Microsoft"s MSN Hotmail, a free Web-based e-mail service, has tightened restrictions on daily outbound messages sent by subscribers, a tactic it says will help curb spam. The Redmond, Wash.-based company on Friday said that Hotmail subscribers are now limited to sending only 100 messages a day "in an effort to prevent spammers from using Hotmail to spread spam," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager. The change, made last week, should affect only about 1 percent of its nearly 110 million worldwide users, based on historical usage data, Gurry said. "The higher the limit is, the more likely that the service can be used for spam, so we found that 99 percent of Hotmail users would find this new limit perfectly acceptable," she said.
Imposing rate limits on e-mail usage is fairly common among Internet service providers as a way to stop bulk messages before they"re ferried on their networks, anti-spam advocates say. But as effective as it can be to trip up potential spammers, it can also occasionally frustrate legitimate mailers who may be sending, for example, a party invitation or political message to friends. Other Web-based mail services including Yahoo also have outbound rate limits.
MSN has been on a tear of late fighting junk mail, as the amount of it bogging down e-mail networks and subscriber inboxes has grown to outlandish proportions. (ISPs estimate that it has risen by more than 500 percent in the past 18 months.) The company, which has nearly 120 million e-mail customers through its Hotmail and MSN Internet services, has bolstered internal tactics to thwart spam in recent months above and beyond employing third-party software to filter junk. These include operating an internal "blocklist" of known spammers whose mail should be barred from customer in-boxes.