gHacks technology news » hotmail

Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail Comparison

Martin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:20:08 +0000

Have you ever asked yourself how you did end up with the email account that you are currently using? Chance is that you have at least one account at one of the three most popular web based email service providers Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Hotmail.

This question might have become insignificant in recent years as all three email providers have started to follow suite if one of them raised a limit or introduced a new service. But not everything is equal and some email users might be surprised if they take a look at the differences between these email providers.

Did you for instance know that a free Yahoo Mail account expires after four months of inactivity but is the only one to offer free unlimited storage space?

Gmail on the other hand is the only email service that is not expiring the account after a certain time of inactivity. It is on the other hand the email service that is offering the least amount of free storage space if you take Microsoft by the word that they increase the Windows Live Hotmail storage space automatically if the limit of 5000 Megabytes is reached.

Take a look at the following chart to see how the three email providers compare.

The chart should be up to date. If you spot an error let me know and I fix it asap.

Back to the original question: Which email provider are you using primarily and why? Here is my answer..

I mainly use email accounts that have been created for my web projects. I also use a Gmail account; Primarily because it is linked to other Google services that I need to use. I do have a Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail account but I barely use them. Mostly for services that require such an account.

Tags: email comparison, email provider, gmail, google-mail, hotmail, windows live hotmail, yahoo mail

Hotmail Login

Martin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:28:01 +0000

We are continuing our login problems series with an article on Hotmail login problems. You can read previous login related articles by visiting the posts Facebook Login or Yahoo Mail Login. Hotmail is an online email service by Microsoft, which – like other email services – can be accessed from a website but also from a desktop email client. The standard Hotmail login page is located at Hotmail.com which will redirect the web browser to a Windows Live Login page.

The Hotmail user can then log into Hotmail using the Windows Live ID or the Hotmail username and password that were selected during setup of the email service. The Hotmail username is usually the Hotmail email address.

The website contains an option to restore the Hotmail password if it cannot be entered correctly. There are two options to reset the password. The first is to use location information and the secret answer to the question to reset the password, the second to send password reset instructions to email. The second option obviously makes only sense if the email account can still be accessed.

Microsoft has created a help file that tries to help Hotmail users who cannot sign in to the service:

If you can’t sign in to a website or service with your Windows Live ID (The e-mail address and password that you use to sign in to Windows Live programs and services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger; Microsoft services such as Xbox LIVE, MSN, and Office Live; and anywhere else that you see the Windows Live ID logo.) , try the following:

* Make sure that you typed your password correctly. Passwords are case sensitive (Capable of distinguishing between uppercase [capital] and lowercase [small] letters. For example, A is different from a. If information is case sensitive, it must be typed with the required capitalization.) . If you’ve forgotten your password, try to reset it. For more information, see Reset your password.
* Make sure that your Caps Lock isn’t on.
* Make sure that the correct domain (A group of computers and devices on a network that are administered with common rules and procedures. The domain name is the part of your e-mail address after the @ sign, such as hotmail.com.) name is typed in the Windows Live ID box.
* Check that the Windows Live network isn’t temporarily out of service.
* Check that the website or service that you want to sign in to has the Windows Live symbol.

There are two options for users who want to avoid login difficulties in the future. The first option is to configure Hotmail in a desktop email software. Those usually work even if the Hotmail website is temporarily not accessible. The other option is to use a password manager like Last Pass which can remember the username and password and log in the user automatically whenever the Hotmail page is opened.

Tags: hotmail, hotmail login, login, windows live, windows live login

Leaked Hotmail Password Data Analysis

Martin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:25:37 +0000

Remember back then when AOL decided to provide downloads of an anonymized snapshot of their search engine logs? One of the first things that Internet Marketers did was to analyze the data to see what users where looking for. Groups focused on privacy would analyse the data to see if it was possible to identify single users from the data that was offered by AOL.

