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It certainly looks like they are still censoring incoming email.
My day job is for a company that provides data on thoroughbred horses and thoroughbred horse racing. Microsoft, through their MSN, Live and Hotmail mail services refuse to deliver replies we've written to their customers. Note that we aren't sending unsolicited email, but rather REPLIES that have been sent from hotmail.com and live.com addresses.
Hotmail tells us that we're a gambling site. We are? That's news to us and would be to the Nevada Gaming Commission as well. Anyway, to "ensure that our email is not blocked", they are more than willing to put us on a whitelist if we pay them protection money/tribute/Whitelist/Spammer fees.
That's right... as a Hotmail user, you are protected from pr0n, gambling and v1agra spam unless the spammer pays Microsoft first.
As an example, a Hotmail user emailed with a complaint that we hadn't been answering his email. Of course we HAD been replying but Hotmail was silently blocking our replies.
So I created a new Hotmail account just to reply to this fine gentleman. After filling in the normal stuff, including a captcha (type in the screwed up letters in this graphic so we know that you're a human), I copied and pasted my reply to him. When i hit send, I was told I had to verify the account before sending an email. The verification? Yet another captcha.
Sheesh. Now I've had a Hotmail account since long before Microsoft bought them. Just FYI, Hotmail ran on Linux and MySQL in those days and never went down. Not long after the Microsoft buyout, my Hotmail inbox filled with spam. Just as a test, I created a new account using random letters and numbers for the name, and sent just one email from it (to an email address on one of my domains.) A month later, I logged into find that my "new" account wasn't accepting any more mail due to the inbox being full... of Spam.
Now, since only Microsoft and I had that email address.... who do you think sold my address to the spammers?
It was either that, or Microsoft Hotmail security is just as secure as Microsoft Windows.
While writing this, I got curious. I only give out my hotmail address as a throw-away. I don't think I've logged into it for years. So I decided to look at it just now.
First, I find that I'm now part of some sort of social network, an anemic copy of Facebook I think. I was sent there after logging into Hotmail.com. I finally made it to Windows Live Hotmail where I have 356 new messages in my inbox and 39 in my junk folder. Of the 35 messages on the first page, 16 of them are spam, most with the subject "RE: Hello". Of course there're some in other languages, my lucky numbers from winning a Lotto I didn't enter and an email from a barrister regarding a $45,000.00 bank draft he's holding for me.
The rest of the page consists of advertisements from Microsoft "Partners" and email from Microsoft entities tell me how great they are.
Yup, Hotmail is still broken. Looks like a lot of spammers have paid to be on the whitelist.
