Talk:Hotmail

Condensing work detailed

• I removed separately named features from TOC list and listed them in bulleted lists.
• reordered features in terms of priority of what a user is likely to see first in terms of actions s/he will do:
  • [login:] UI/localisation, search, color schemes
  • [various UI improvements to reading messages and taking actions:] Reading pane, keyboard shortcuts
  • [composing messages:] contact updates, address auto-complete image attachments, rich text editing, inline spell checking,
  • [other stuff:] storage
• I still left the safety section alone, because users need to know what's in store for them.

-BStarky 22:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Multiple Users Access

With the new security features, could Hotmail be accessed by multiple users from different locations at the same time with both of them being logged on? --Atreusk 23:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

For some reason, yes

kashimjamed (talk) 16:14, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I can't see screenshot of Windows Live Hotmail

I don't know why I can't see it here, that's the reason why I replaced it with another screenshot I uploaded last month. I'm from Vietnam and I tried IE7 and Firefox2.0, but it stills don't show. I downloaded, clicked to go to Image page --> the same. Vinhtantran 09:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Version

Is this really version 2.0?Geoffreynham 15:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Data Retention

I am aware that hotmail stores user information about people when they initially set up an account. Data such as IP address used to register etc. Does anyone know any details about microsoft/hotmail data retention? eg: period of time stored & what is stored?

Deleted Mail

They have forced an "upgrade" from hotmail, to something that seems unusable on dialup. And they have deleted all my email. All ten years of saved email. The article is wrong; they do not keep free email for 120 days. What is the actual period of time? It is besides the point to say they let you have 2GB or 5GB free, when they won't even let you keep a few megabytes, and you don't know how often you have to check your email to keep them from deleting it all. -69.87.200.139 13:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a 120 day timeout (according to "Windows Weekly 25: Vista - Hot or Not?") -- Imperator3733 21:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

60 days if it's an old account, according to an email direct from MS customer support to me today: "If you are wondering why your MSN Hotmail account was migrated to Windows Live Hotmail and your account appears to be newly created, then the contents of your MSN Hotmail inbox were deleted by an automated service which flags accounts which have not been signed into for 60 or more days. Once the inbox contents have been deleted, they cannot be recovered.So if you are thinking of getting an MSN Hotmail account, then please note this key fact.

When you signed in after that period of inactivity, you were also upgraded to Windows Live Hotmail. Windows Live Hotmail will keep your account active, even if you do not sign in for 120 days." 87.81.12.15 (talk) 15:21, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

2000 - 2001 Server Migration

Perhaps this section should also mention that after the acquisition of Hotmail by Microsoft in the process of moving Hotmail from unix based servers to Windows based servers they managed to lose hundreds of accounts along with all the e-mail of those users. They were unable to recover the e-mails because they failed to make proper backups. bajs kuk you suck So many penis of those who had been using Hotmail before it was acquired by Microsoft ended up with no e-mail at all after.

Accusation of Blatant advertising

As far as I can see, the information on this article is stating FACTS about Hotmail and not promoting it as such. I fail to see how much more neutral it can get, both unique features distinguishing it from other webmail services AND criticisms of Hotmail are included. I think a comparison needs to be done between this article and the Gmail article, and see if the style of writing about facts differs in any way, which I cannot see it does. My instinct tells me that this article has been bombarded with Advertisement templates by a sad Gmail fan, intent on belittling any competitor of Google's services with his own biased views. --Joowwww 12:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above. Having read the article, all I can say is that the article may require some cleanups and move the "miscellaneous" section into relevant sections. However, it definitely does not contain "blatant advertising" and hence should not be even considered for speedy deletion. The article states facts about the service and also its criticisms. Also, is it really needed to have THREE tags for speedy deletion on one article? --Pikablu0530 12:42, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

The "Features" section definitely reeked of blatant advertising. I've reworded several parts of the section to remove advertising lingo. I've also removed the POV, Cleanup and Advert templates from the article. -/- Warren 00:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

