Hotmail policy drives users to tears

[gobble gobble]

<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/785760.asp" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.com/news/785760.asp</a>

Apples webmail is looking better and better.

[ 07-26-2002: Message edited by: gobble gobble ]</p>

[hmurchison]

My hotmail account has really started to suck. I don't complain though because I have a fundamental problem with complaining over free services.

[sean]

I’m liking Hotmail less and less these days; I’m going to go with webmail as my hotmail accounts are starting to attract spam anyway.
Real shame what happened to that girl in the article, but in fairness she should have had someone back home saving her e-mail for her. I wouldn’t trust any document I valued to sit on a hotmail server for very long. :rolleyes:

[Matsu]

Link doesn't work for me, what's the story?

[rok]

don't have the link, but you can read the synopsis and get the link from macminute (my favorite mac news site these days)

[Giaguara]

Yea hotmale.. ea, hotmail ... sucks :eek:

i quitted using it in 97 when some twats had logged into two of my accounts there. from university... actually i discovered the way to crack in accidentally.

one more thing to hate it is the SPAM. i had an account i checked every 59 days... and found always those "how to make your penis larger" (ahaha.. i'm a female..) .. then those nigeria spams..

so at one point i used it for some registrations of the sites.

basically it has only ONE feature i think is ok: 2 clicks to block senders.

more $it features: it gives me ugly messages when i try to use it with Opera or Mozilla (ok mozilla sucks as well .. but i want to see how some things are seen differently with different browsers..)

o think hotmale. .. eahm, hotmail is ok only for registrating your site in the engines (beacuse then u get all the spam..)


Oh, one friend put once "Go and get your free msn hotmale at .." as signature on his (yahoo) mail.
One of his friends was reading the mail in the library and accidentally clicked on the hotmale.. oh yea.. one of those 100 000 pop-up sites.. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[sizzle chest]

What happens when a female signs up for one of those "make your penis larger" deals, anyway? No effect, catastrophe, or something wonderful?

[BrianMacOS]

I only log in to my hotmail account to empty my junk mail folder! :D

[Ebby]

Me too! Once a month I log in and clear 700+ spam e-mails. All while searching for the 1 or 2 that I actually need.

Spam... I HATE SPAM!!! :mad:
Someone has to invent a way to kill spam AT-THE-SOURCE, don't just block it. If I find anyone who is spamming me, and I hope I do, I will record their MAC address, erase their hard drive and zero all data. NO, better yet, I will take his computer hostage and sell it back to him/her after doing teh above. :cool:

[I-bent-my-wookie]

I cut the ties on my hotmail account just a few months ago. I use neomail through my domain account and it works great. Since its my primary email account anyways I dont need pop access. I spent about 6 weeks telling everyone I was switching all my mail over to one account.

I still keep an email with my local dsl provider for signing up for crap on the 'net but I dont check it unless I need a password for some stupid site.

hotmail is now reduced to a useless service. MS made sure of that by opening the spam gates. Unless you pay 30$ you get nothing... pay the 30$ and get more room for your spam.

:D

[stimuli]

[quote]Someone has to invent a way to kill spam AT-THE-SOURCE<hr></blockquote>

check it out, yo:
<a href="http://razor.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">http://razor.sourceforge.net/</a>

Don't you love how OSX is unix?

[trevorM]

I havent read all your posts so forgive me if this has been said....

Anyhow back at school one day a teacher informed me that Hotmail states somewhere that they have the right to do what they want with your emails and that includes using the information in your messages for their own gain...

I dont think I ever have or will use Hotmail for anyhting serious! <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

[Eugene]

I opened a Hotmail account two days ago for kicks. I haven't distributed that address to anybody.

I have 8 messages in my inbox: 1 welcome message, 7 spam messages.

My quota is TWO fricking Megabytes.

Hotmail deletes you mailbox after 30 days of inactivity.

And now they delete your sent mail if you get tight on space?

Gosh.

