I’ve got an old Hotmail account I’ve had since about '95. I don’t use it much; just go in every couple of days and clear out a bunch of spam, and occasionally an e-mail from someone I haven’t heard from in a while.
So today I was poking around in there, and went to look in the “sent messages” folder; I had some old e-mails I wanted to re-read.
Or I THOUGHT I did! The sent folder is empty, displaying a notice that “messages will be automatically deleted from this folder after 30 days.” Sonofabitch! I am certain this was not the case before; I used to have a LOT of old messages saved from back when this was my primary e-mail account (in those carefree, pre-spam days).
And why am I getting so much spam in the account (up to 20-30 a day even with Junk Mail Filter activated)? Well, it might have something to do with my profile having “share my e-mail address with other companies” enabled! I guarantee I did NOT choose to do that; maybe when the feature was added (or when MSN bought Hotmail) everyone was set that way by default? No telling.
So I’ve lost a bunch of old messages that I would really like to have kept, and my e-mail is on a bunch of mailing lists of people who want to increase my bust/penis size, get me rich in three days, show me women who like to have sex with animals, and otherwise pollute my life with the outpourings of their undiapered minds.
I’ve changed my settings now, but I strongly doubt the spam-flood is going to stop. :mad:
Actually, Hotmail did send out warnings ahead of time that they would be starting this policy. A lot of times, those “Hotmail Member Services” mails aren’t worth reading, but that one was.
I think that setting was implemented when Microsoft bought Hotmail, but I don’t recall correctly. New accounts have the option to select or not select that, however, and I think the default is to not share it for them.
yeah, kind of a bummer that it changed like that. They want to sell MSN memberships bad, I get that e-mail about every other day. Of course, you can always create a “save this” folder to put your old stuff in. Until it fills up. Seems like we had a lot more storage before.
You know, I got spam in that account one time from someone who had opened a hotmail account with the address “Hotmail_Member_Services” with a bunch of digits after it. Because the name was too long to display, the digits didn’t show, and because it was linked, the underscores didn’t show either. Click! “FREE BEAST PORN NOW!!! XXX!!!” Etc. Ick.
I think that’s the last time I read an “important annocement.” Probably should have. Ah well.
You know, I got spam in that account one time from someone who had opened a hotmail account with the address “Hotmail_Member_Services” with a bunch of digits after it. Because the name was too long to display, the digits didn’t show, and because it was linked, the underscores didn’t show either. Click! “FREE BEAST PORN NOW!!! XXX!!!” Etc. Ick.
I think that’s the last time I read an “important announcement.” Probably should have. Ah well.
I was pissed off to find my hotmail account deactivated and all of my messages deleted after only 30 days of not checking my email. All new emails were being bounced back to their senders.
What kind of shit is that? What if I went on a month-long vacation only to come back and find important emails deleted?
Why the hell should I upgrade to the pay service because I access my mail infrequently? Bah. I think I’m going to give up hotmail for good and just use yahoo or any of the dozens of other free services.
Mind you, they do warn you about that during the sign-up process, and not buried in small type either. If you’re gone for a month, you probably need to find a library or internet kiosk two months into it and log in once - or get what you pay for, and get a pay service instead.
The problem that neutron star had was that it used to be eitehr 60 or 90 days (I forget which) before they shut down the account. And I don’t recall ever getting notice that the time period was changing, either.
That’s another bonus from evilemail–they will send a notice to whatever you enter as your alternate email to let you know that your account’s nearing it’s expiration date.
