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Hotmail users out in the cold again

Rachel Konrad CNet

Published: 25 Jan 2001 15:56 GMT

Inconvenienced, yet again.

That was a prevailing attitude Wednesday among users of Hotmail, Microsoft's Web-based service that boasts 84 million free email accounts.

Ironically, a Microsoft spokesman could not confirm whether Wednesday's outage that blocked access to many of the company's Web sites, such as MSN.com and Expedia, also brought down Hotmail. The reason: Hotmail is often inaccessible.

"I am not sure if there are intermittent problems that are due to [Wednesday's outage] or just the normal difficulties that sometimes occur with Hotmail," said Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn.

Microsoft receives calls every day from people complaining about Hotmail, which the company agreed to purchase for nearly $400m on 31 December, 1997. "It's hard to tell if we are getting any more or any less today," he said.

Numerous people who couldn't access their accounts said they were not angry or overly annoyed; in fact, many said they have come to expect as much from Hotmail and don't rely on it for urgent missives. The site -- among Microsoft's most popular Web properties -- has been plagued by inconsistent service, lost email, sluggish delivery and customer complaints for months.

Many Internet users also said they have heeded warnings by security analysts and other e-commerce experts to use Web-based email services from Hotmail, Yahoo! and others as backup accounts. They recommend paying Internet service providers for a primary home account or, when appropriate, relying on a corporate email account from an employer.

Nelson Lode, a Los Angeles resident studying in Brazil, said Hotmail should serve as an easy way to keep in touch with friends back in the United States because, in theory, he could send and receive email from anywhere he travelled. But he has largely used a paid email account from a Brazilian ISP, Universo Online, because he said his Hotmail account was too unreliable.

"I just got it because Microsoft forces you to sign for one to be able to access the MSN Messenger service," he wrote via email. "I don't use my Hotmail account, so no inconvenience on that side, and I don't do it for this particular reason: not having access if there is a problem with the provider. So I agree with the experts that say it should be used for low-priority messages."

Andrew Gray of White Rock, Canada, was equally blase about Hotmail's failure Wednesday.

"I do not trust it being free and expect my paid service to handle what [messages] I consider critical to running my business and for general communication," Gray wrote via email. "I could not ask this of a free service."

Although few Hotmail users were outwardly irate at the lack of service, the outage is likely to be a disservice to customer relations. Experts say consumers' generally low expectations aren't likely to remain that way forever -- especially as Hotmail rival Yahoo! tries to grow market share.

"I know personally several people who have switched to Yahoo! because it's much better in terms of mail access. They have a more distributed service," said Sujata Ramnarayan, senior analyst for Gartner. "As long as people think there are no alternatives, people will accept what they're getting. It means there's an opportunity for someone else to step in."

Yahoo! is not without problems, either. In September, Yahoo! Mail suffered a one-two punch as the free Web-based email site acknowledged it had been arbitrarily bouncing incoming messages and that its servers were on the blink.

Hotmail also has a long history of shutting out consumers without warning. A portion of Hotmail members were shut out of their email accounts for several days starting 5 December because of system upgrades. A spokesman tried to soothe locked-out consumers by saying that MSN services were periodically taken offline "in ongoing efforts to continue to improve the Hotmail service".

The company suffered a similar outage just over a year ago when it failed to pay a $35 registration fee for the domain name Passport.com. Passport.com, the authentication service for Hotmail, verifies usernames and passwords. A Linux programmer noticed the problem and paid the $35 registration fee for the domain name, and an embarrassed Microsoft later reimbursed him.

Web-based email has also come under attack by security analysts. During an attack on Microsoft's network in October, sources close to the company blamed Web-based email.

While email coming through server-based messaging systems, such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, is checked for viruses or malicious programs, Web-based email is typically an open door.

Detecting unwelcome programs would then depend on the computer's own scanning software. While many PCs on networks use antivirus software, most do not have personal firewall programs to scan for intrusions, security experts say.

"One huge, gaping hole -- and oddly enough, Microsoft runs one of the hugest gaping holes -- is Web-based email services like Hotmail," Gartner security analyst John Pescatore said at the time.

Robert Lemos contributed to this report.

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