The software giant recently launched an antispam campaign, but critics say the company should be more introspective if it is serious about reducing the scourge of unwanted e-mail. [CNET News.com]
Deficiencies in Microsoft’s spam behavior range across a number of its divisions that offer e-mail services, according to Atkins and others. These include the company’s small-business-oriented bCentral portal; MSN, which has its own e-mail service; and Hotmail, a separate, Web-based e-mail service that uses many of the same systems as MSN but operates under different rules.
Perhaps the loudest hew and cry against Microsoft emanates from some network administrators tracking the spam problem, who claim that a sizable chunk of the spam now clogging the Internet’s arteries emanates from Microsoft’s own servers.
These spam watchers complain that while Microsoft has implemented badly needed controls on Hotmail, such as technology designed to identify software robots and prevent them from registering for accounts, Microsoft has left loopholes large enough to run rivers of spam through the related MSN e-mail service.