"The "Features" section definitely reeked of blatant advertising" I just read it, and I thought the same thing. The criticism fuck meee section seems to have many minor, seemingly personal gripes that really don't seem notable to mention. Many webmail services have their flaws, is it mandatory that we list a criticism section? I haven't read any of the other webmail articles but I'll check them out too.Cannedbeef (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• I have noted that this seems particlarly true in how someone snuck in an 'advertisement' about Gmail in here. This article is NOT "a history of the webmail services"- it is entitled "hotmail". The focus should be on Hotmail and how other varius services may have affected its development- so when someone says "Gmail was made with..." and lists all Gmails awesome, incredible features "innovation" and such with a link to the gmail section it sounds like either an advertisement for Gmail, or a "history of web email servces" with a bias to gmail. I think that portion should focus on hotmail, saying at most how gmail's entering onto the scene inspired *insert changes* in Hotmail... not listing gmails many, l33t features. I've become a little annoyed with how many wikipedia pages seemed to ohh baby be used as an advertisement medium (carefully fit into the boundaries of what is allowed, sometimes even otside those)... so it is particularly annoying when that same thing is done for completely different companies' article. Coroloro (talk) 13:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

This was the WHOLE reason I checked out the talk page. Scrolling through the article it was quite jarring to see a paragraph dedicated to pointing out the webmail industry stagnated until GMail came along to rescue us all - particular since that's a fairly subjective claim to make. I definitely think that bit needs removing. You know, for whatever my opinion is worth. :) Kermitron (talk) 03:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Live.com addresses

Does anyone know if the live.com email addresses are available yet? == Imperator3733 20:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, they are now available[1] WasAPasserBy 00:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move --Lox (t,c) 10:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

---

Windows Live Hotmail → Hotmail — This is a clear case WP:NC with regard commonly used names. A search for "Windows Live Hotmail" returns 1,040,000 results, while a search for "hotmail", excluding the phrase "Windows Live Hotmail" returns 371,000,000. That means that there are about three hundred and seventy million more results for "Hotmail", so it is probably safe to say that it is the most common name and should be used as the title. —GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 20:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support. The article covers Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, and Windows Live Hotmail. Article should not be renamed every time Hotmail is renamed, as it is still most commonly referred to by that name. –Pomte 15:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support of course. And the person who changed the name should be given the Casino Royale treatment. SilkTork *^SilkyTalk 15:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Initially, the "Windows Live Hotmail" we have now was named "Windows Live Mail", and it was a completely seperate thing from the then "MSN Hotmail". If they retained that name and made it final, I don't think people would still call it "Hotmail" as often as now. When they renamed it from "Windows Live Mail" to "Windows Live Hotmail", the article name changed as well. At that time, I recall that "Windows Live Hotmail" was still in its beta testing stages, and "MSN Hotmail" was still the mainstream service and hence they existed as separate articles. After "Windows Live Hotmail" replaced "MSN Hotmail" when it was released, the two articles were merged into what we have now, but no one remembered to renamed the article. --Pikablu0530 (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support Now it's all the same thing there's no need for the pedanticism --Joowwww (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support no doubt everyone in the world still calls it Hotmail.--Pikablu0530 (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Comment on Google search results. Search on "Windows Live Hotmail" ENGLISH pages returns 355,000 results. Search on "Hotmail" without "Windows Live Hotmail" ENGLISH pages returns 18,600,000 results. These results doesn't not contradict what GW_Simulations said, but this is to make the results more convincing according to WP:NC where only English pages should be searched.--Pikablu0530 (talk) 22:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

• PAGE MOVED per discussion; cheers. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

verifying spam addresses

The article contains the following line: "With virtually no exceptions, these addresses are used for the express purpose of verifying the recipient's address, thus opening the door for more spam."

This is what is generally assumed, but I have yet to see anyone substantiating that claim.

I even recall an article from years ago, where there was an experiment with fresh email addresses where the surprising outcome was that replying to opt-out links had no negative effect on the amount of spam received. Though considering that the benefits of having a few email addresses verified probably does not outweigh the work involved in setting up a system for that purpose, perhaps this shouldn't really come as such a surprise.

