14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's MSN Hotmail service is taking very seriously measures against spam. Microsoft unveiled on Friday a new service named MSN Postmaster which is going to act as a clearinghouse for e-mail information.
The MSN Postmaster service is dedicated to ISPs and bulk mailers and it offers detailed information on email sent to its Hotmail accounts through its Smart Network Data Services monitoring.
"MSN Postmaster and Smart Data Network Services represent a move by Microsoft toward broader, more-comprehensive and transparent information-sharing with ISPs and e-mail senders to help protect e-mail and ensure that it continues to be an essential and valuable communications tool," said Kevin Doerr, product unit manager for MSN Hotmail at Microsoft.
Practically, ISP's can now check a range of IP addresses with the new service to determine the amount of mail coming from one location. This is done by measuring the amount of spam that the IP address sends to Hotmail accounts.
Hotmail stops about three billion spams a day and has over 200 million active users, Microsoft says. This gives it a unique insight into what types and volumes of spam are being sent to consumers. ISPs now will get access to a slice of that data.
Microsoft is also implementing its Sender ID authentication protocols within Hotmail, to verify the origin of email and weed out phishing campaigns.