# What happened to Hotmail? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 19, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264 "2010-11-19T20:55:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Cugel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cugel/32/1199_2.png) [@Cugel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cugel)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264/61 "2010-11-24T06:07:54Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I alrady get almost no spam in my Hotmail; it’s very rare. Been like that for some time, I even have mine set on low. I think someone upthread mentioned hotmail’s spam filters are too aggressive, if anything. Anyway, when an email shows up in in Thunderbird doesn’t matter if comes from hotmail, gmail, yahoo, bunn, wacket or stubble etc., they all look the same. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264/62 "2010-11-24T06:24:18Z")
Hell, I still have an AOL addy. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264/63 "2010-11-24T07:51:17Z")
> [@Cugel](#): > > Been like that for some time, I even have mine set on low. I think someone upthread mentioned hotmail’s spam filters are too aggressive, if anything. > > Anyway, when an email shows up in in Thunderbird doesn’t matter if comes from hotmail, gmail, yahoo, bunn, wacket or stubble etc., they all look the same. All I know is that people with hotmail are the only people I’ve ever had who didn’t get my emails when I sent them. No other provider has ever marked my emails as spam. What’s funny is that I finally have a hotmail again, and it’s for one reason: Google wouldn’t let me have the name I wanted, even though it reports that it is not in use. (I do use it on YouTube, so I wonder it that may be it.) Since I was creating a new email account to give out online (so I’m not always giving out my full name), I knew it needed to be a popular provider. I also wanted to check it from my Gmail box, so I couldn’t use Yahoo, since they don’t have POP/SMTP support unless you pay. So I chose Hotmail. My plan was to disable the Junk folder and let Gmail handle that, but the stupid thing won’t let me. I wish I’d noticed before I started making it my default email address. But I can’t think of another popular email provider, and am hoping that the GMail people will eventually get back to me on why I can’t use an account name that is reported as available. (In fact, it’s so unique that I have never encountered a place where it wasn’t available, except at one where I already registered. People don’t tend to use names that have no vowels.) ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264/64 "2010-11-24T11:16:56Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > According to [Compete](http://blog.compete.com/2010/11/11/gmails-buzz-much-bigger-than-its-bite/), unique, active Hotmail users in September 2010 were 48.5 million, versus 25.1 million for Gmail. Yahoo is still number one at 72.8 million. How do they measure “unique” and “active”, though? I’ve got like a dozen yahoo accounts, most of which are either throwaways or created to block my name, and the other one is what I have to use when I need to join a yahoo group. Every time I join another group, I have to start by going through my gmail inbox looking for the damn yahoo login 😛 ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2010, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264/65 "2010-11-24T17:02:33Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > I had to give up my 12 year-old hotmail account because of spoofing. I was getting scores of replies a day to messages that I didn’t send. There didn’t seem to be any way of fixing it from my end, so I just decided to close it down. Same here. Got hacked four times in six months, very embarrassing. I had that account for over ten years. Bummer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-hotmail/561264.md?page=3)