I don't recall the scale of that experiment, and whether things have changed since then, but I think the claim made in the article does warrant some reference to some external source. One which isn't just repeating "common knowledge". — SvdB (talk) 00:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

missed DNS renewals

I cleaned up the section on missed renewals and combined the two paragraphs for brevity. The hotmail.co.uk section had the wrong year anyway (it happened in 2003 according to the reference), and it was passport.com that wasn't renewed in 1999. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Belwig (talk • contribs) 02:47, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Quoting

How on earth do you quote part of all of an e-mail when responding to it? I tried it on a Mac and also on a PC, and it doesn't seem to let me do it. What an incredible pain! If someone knows how to do it, (a) please tell me; and (b) let's definitely incorporate the answer in this article. Thanks, EverybodyLovesSomebody (talk) 00:30, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

nnections" so it must be a problem down your end mate. Swanny92 (talk) 12:18, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

POP3 Access

The acticle says that "POP3 access, although not directly available through Hotmail, can be accessed via Windows Live Mail, and Microsoft Outlook with Outlook Connector.[4]" Firstly, WLM and Outlook do not give you POP3 access, they are simply desktop applications that access Hotmail via proprietary means.

Secondly "Hotmail Plus" subscribers do get real POP3 (and SMTP) access, see [[2]]. -- Mallardtheduck (talk) 08:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. That was a major mistake. Users often confuse POP3 and WebDAV, so whoever added it probably meant WebDAV. -- xpclient ^talk 16:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Redirect

When a site redirects to somewhere else do not restore the redirect. Thanks, SqueakBox 15:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem with putting the full URl there is its extremely fragile. If hotmail decide to make even the slightest change to their URL format it will become a deadlink, whereas hotmail.com is always going to work. The reason they put a redirect there is so they can change the internal formatting of their URLs without breaking inbound links. Linking to hotmail.com makes more sense. Gwernol 15:29, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the link as they are clearly not going top restore it. Using a redirect makes us look sloppy and unprofessional, as if we had not noticed, it also gives the reader the wrong idea that hotmail.com still exists as a webpage. Thanks, SqueakBox 15:36, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The Hotmail.com is used for a reason. A) It's considered the one of the "official" links to Hotmail (like mail.live.com was and now hotmail.live.com, which all also redirect) and B) like Gwernol said, putting the full URI there is fragile as they could change it any minute and it would most likely become a dead link. I don't know anybody who would sit at their computer typing in "login.live.com/... whatever" just to avoid using a redirect and saving yourself about 2 seconds of loading. If this was another webpage we were talking about then yes in that case we would use the full link rather than a redirect though "www.hotmail.com" is used for a reason. Swanny92 (talk) 00:59, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Inclusion of Competetors

Regarding this section in the development description of hotmail: "After a period of technological stagnation, the webmail industry received a significant boost in 2004 when the Google search engine announced its own mail service, Gmail. Featuring increased storage space, speed and interface flexibility, this new competitor spurred a wave of innovation in webmail. The main industry heavyweights – Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail – introduced upgraded versions of their e-mail services with greater speed, security and advanced features."

Is it necessary, in an accurate description of hotmails growth, to describe Gmail's virtues and mention Yahoo alongside hotmail? How does this keep the article focused on the topic and retain neutrality? Elaborate and discuss.Coroloro (talk) 13:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate Information

The Registration section says that users are offered a choice of hotmail.com hotmail.co.uk etc. This is not true. If, for example, you are in the uk, you are *only* offered a choice of uk addresses, i.e. hotmail.co.uk or live.co.uk.

So-called criticisms section

I noticed that just about everything in the "Criticisms" section has nothing to do with criticism. I'm going to split that content into other sections, and it seems like it would be easy to integrate the information on actual criticism into other sections as well, as suggested by Wikipedia:Criticism. Anyone disagree? - Josh (talk | contribs) 05:00, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

This is the lightest criticism I've ever seen of any of the numerous insecure M$ products. How easy is it to hack into a known person's account or even hack right past all of M$ security since they just refuse to fix known issues in their server/firewall that manages hotmail.com/live.com like this "critical vulnerability in SQL Server" that has known "for more than eight months"

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Business+Intelligence&articleId=9124351&taxonomyId=9&pageNumber=1

There isn't even a listing of the type of servers they use. (don't know, but my money is on SQL Server) Do you guys all work for M$ or do they send you gold once a month? ;) The Unknown Soldier(talk | contribs) 12:40, 2 Jan 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.15.197 (talk)

Link to hotmail or windows live mail?

