Hotmail’s SmartScreen Helps Dealing with Graymail

Recently, Microsoft announced that there was a new Hotmail available for its users to enjoy, packing great, appealing features.

One of these is the Microsoft SmartScreen, included into the mix in an attempt to make the sorting of newsletters an easier task.

“Since newsletters account for more than a quarter of all the mail in a typical inbox, having them automatically categorized is a big time-saver,” Dick Craddock, group program manager Hotmail, explains.

According to him, SmartScreen was designed to identify spam and specific kinds of graymail, newsletters. With it, users will be able to better stop spam and manage graymail.

The enhancements applied to the service helped the team reduce the level of spam from 30 percent to only 3 percent, Craddock explains.

“When inbox spam was at 30%, our job was really clear—our enemy, clever as he remains, was impossible to miss. We made huge investments in SmartScreen and reduced spam to historic lows of less than 3%,” he notes.

However, spam was only one aspect that needed attention. Graymail was also there, and the team had to take care of that as well.

However, while it is easy to set spam filters and identify person-to-person email, “there is no general agreement on how to deal with graymail,” Craddock notes.

“We believe the solution lies in delivering features that enable you to manage your graymail. With that in mind we introduced powerful new tools, including Sweep, Scheduled Cleanup, special views of the inbox, and other enhancements to put you in charge,” he explains.

Thus, they decided to train SmartScreen to identify social networking updates, and also set it up to recognize newsletters, since they are different from notifications (though they still come in large numbers sometime).

The filter is now out and delivers great results, testing has shown. Moreover, the development team is looking forth to add new functionality into the mix.

“We’re investigating ways to more effectively present and manage email-based receipts, bank statements, and more. We hope the newsletter filter can be a helpful tool in your own war on graymail,” Craddock concludes.