Why is Hotmail so bad at spam?

[app103]

I'm trying very hard to be sympathetic towards Hotmail, and I'm failing, badly.

It's not the Microsoft connection that makes me fed up, it's just Hotmail.

Here's today's inbox:

    From my contacts: 2 (2)
    Marquita@viagra,com RE: Online Canadian Pharma...
    admin@speedtrader,co... RE: Daily News

If you believe I have a contact called Marquita at viagra dot com, you're mad.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/15/spam_nothotmail/

[Darwin]

Yes, I struggle with this as well - what is the point of reporting junk mail (ie SPAM) when it NEVER works (the junk mail filter that is)? I now access hotmail via Outlook and let SpamBayes filter it. I wind up with one copy in my Junk Mail folder which I manually delete and a copy in my Hotmail Deleted Items folder, but at least I am slowly regaining (some) control over my Hotmail inbox and can open up the inbox without having to winnow out my one or two bona fide e-mails from the 20 or 30 spam messages I receive every day (they're all in the Deleted folder)!

[nudone]

i am also quite perplexed at how hotmail can be so sh*t at filtering.

my settings are to only receive email from MY contacts. that seems like a simple thing to enforce to me - you're not on my list then you're not coming in.

now i have plenty of gatecrasher spam mails. i guess it shouldn't take long for the problem to be sorted out.

how it could even happen in the first place makes me wonder how crap the underlying system must be.

[nite_monkey]

Easy, hotmail gives you a free account, how do they make money giving away free accounts?
1. from the people that are stupid enough to buy their paid accounts.
or
2. By selling your email address to tons and tons of spam companies.
I am glad I use gmail, I only use hotmail to chat with my friends, and the only time I check my hotmail account is when I want to make sure it hasn't expired yet so I can still chat with my friends.

[jgpaiva]

Actually, i don't complain about receiving spam from strange e-mails in my hotmail inbox. But i do complain about the spam homail themselves send me. Every other week i receive a stupid e-mail about upgrading my hotmail or something like that. i just feel like hitting them with a big hammer! 

[Carol Haynes]

It's not just Hotmail - Yahoo spam filtering used to work quite well - and it is supposed be to be learning your preferences. Recently it has been utterly crap - it doesn't matter how many time I report the same message it still goes to my filtered folders and not the junk folder.

Part of the problem is if you look in the headers often the senders address is spoofed (I often have them coming from my own email addresses and/or domains) and consequently do get past as a known address (even though superficially it looks like they come from a spam source).

I think the time is coming when all email addresses (like domains) will have to be registered with a proof of identity and made spoof proof by some sort of certification process. If that were the case ISPs could simply block emails from sources that are unregistered or where the registartion and certification don't match.

[Laughing Man]

I've had an opposite experience lol. Yahoo use to be horrible with spam (I cranked it up to max though) and I get almost no junk mail now. Hotmail on the other hand I have to rely on TB's junk filters I setup.

[Darwin]

I've started seeing cracks in the dyke too - Yahoo used to be BRILLIANT at filtering my e-mail but recently it's been letting some blatantly obviousl spam through - not much - most of it is still landing in my junk mail folder - but enough to make me thing that things are starting to degrade...

[Carol Haynes]

I reckon to get at least 150-200 junk emails a day via Yahoo mail - and it is supposed to be filtered. Probably about 60 end up in the junk mail folder the rest scattered through my other folders. It isn't as though it isn't obvious junk either - most is for viagra and variants or just plain porn.

I am systematically swapping all my subscription email addressed using Yahoo's AddressGuard - at least then I should be able to tell how my emails are escaping to the spammers - but it is a long winded process and I am not sure I am too happy putting all my eggs into the Yahoo basket. If at some point in the future I want to change provider it will be a massive job to change all my subscription emails again, and if they change the options available (hopefully this shouldn't impact on current users but you never know with potential Yahoo buyouts on the table) I could equally be hit.