Hi all, Many wikipedias have articles about both Windows Live Mail and Hotmail. My bot tried to get things straight today, but got reverted. What would be the best to link to from here with interwiki links? Any bright ideas? Thijs! (talk) 17:08, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Hotmail should only link to pages that are named "Hotmail" or "Windows Live Hotmail" (the two official names).

Windows Live Mail (a separate software program) should be linked only to "Windows Live Mail".

Of course, there are names for the respective titles above in different languages, such as Arabic, and these should also be retained.

I believe that in most wikipedias, the articles are named either "Hotmail" or "Windows Live Hotmail" in English already as this is the brand name. And I'd say most of the ones that are not in English titles (such as the Arabic page identified above) are already properly interwiki linked. So I don't think your bot needs to do anything for the moment Thijs!. --Pikablu0530 (talk) 06:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Browser compatibility

It says that since Nov 4 2008 Google Chrome works with Hotmail - but I use Chrome and only get a read only mode when I log in - it won't let me write. Microsoft is obviously doing this intentionally and it has not been corrected. Is this happening to others? Because if it is then the statement should be removed. Malick78 (talk) 10:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion for splitting into MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail

• Oppose To whoever suggested the split, please note that it was after a really long debate to come to the consensus and settle with the decision to merge Windows Live Hotmail and MSN Hotmail articles together, and renaming the article to Hotmail as it is today. The person who placed the split template did not provide any reason for doing so. If the reasoning behind the split was based on article size, this article's length is not long enough to justify a split. Therefore I strongly oppose to splitting the article. --Pikablu0530 (talk) 05:36, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Discussion for merging Windows Live Web Messenger into Hotmail

• Postpone It is unknown at this stage whether Windows Live Web Messenger will have its own independent service as well as integrating into the new version Hotmail. I'd suggest postponing the merge at least until it is officially integrated into Hotmail. Please take note that currently, the Windows Live Web Messenger article contains information (particularly historical information) about both MSN Web Messenger and the once independent service Windows Live Web Messenger that was released to beta testers only. These are particularly important information that should be preserved even when merged. --Pikablu0530 (talk) 05:45, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

• Postpone Still unknown...even though it has already been redirected...The supposed reference at liveside.net only states that the Web Messenger has gone into preliminary dogfood testing withing Microsoft only, and has not been released either in full or to the general public.WasAPasserBy (talk) 07:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Phone number

One issue is P.O.C. I have recently encountered a situation in which I needed to contact customer service for hotmail, and was wondering if it might be a good thing to include a P.O.C. section in the article.John5Russell3Finley (talk) 03:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Oldest hotmail account

Just wondering if it's been figured out who has had the oldest hotmail account, still in operation, as I've never seen any mention of this anywhere.

Mlauzon (talk) 01:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't publish trivia like that, as it's generally not considered notable.Jasper Deng (talk) 06:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Rubbish - we want that info. and it's typical info. on Wikipedia. Stop speaking for Wikipedia and misrepresenting it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.166.102.108 (talk) 10:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

No a polite way of putting it...

But the core disagreement is right: If it can be verified by fact, it can be put into the article. Generally speaking, what Wikipedia does not want is a "trivia" section which includes incoherent facts (lists of indiscriminate items), but that can always be avoided. In addition, notability is a mean of weighing the merit of an article and does not apply to a single fact. Fleet Command (talk) 15:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

A little contribution

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://hotmail.com (The oldest archived hotmail's home page complete with images is dic/97) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.17.50.49 (talk) 02:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

"Hot"mail

I don't know if this has been discussed here before, but I have heard that some Swedes derive amusement from the name, because the word hot (pronounced like the word hoot in Scots) means "threat" in Swedish, so some Swedes tend to think of "Hotmail" as "threat letters". JIP | Talk 18:47, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Hotmail for Mac

It seem appropriate to mention [mBox Mail for Mac] as a solution for Mac users to get IMAP support for Windows Live Hotmail. Formerly the solution was HTTP Mail via WebDav. Now WebDav is discontinued by MS. As far as I know this is the only solution for Mac users to get their Hotmail with folders without using the Web pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.194.4 (talk) 04:45, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Patent puffery

The article claims that Hotmail uses patented security, but the citation just mentions patent pending technology. Hardly the same thing. Most pending patent applications are never granted. Editing accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.113.11 (talk) 04:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

F7r@hotmail.at —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.31.68.41 (talk) 00:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hotmail initially ran under FreeBSD-Apache and was only converted to Microsoft products in 2000???