Security analyst Bogdan Calin from Acunetix performed a similar analysis on the leaked Hotmail data. He performed an initial analysis and clean up of the data which consisted of 10,028 entries and started a detailed analysis of the remaining 9843 passwords of which 90% were unique.

3,713 = 42 %; lower alpha passwords : passwords containing only characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’. Example : iloveyou

291 = 3 %; mixed case alpha passwords : passwords containing characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’ and from ‘A’ to ‘Z’. Example: ILoveYou

1707 = 19 %; numeric passwords: passwords containing only numbers (’0′ to ‘9′). Example: 123456

2655 = 30 %; mixed alpha and numeric passwords: passwords containing characters from ‘a’-’z’, ‘A’-’Z’ and ‘0′-’9′. Example: Iloveyou12

565 = 6 %; mixed alpha + numeric + other characters. Example: 1Love You$%@

The shortest password in the list was made up of one character while the longest used 30 of them. The average length was eight characters with 42% of all users using a password that only consisted of lower case characters from a to z and an additional 19% of all users using a password with numeric values only.The most common used password was 123456 followed by 123456789.

Calin thinks that the passwords have been gathered using various phishing kits. It is also likely that the attack was aimed at the “latino” community which he concluded from the passwords entered by the users. You can find the full report at the Acunetix website.

Verdict: It is interesting that that many users are still using weak passwords for important accounts like web email accounts. But then again, a good password does not help at all if the user enters it in the wrong place for attackers to see.

Tags: Email, hotmail, hotmail passwords, hotmail phishing

Hotmail Phishing Attack: Time To Change Passwords

Martin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:26:30 +0000

Microsoft has recently confirmed that thousands of Windows Live Hotmail customer’s credentials were exposed on a third party website. According to Neowin the account information were posted by an anonymous user at the pastebin website. The list that was posted contained over 10.000 account details of accounts starting with the letters A and B which suggests that additional lists might be in the hands of the attackers. Initial investigations suggest that only accounts used to access Windows Live Hotmail were affected (which includes email accounts ending with hotmail.com, msn.com or live.com.

Microsoft determined that the attack was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and believes that the account data was gained by a phishing attack. Phishing attacks are common ways these days to lure users into entering their account data on websites that look like the real deal but are not.

Hotmail users are encouraged to immediately change their account password to protect the account from unauthorized access. It is furthermore recommended to change the account password on other websites if the same password was used for accounts there as well.

A good tool that can help users create and use secure passwords is the Last Pass extension which is available for Firefox,Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

Tags: hotmail, hotmail phishing, last pass, msn, phishing, windows live

Gmail Enables Mail And Contact Import For All Gmail Accounts

Martin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:22:30 +0000

The option to import mail and contacts from other email accounts into a newly created Gmail account was enabled a few month ago. Long time Gmail users on the other hand were not able to use the email import option back then. Google today enabled the email and contact import feature for all Gmail accounts. Gmail users who want to import emails and contacts from other webmail and pop3 email services can do so by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of the Gmail interface after logging in.

This will open the general settings window. A click on the Accounts and Import tab will display an Import Mails and Contacts button. Pressing this button will initiate the process. Gmail will ask for the email address and password during configuration.

The following email providers are supported by Gmail:

* aol.com
* aol.fr
* clear.net.nz
* cox.net
* comcast.net
* cs.com
* earthlink.net
* freenet.de
* freeserve.co.uk
* gmx.at
* gmx.ch
* gmx.de
* gmx.net
* hotmail.com
* hotmail.co.uk
* hotmail.de
* hotmail.fr
* Ihug.co.nz
* juno.com
* laposte.net
* live.com
* mail.ru
* msn.com
* netscape.com
* netzero.com
* neuf.fr
* optonline.net
* optusnet.com.au
* orange.fr
* orangehome.co.uk
* orcon.net.nz
* paradise.net.nz
* rr.com
* slingshot.co.nz
* sprint.ca
* sympatico.ca
* tiscali.co.uk
* verizon.net
* voila.fr
* wanadoo.co.uk
* wanadoo.fr
* web.de
* worldnet.att.net
* yahoo.com
* yahoo.co.uk
* yahoo.co.in
* yandex.ru

The import of the data usually takes about a week. It does depend largely on the amount of emails and contacts in the other email account.

