Millions of Hotmail customers have been caught in the crossfire of a battle over spam. For at least five months, some customers' outgoing mail has been blocked.
In an apparently overzealous attempt to prevent spam, Microsoft's Hotmail has been discarding email sent to and from sites hosted by controversial ISPs - even if the sites themselves were not controversial.
What's more, Hotmail didn't tell people that some outgoing mail was being discarded. Instead, it said the error was because of a problem connecting to the recipient - a practice that has particularly alarmed some customers.
"If Microsoft, one of the largest technology companies, can say who we send email to, that really puts constraints on freedom of speech in the US," said 24 year old Ben Johnson, an information technology worker.
Microsoft defended its actions, saying it's only trying to prevent spam.
"MSN has been very aggressive and proactive in protecting our MSN Hotmail users from spam," Sarah Lefko, MSN product manager, said in an email, noting that the company will review blocked sites on a case-by-case basis if a complaint is filed.
Spam vs. free speech
The quagmire illustrates the challenges of trying to prevent spam while preserving free speech. After all, no one wants an in-box crammed with unsolicited porn and bogus plans to work from home for millions of dollars.
E-mail services are struggling to find a fair way to prevent that from happening. Still, to subscribers such as Johnson, the practice of blocking outgoing mail is extreme.
"It's like killing a fly with a shotgun," he said.
The controversy stems from Hotmail's membership in the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), an organization formed to crack down on spam. MAPS is the keeper of the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL), a list of ISPs known to host some major spammers.
However, many of those ISPs also host sites that don't send spam, and those sites often are blocked, too. MAPS hopes the practice will convince legitimate sites to abandon hosts that cater to spammers.
Other companies besides Hotmail also may be blocking outgoing mail, but because they don't always notify customers, it's difficult to determine whether it's happening unless someone complains.
Angry email users
The idea behind blocking outgoing mail is to ensure that people don't reply to spammers, who often offer recipients a fake option of unsubscribing from their list. Instead of removing people, spammers use the incoming messages as a signal that an email address is an active one where they can send more spam.
Still, Web-based email users are angry.
Kyle McCowin, a 21-year-old student, first learned of the blocks when he was alerted by Peacefire earlier this week. He said he could understand blocking incoming mail, but the move to block outgoing mail disturbed him.
"They just sort of pocket the email and don't even tell you about it," he said.
MAPS already has stirred plenty of controversy in its attempt to balance free speech rights with spam control. In August, the organization was sued by Harris Interactive, which claimed it was being unjustly blocked. The suit was later dismissed.
Others have filed similar suits but lost the first round when a judge denied their request to be taken off the list.
Look, just look at the Hotmail USER DEFINED setup options. "Email Filtering" ie SPAM FILTERING can be turned on, or off. I signed up for a Hotmail account in the recent months, and the VERY NEXT DAY, before I had even used the account, I must have had 30+ spams, trying to sell everything under the sun.
If Microsoft have gone a step further and blocking all email from spamming ISP's then good on them. No ethical ISP would allow their system to be abused in that fashion anyway. I say, black list all spamming ISP's and kill their upstreams, and get them off the air permanently.
You can't sit on a train, open your letter box, or listen to the radio without being bombarded by pathetic advertising. The last place I want it, is in my inbox also.
Nick.