[Kamikaze]

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+pushes+spam-filtering+technology/2100-7355_3-5758365.html?tag=nefd.top?headline=Microsoft~pushes~spam-filtering~technology

Microsoft is planning to enforce Sender-ID in its hotmail services by trashing (at the server level, it won't reach your spam box even) e-mails without Sender-ID tags. The problem is, Sender-ID is widely unsupported among webmail services and e-mail applications. Particularly, it's incompatible with free/open-source software. The Apache foundation, they make the most popular webserver on the www, has announced they won't be supporting Sender-ID at all because it's incompatible with the Apache license.

What's even worse is Sender-ID doesn't work very well for what it's advertised to do (i.e. preventing spam). Lots of spam comes from legitimate looking domains. Plus, it'll hamper legitimate mail too. For example, it'll break mailing lists. Since mailing list posts are sent by the mailing list server, the e-mail from domain won't match the list server's domain. That'll get rejected with Sender-ID.

So hotmail users, go switch to gmail or yahoo... or else your non-MSN friends won't be able to e-mail you.

[SadisticSid]

I would've thought this a suicidal plan for Microsoft... surely it'll send Hotmail users to Gmail in droves?

[Unknown Target]

Or Yahoo, which offers 1 gig of space now, and gets very little, if any spam if you're careful.

[aldo_14]

Microsoft offers a 'service' using a 'feature' which only it supports, and thus attempts to either handicap competitors or force them to spend money on unecessary compatibility tech?

Never.......