Tags: Email, email import, gmail, gmail email, gmail import, gmx, google-mail, hotmail, yahoo mail

Gmail Adds Email Import

Martin — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:33:12 +0000

One of the things that many users like about Google’s email service Gmail is that the service is constantly advancing. Users get to test tools in Gmail Labs all the time and new features are added regularly. One of the new features is the ability to import emails from other popular email providers such as Yahoo Mail, Windows Live or AOL but also POP3 accounts. There have been workarounds to accomplish that like the excellent gExodus email importer for the Windows operating system which allowed users to easily import mailboxes into Gmail. The new email import feature is not yet available for all Gmail accounts but will be added to all of them over time. New Gmail accounts on the other hand do have the email import feature enabled already.

Interested users find the email import option in the Gmail account settings. The second link is displaying as Accounts for users who have not had this new email import feature enabled and as Accounts and Import for those who have.

Gmail users have to provide account login data of the email service that they want to import into Gmail. Options that are provided allow the user to import emails and contacts, add a label to all imported mails and to enable email imports for the next 30 days.

Being able to import emails into Gmail is another feature of Gmail that is poised to become popular as soon as it is activated for most Gmail accounts.

Tags: aol, Email, gmail, gmail import, google-mail, hotmail, pop3, windows live, yahoo mail

Hotmail POP3 Configuration

Martin — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:08:40 +0000

Microsoft has finally enabled POP3 email access for all users of their Hotmail email service. This essentially means that it is now possible to configure desktop email clients to access Hotmail to retrieve and send emails using the email provider. We already mentioned how to configure Hotmail POP3 but in a slightly different context as the article back then concentrated on providing information on how to enable POP3 access for all countries.

Here are the information that have to be entered into the desktop email software so that Hotmail can be accessed:

Incoming Server: pop3.live.com
Incoming Port: 995
SSL Encryption: yes
Outgoing Server: smtp.live.com
Outgoing port: 25 (use port 587 if the default port is not working)
Authentication: yes
TLS Or SSL: yes

Please note that the names might differ depending on the desktop email client in use. The values on the other hand do not change. The username (usually the Windows Live Hotmail email address) and password are the same that are used when logging into the Hotmail website using a web browser.

There is no need for configuration of POP3 on the Hotmail website. This is a difference to how Gmail is handling external access as it has to be explicitly activated in the email web interface before it is possible to access a Gmail account using POP3 or SMTP.

Tags: Email, hotmail, hotmail desktop email, hotmail email, hotmail outlook, hotmail pop3, hotmail pop3 access, hotmail smtp, hotmail thunderbird, microsoft, microsoft email

Truemark Email Identification

Martin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:35:33 +0000

Inexperienced users and even some experienced users have troubles identifying fake emails from legit ones. It is sometimes hard to tell if the email that just arrived in your mail inbox came from a legit company like eBay, Amazon or Citibank or if it is just another phishing attempt. There are some basic guidelines that help identify phishing emails. They are not that hard to learn, read our anti-phishing tips for pointers. Many inexperienced computer users think that it’s complicated, they prefer an easier way of telling if an email is legit or not.

Enter Truemark by Iconix. Truemark uses authentication techniques to identify more than 1500 different company email addresses including the three companies in the example above. It is backed by some of the most popular shopping and financial websites on the Internet which makes it attractive for many users. Even better is the fact that the software is free to use and compatible to several popular email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Aol Webmail but also Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Another advantage of Truemark is that is it working in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox which should cover more almost 90% of the web browser market. The installation of the software will install a Browser Helper Object in Internet Explorer and an add-on in Firefox.

