except for too short ones, with a reasonable minimal length). Just freak user out so he'll think twice before using possibly weak password. You'll educate users this way instead of frustrating them. (And never limit maximum length or set of possible characters, except for rare cases where there are technical obstacles requiring to do so - like non-8-bit-safe protocols. If user wants to authenticate with a passpoem, written in runic alphabet — let him have it.)
- tlrobinson 15y agoOne of my banks limits passwords to something like 12 characters. I called and asked why, their response was "because it's hard enough to remember 12 characters!". sigh
- dorian-graph 15y agoMy bank limits it to 6 characters being only uppercase letters and numbers. :|
- maximilianburke 15y agoMy bank says that too but it's really just 6 numbers because the characters map to the same numbers as on a telephone's key pad. So, if your password is ABC123, it's really just "222123", and both will work to log in.
- gorog 15y agoMy bank only allows passwords to be made of 5 numbers. The interesting thing to note is that if they had any significant problem with this scheme, they would have changed it. Maybe we worry too much about the strength of passwords. The password verification process may be hardened enough, even for the needs of a bank.
- benologist 15y agoSummary of a summary of http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/07/14/hey-my-friend-s-account-was-hacked.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...
- funkah 15y agoWhat if you have a contact who has been hacked and uses Hotmail, but you don't? (This is actually the case for me right now.)
- Empedocles99 15y agoSo, they've made it easier for people to launch simple denial of service attacks on hotmail accounts.
- kaiyi 15y agohaven't tried this feature yet. and don't expect to try any time in the future either. if my friend is hacked and keeps sending me email, i'll just block that person.