Regarding this line: "Hotmail initially ran under FreeBSD-Apache and was only converted to Microsoft products in 2000."

I think it definitely needs a citation. I worked for UUNet when MS acquired Hotmail (the MicroSoft Network was in reality more UUNet than implied by it's name, (with UUNet) providing much of their connectivity services, and the backbone their stuff ran on). As far as I can remember, having had to deal with the transition, Hotmail was running on SunOS and Solaris. The switchover started a lot earlier than 2000 AFAICR. Shortly after they acquired it (1998ish). I believe the transition may have "completed" in or around 2000. Regardless, that sentence definitely needs a citation, as it's far from my memory of the circumstances and/or makes specific unfounded claims. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 22:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Nope, my memory IS correct. [3]

"The software giant has attempted to exchange the Sun/Solaris infrastructure of Hotmail with NT since buying it in December 1997. However, the demands of supporting 10 million users reportedly proved too great for NT, and Solaris was reinstated."

That was from a pretty big pub of the time. There should be a bunch more to support it. It's what we used (UUNet), and it's what we used to handle mail for our clients, and what Hotmail was running off our services. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 22:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm changing it. Here's[4] the one of the original MICROSOFT job posting from when they were on attempt #2 (or was it #3 or #4?) to migrate off Solaris. I am also removing the year 2000, as the actual successful migration didn't happen for YEARS from that date (or the original attempt in 1998). Note the migration was still not done successfully by 2002. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 23:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

For those who don't like clicking links to verify, here's a snippet from the job posting (emphasis mine)... "The Hotmail development team needs a Software Design Engineer to work on the design and development of the next generation of backend servers. The new backend servers are WIN32 replacements for the current Solaris implementation." For the rest of you, click the links above. Guess I am not going as senile as I thought. ;-) ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 23:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The confusion may come from the fact that SunOS and Solaris were BSD implementations at that time. Note... BSD, not FreeBSD implementations though. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 23:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, just in case anyone is interested, I've read through everything I could find (the two links above and a number of others). Hotmail's mail services were run on Solaris/SunOS. The web interface was run on Apache (v1.21?) and FreeBSD. The statement has been adjusted to match. No one seems to have a clear cut idea of when the final migration to Windows was completed. By 2002, they (MS) were still looking to hire people to try the migration yet again. I suspect a completed migration date (especially not 2000) should be left out unless some reliable third party has posted a date. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:31, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Criticism section: RIP

I always wonder about these "sanitized" company pages, 9 times out of 10 a criticism section has been deleted/and or later merged then slowly removed, as is the case here, in March 2009.[5] Original: [6]

Errectstapler (talk) 16:45, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Good riddance. It look like everything but a criticism section. Though I think some verifiable items can still be salvaged and re-written in a neutral manner (as opposed to polish-an-apple-for-Microsoft or bash-the-hell-outta-Microsoft styles). Fleet Command (talk) 04:24, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't take me wrong: I don't think that Criticism is unnecessary. But I think instead of a writing an article in an all-praise manner with only one Criticism section into which all shortcomings are crammed, the entire article must be written from a neutral point of view; critical points must placed on the spot where appropriate. A dedicated criticism section belongs to articles about movies. Fleet Command (talk) 01:13, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Accounts exposed in 1999

It looks like there was a big security issue in august 1999 too [7] maybe the information should be added into the article. —  Ark25  (talk) 01:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I think so. /me wonders if these problems were related to their switch from FreeBSD. Scientus (talk) 23:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Name change?

According to the main Hotmail site, the name seems to have changed to Microsoft Hotmail, although it still says Windows Live when logged in. Is this part of a forthcoming rebrand? Cloudbound (talk) 23:28, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

AJAX

Is putting Ajax in the first paragraph really appropriate? Most non technical users aren't going to have a clue what that is, nor does it really show up as a main feature. Lukes123 (talk) 13:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)