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Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Microsoft rations Hotmail users' e-mails to cut spam
Microsoft Corp. has moved to combat the ever-increasing spread of unsolicited e-mail, or spam, by capping the number of e-mails that users of its free Hotmail service can send each day.
By limiting to 100 the number of messages that can be sent in any 24- hour period, Microsoft's MSN division hopes to stop people from using its service to send spam, lead product manager Lisa Gurry said.
"Spam is an industrywide problem, but MSN and Hotmail are strongly committed to doing everything we can to make sure we're not a source," Gurry said.
She said the 100-message limit will affect between 1 percent and 2 percent of Hotmail's 110 million worldwide users. The company gave users no notice of the limit, which was put into place earlier this month. The limit isn't noted anywhere on the site.
"It affects so few users, we didn't think any notice was required," Gurry said. A previous cap, which she would not describe, set a higher limit.
The limit doesn't apply to users who buy extra Hotmail storage, which costs $19.95 a year, to those who use the $9.95-a-month MSN8 software, or to those who use MSN as their dial-up or broadband Internet service provider.
Though those charges aren't high, Microsoft hopes they'll be sufficient to deter spammers, who Gurry said "are looking for the easiest route."
The other major free e-mail service, Yahoo! also imposes a limit on outgoing e-mails, but won't describe it. Spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten said most users will never know about the limit because they won't reach it. Both services also offer increasingly sophisticated filters that direct spam into "bulk mail" folders for easy deletion.
About 40 percent of all e-mail today is spam, up from 8 percent in 2001, according to San Francisco-based Brightmail Inc., a maker of anti-spam software. A total of 1 trillion spam e-mails will be sent this year, according to International Data Corp.
"Spam is a bigger problem than ever, and most consumers are sick of it," MSN's Gurry said.
P-I reporter Dan Richman can be reached at 206-448-8032 or danrichman@seattlepi.com
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