Mar 28, 2011 15:03 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has fixed the error that prevented Hotmail users in many countries from enabling the always-on HTTPS setting under their accounts.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), one of the most prominent digital rights watchdogs, revealed that Microsoft no longer allowed users in some countries to opt for permanent secure connections in Hotmail.

The EFF said people in Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, were being affected.

Enabling secure connections (HTTPS) for email access is critical in countries where the government controls national Internet gateways and can mount man-in-the-middle phishing attacks.

The issue was originally reported by a Syrian activist who tried to set always-on HTTPS in Hotmail and received an error that read "your Windows Live ID can't use HTTPS automatically because this feature is not available for your account type."

Following media coverage of the issue, Microsoft investigated and corrected it. In a support note posted on the Windows Live Solution Center, a company representative claims the feature wasn't disabled on purpose.

"Account security is a top priority for Hotmail and our support for HTTPS is worldwide – we do not intentionally limit support by region or geography and this issue was not restricted to any specific region of the world.  We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers that this may have caused," the note reads.

Although the list provided by EFF suggests a certain typology for affected countries, it might just be that the foundation tested the issue with the help of contacts from countries where the setting is particularly important.

Support for always-on or even default HTTPS has come a long way during the past year as more mainstream services like Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter and others adopted it.