[Wrong Robot]

I'm not to fond of hotmail anymore...I've been with them pre-microsoft(though my acocunt got deleted)
I used to think it was the greatest thing since sliced cheese(far greater an achievement than sliced bread if you ask me)
I've been meaning to switch to Yahoo...for quite some time...but three things hold me back
1) it seems to be alot slower(and thats saying something...its hard to get much slower on the shite connection I have)
2) I'm very accustommed to hotmail
3) I set up a yahoo account....but didn't use it for a few months...and either I forgot hte password...or it was deleted and somone took the name of it shortly afterword
at anyrate...its not good news cause I gave a friend my to-be yahoo.com email(variable8@yahoo.com)
but then when I went to access it...it said incorrect password...I tried everyone of my commonplace passwords...and the password retrival system is funky. oh well....if I never hear from her again...then its my bad :)

[viking]

I've been using hotmail for two years now and I can't believe how crappy its become. I get over 20 spam emails a day with the junk filter on high and a zillion blocked email addresses. I'm also not getting messages that people have sent me which has never happened before. I've now changes to .mac. I'm not happy about the $100 per year but what other choice do I have. It's also impossible to get a decent email address now on Yahoo or Hotmail.

[Giaguara]

Well i'm basicly trapped in yahoo...

i have one account that i can't check elsewhere cos i have forgotten my password ... and have some ten accounts being forwarded there.

i don't know if it's slower.. the thing i'd want there is the block sender with ONE click.
i hate to do more than ONE click to block spams...

the filters work a lot better ... so the only spams i get are due to my iol account and uol.com.ar &gt; :(

the others that i can check online i can't check them anywhere... so yahoo is the one that works anywhere - except at theathrow airport where ONLY hotmail works (you sign up for spam and can empty youre spams in hotmail for 7 minutes..)

[Matsu]

I dunno what people expect froma free mail account??? Besides the chick complaining about the lost messages is incorrect about the lack of warning, the M$ rep in the c|net stort says that M$ did indeed send out a warning 30 days before. Most people probably just deleted it as spam. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

I think Yahoo is much better, but I wouldn't pay for it. If it ever comes down to not being able to get reliable free e-mail then I'll just start using the mail accounts that come with my ISP.

However, I may soon convince my university that all alumni should be able to keep their user@university.ca eMail accounts. That'd be perfect, free and internet based.

[cyko95]

Does anyone else remember when hotmail wasn't owned by M$? Those were the days. No I check my hotmail account every 5 days or so, but it's spam 99% of the time. Unfortunately, since that is the email address on my resume', I have to keep the account opened. =( I have a yahoo.com account for kicks and I bet I check that one about every month or 2, with NO SPAM waiting for me. I bet i've had 2 spam mails in over a year from having that account open. Strange.

[anamac]

Why would anyone choose Hotmail over the alternatives? Unless you enjoy spam, tiny storage and intrusions by the 'editors' to delete your mail.

Any cruise on Tucows, C|net or your download site of choice will give you dozens of possibilities. Also, you can get free e-mail from so many websites, and obscure places that don't attract the kind of unwanted attention that Hotmail does. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />

[Macguy]

I used to use <a href="http://www.apexmail.com" target="_blank">apexmail</a> a lot, a few years ago.

All web-based and free, haven't been by in a while though.

[Macguy]

Nevermind, looks like they aren't free anymore.

Has the whole internet gone nutty?

[Junkyard Dawg]

I only use hotmail addy for registering at sites, and for downloading porn. But even without using the email addy at all, spam floods in . I think Microsoft really likes spam or something.

[Snof]

I had a similar problem with sent messages being deleted. I had some code I had written a while ago saved there and just yesterday I wanted to use some of it and it wasn't there. Luckily I found it backed up on my Mom's TiBook, so it wasn't terrible, just slightly inconvenient.

And unlike most accounts, I do have one Hotmail account that gets no spam at all, aside from the messages from Hotmail Member Services (which I ignore).

[Eugene]

try myrealbox.com for a FREE POP account, no ads, nothing.

