We would like Microsoft to remove its SmartScreen spam filtering technology from its Hotmail/Windows Live Mail email services and implement a usable alternative.
SmartScreen clearly proves not be a viable technology to combat spam because:
- SmartScreen aggressively filters out legitimate emails without sender’s consent. Millions of personal and business emails silently disappears within Hotmail’s server.
- Email servers which has been configured to be fully compliant with all Sender guidelines as listed on Microsoft’s website still fails to work.
http://postmaster.live.com/Guidelines.aspx - OpenSPF suggests that Microsoft’s Sender ID specifications is broken and not compliant to common standards.
http://www.openspf.org/SPF_vs_Sender_ID - Sender Score Certificate is too expensive. Purchasing a certificate just to get their domains white-listed is not an option for webmasters, server administrators and organizations who can’t afford them.
- Some users report that their e-mails managed to send through when using Microsoft Outlook as their e-mail client. However, not everybody uses Microsoft Outlook.
Let us ask ourselves, what is the purpose of Hotmail’s email service if hotmail users can’t receive emails from external senders, even if these external senders complies to all guidelines as stated by Microsoft?
If Microsoft is trying to monopolize email services, they are clearly heading towards the wrong direction. They are in fact, cutting their own throat. Hotmail users are moving away to other email services, favourably its competitors, GMail and Yahoo! Mail.
We would like to advocate that SmartScreen technology should be removed and replaced with other usable spam filtering technologies.
Relevant articles:
http://www.iis-aid.com/articles/iis_aid_news/are_hotmail_cutting_their_own_throat
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/01/hotmail_friendly_fire/