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Hotmail tipped for upgrade

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 27 Jul 2005 17:20 BST

Microsoft is rumoured to be about to upgrade its Hotmail service to give users more storage space and better security.

According to BetaNews, the rollout could begin on Wednesday. The updated version of Hotmail, codenamed Kahuna, will see Hotmail users given up to 2GB of storage space, bring it closer to parity with the beta of Google's Gmail which gives its users upwards of 2GB. A rich-text editor and an automatically-refreshing email inbox are also expected.

Some reports have predicted that Hotmail will gain anti-phishing controls intended to protect users from Internet fraud. Precise details of these features haven't yet been released, but they could flag up when a sender's email address seems to have been forged.

Microsoft has previously said it is looking to integrate Sender ID, its anti-spam technology, into Hotmail — a move that would see emails tagged as spam if they didn't conform to Sender ID.

This would be a controversial move, as Sender ID is not a fully recognised standard.