More Spam For Hotmail Users? New Users Unintentionally Expose Their Addresses Byron Alley
February 8, 2001 - New Hotmail users may be unintentionally opening themselves up to receive more spam when they first create a Hotmail account. Hotmail has a feature which will add the new user's email address to the InfoSpace's Internet White Pages email directory--unless the user specifically opts out by unchecking a checkbox.
Spammers roam the Internet looking for new email addresses to add to their unsolicited commercial email lists. Large lists of email addresses, such the White Pages, bulletin boards, or other locations in which email addresses are posted, tend to feed addresses back to the spammers' lists.
InfoSpace's Internet White Pages take a step in the right direction by preventing visitors from seeing a user's actual email address. Instead it offers a form from which the person in question can be contacted. However, there are a few ways around this and a user with a Hotmail account will be able to see the addresses.
Spam is a problem for all email users, and while Hotmail attempts to block some of the unsolicited email, not all of it can be stopped. Some users have found that, after some time, spam becomes such a problem that they are forced to close the old account and open a new one--this time, opting out of the White Pages listing.
