As part of a general upgrade of Microsoft’s Hotmail service, the
company has improved facilities for filtering unsolicited e-mails.
Microsoft's development can be seen as part of a global effort to
combat the practice of spamming, which includes EU measures based
on "opt-out" clauses in direct marketing schemes.
The Hotmail service now offers three different choices for users
wishing to limit the amount of e-mail that they receive. The two
lower levels of protection offer to remove obvious “spam” e-mails
from the user's inbox, while the exclusive option removes all
e-mails except those sent by people listed in the user's address
book.
In a statement announcing the Hotmail upgrade Rick Holzli,
director of MSN Hotmail at Microsoft Corp said:
"MSN is applying knowledge we’ve gained as
the provider of the world’s largest e-mail service to offer
consumers a better way to handle their e-mail and protect
themselves from spam. These improvements will help ensure that
users worldwide — more than 110 million now and growing every day —
have a superior experience with MSN Hotmail."
Despite a few technical problems encountered last week in
attempts to launch the improved service, those problems now appear
to have been resolved and Hotmail customers can enjoy the benefits
of the enhanced service.