Truemark will automatically scan the emails in the mail inbox if the user opens a supported email client or web email client. It will display a verification icon next to the email to notify the user that the email is legit.

Moving the mouse over the icon will show an overlay with additional information about the sender and if the sender passed both identification and authentication.

Tags: aol, Email, email certificates, email security, gmail, hotmail, iconix, microsoft outlook, outlook, phishing, Security, truemark, yahoo

Enable Hotmail POP3 In All Countries

Martin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:44:59 +0000

Microsoft has announced a change to the Hotmail email provider service that they offer. The feature to access Hotmail accounts using a POP3 connection will be gradually enabled for all Hotmail accounts. Gradually meaning that only users from some countries like Germany, Italy or the United Kingdom are currently able to connect to Hotmail via POP3 while others have to wait until Microsoft enables POP3 access for their countries as well.

There his however a simple method to enable POP3 access in Hotmail right away independently from where you are accessing Hotmail. Microsoft is checking the location stored in the Hotmail account to determine if a account should have POP3 access. All that needs to be done to enable both POP3 is therefor to change that location in the Hotmail account profile.

To do that select More Options by hovering the mouse over Options in Hotmail. Select View and edit your personal information in Manage your account and click on Registered Information. Information about the location should appear. Edit those information so that they are in a country that currently supports Hotmail POP3. You can later change it back if POP3 support is added for your country as well.

One easy way to find an address is to search for hotels in London using a search engine and copy their information into Hotmail. Make sure you change the postal code, timezone and country in the menu. You can for instance use that postal code for London: SW1V 4BN

Now that you have enabled POP3 access you need to configure your email client to access Hotmail this way.

Incoming Server: pop3.live.com
Incoming Port: 995
SSL Encryption: yes

Outgoing Server: smtp.live.com
outgoing port: 25
Authentication: yes
TLS Or SSL: yes

The username and password are the same that are used to log into the Hotmail site

Tags: email provider, hotmail, hotmail pop3, hotmail smtp, pop3, windows live, windows live pop3, windows live smtp

Transfer all Hotmail Mails to another software

Martin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:31:45 +0000

If you still have an old Hotmail account that you use regularly you might be relieved to know that there is a way to update or move all of the mails from that account into another software. Well, another software is not the right term, you can move them into Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 and from there into any other mail account such as Gmail, Thunderbird or Yahoo Mail.

The first step would be to download a software called Microsoft Office Outlook Connector from Microsoft. This download is only possible for genuine Microsoft Office users.
Outlook Connector does not require lots of configuration, just enter your username and password and you are ready to go.

All folders and mails will be downloaded from Hotmail and you can either import those into another email program like Thunderbird if you like or import the Outlook pst file into online webmailers such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

via Digital Inspiration

Tags: Email, hotmail, outlook

Get Notified in Firefox about new mail

Martin — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:55:59 +0000

I don’t keep Thunderbird, my email client, open all the time and don’t like to visit websites of webmail accounts as well. It is a pain in the *** to visit gmail, hotmail or yahoo mail to see if there is new mail in the inbox. I was using the gmail firefox extension to get a notification if new mail did arrive.

Mailman is a firefox extension that is able to get that information from gmail, hotmail, yahoo and pop3. Mailman adds itself to a toolbar and displays a message if new mail did arrive. You will have to add your login details to the extension to be able to do so. I do understand that this raises security concerns but this is the trade off.

Mailman has some additional nice features. Once you see that new mail did arrive you may click on the link and will be directly taken to the mail account using an auto-login feature. Right, you do not need to login a second time. You may define the update frequency and add sound alerts if you like. (I would never use sound alerts because I would hear a constant sound then, with all the spam that is flodding my mail boxes.

It also offers a search function to search your accounts from within firefox. Some users seemed to have problems with hotmail. I do not have a hotmail account, maybe someone else could verify if problems exist ?

Tags: firefox, firefox-extensions, gmail, hotmail, mail, mozilla, pop3, thunderbird, yahoo

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