Just don't expect it to stay that way forever.

[Wrong Robot]

Spam is the staple food of Bill gates' diet.

Steve jobs' eats granola and soy

there was an episode of babylon 5 where garibaldi was with someone and they ate nutra-grain bars :)
(only the label was taken off)

[Giaguara]

Hey there are a lot of better and less known free email services... if you are looking for something to try, i'll give some ideas. I have tried maybe 200 different ones, searching for the perfect one - they don't exist - so i left 3 accounts in altern, one in yahoo, 2 in my service (no spam) and 3 in libero / iol.

<a href="http://altern.org/mail" target="_blank">http://altern.org/mail</a>
altern is a (french) service: check online or pop. 10 mb if i remember right. no advertising, very fast, very very minimal graphics. haven't found any negativities - except it's in french. if u know whate are 'write', 'send' and ome more basical terms it's ok. also, registering they don't ask even your name. like it cos fast.
(and i don't know any french btw)

<a href="http://mail.ru" target="_blank">http://mail.ru</a> (if i remember right without www)
should be very fast. it takes some time to find the english version ... i used it for a year, just got bored and changed to altern...

libero and iol.. are only in italian and now are full of provider sent spam. so i don't really suggest them.

<a href="http://mulattabianca.zzn.com" target="_blank">http://mulattabianca.zzn.com</a> .. thehe! ok i promise, no spam. choose interface in 14 languages .. and get notice in other mail or icq of your mails if u prefer .. zzn accounts now are far from what they were years ago. when i have to use public comps, i use this and yahoo.

also <a href="http://terra.com" target="_blank">http://terra.com</a> (.uy, .ar etc) seems ok.. i dont really get spam there.

in the end.. yahoo has remained for years, it works about everywhere.. and hotmail i use exclusively to the registrations that will anyway send me the spam.

i wish there was in every service a button in the inbox "kill this sender" or "block"...

i would NOT recommend any of these to use: uol.com.ar (worst of all uol's .. i never give the address to anyone and i get only spam) - francimel.com - they killed all my mails in inbox with no notice so i quitted using it after that - zwallet -yep .. get paid 0,000 $ for rading your spams .. - anything adding stupid spams in the end of your mails or that cancel your inboxes with no notice.. - even hushmail .. i had an account and now they want it to be paid!! i'll simply use pgp when i need and that's it..

.. ok, only some suggestions if anyone's looking for something else as an email account..

<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />

[Amorph]

I've never understood the obsession with "free" stuff.

Nothing from a commercial vendor is truly free.

If you use a "free" email service, or a free browser, the company offering it doesn't answer to you, so they can change things to suit those people they do answer to - usually advertisers and their own accounting and marketing departments - at a whim. Address and demographics information is valuable, and sale of such is lucrative, so if they're not making money off a service that you sign up for, odds are they're making it by selling your information to whoever the highest bidder happens to be. They have no interest in maintaining user reliability or security or confidentiality over the wishes of the people who actually are paying them.

The exception is public domain code (NewsWatcher) and open source code, where there is generally some sort of altruism involved, because nobody is paying the "vendor," and there often is no vendor to begin with.

If you buy a service, on the other hand, the vendor is beholden to you, and they have a direct interest in tailoring their service to suit you. The more elaborate things like email clients and web browsers get, and the more commercial the media they access become, the more important this distinction is.

That's why I'm happy to pay for something like OmniWeb. I'd rather have a browser designed for my purposes than one designed for Microsoft's, or AOL's.

[ 07-29-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

[ibub]

i signed up for a hotmail account winter quarter while studying abroad. (it was the only free one i knew of) i don't really save sent messages and i've never gotten any spam and trust me i know spam (i have an aol account at my parents house!). i knew this was just going to be a temporary account so only a handfull of people know the address. the hotmail service was perfect for what i wanted.

but now i'm back and i think i might buy a .mac account once i get my mac.

just wanted to say that i have had a nice experience with my account and that it is nice for some things.