Hotmail's antispam measures snuff out legit emails, too

by admin May 1, 2007 at 9:33 am

No warning, little recourse

Hotmail users and email server admins, beware: you may be unknowingly caught in the crossfire of Microsoft’s war on spam. Unintended casualties include legitimate emails from domains with well-established reputations, which are systematically blocked with absolutely no notice and little recourse.

The chief culprit is the inaptly named SmartScreen, a proprietary spam control technology the software Goliath rolled out to great fanfare several years ago. While the filtering mechanism appears to be making some headway in eradicating Viagra come-ons and nasty phishing attempts, the victory comes at a price: an untold number of legitimate emails are blocked with no warning to either sender or intended recipient.

Full story: The Register