I kept my account open because various website registrations were still linked to that account, but I’ve seen nothing to tempt me back into regular use. Quite the opposite in fact. In the past few months alone, both a colleague at work and my girlfriend have had their Hotmail accounts hijacked and used to send malicious links to everyone in their address book.  Microsoft insists this problem is industry-wide, but I’ve never seen a Gmail account hacked in such a manner.

Microsoft knows this is a serious problem: today it’s announced a series of “upgrades” to Hotmail’s security… that don’t go anywhere near far enough, in my opinion.

Why not force people to change their Hotmail password, say, every six months? “That’s not something we plan to enforce,” said Fyfe, without offering any explanation as to why not.

Microsoft claims the main reason people like my girlfriend have their accounts hacked is because they never change their relatively insecure password. “Eighty percent of attacks on compromised accounts come from people who’ve had their password guessed or phished,” Hotmail product manager, Fiona Fyfe, told me, before confessing that: “until recently, I hadn’t changed my password for over a decade”.

So, if even Hotmail product managers don’t follow best security practice, how’s it going to convince customers to regularly change their password? “We’re going to be really proactive about promoting this,” said Fyfe, adding that customers will be prompted to beef up the strength of their password.

Why not force people to change their Hotmail password, say, every six months? “That’s not something we plan to enforce,” said Fyfe, without offering any explanation as to why not.

Likewise, Microsoft is following Gmail’s lead, by offering customers the chance to have their messages sent over a secure socket layer connections (HTTPS). Unlike Google, however, Microsoft won’t make this the default account setting – you’ll have to manually switch it on. What possible reason could Microsoft have for not switching on encryption for everyone? Microsoft promised to get back to me with a full answer to this question, when I was first briefed on these security measures on Thursday. I’m still waiting for an answer. (Update at 4pm, 28 Sep: Microsoft now claims SSL will eventually be turned on by default, but cannot give a specific timeframe.)

To be fair, Microsoft is introducing other measures that should make a difference. If the company spots your account was accessed in, say, Mexico City at 4:30am and Moscow at 5am, it will lock the account on the fairly safe assumption that you’ve not borrowed one of Branson’s spaceships and your account’s been hacked.

It’s also extending its rollout of single-use codes, for when you access your Hotmail at an internet café or other high-risk public PC. Instead of leaving yourself at the mercy of keystroke loggers installed on the PC, you can get a one-off code sent to your mobile phone, and sign-in with that instead.

That’s magnificent – but this naturally means entering your mobile phone number into Hotmail. And if someone does manage to break into your account, they’re going to get access to your mobile phone number too. Fyfe insists Microsoft will lock the account if it detects any suspicious activity and that nobody will be forced to hand over their mobile number, but admits there “is always a risk” hackers might get their hands on your phone number if they manage to crack your password.

“I would personally feel more comfortably putting my details into Microsoft property than other properties on the internet,” Fyfe argued. I can’t say that I agree.

Sign up for you Gmail account, click on “settings”, and head to the “accounts” tab.  There’s a section entitled “Get mail from other accounts” and you’ll want to click “Add a mail account you own”. Where you’ll be presented with the following lovely box.

In the “Username” type in your Hotmail email address. In the “Password ” box, your Hotmail password. In the “POP3 Server” box enter “pop3.live.com” without the quotation marks. Then set the Port to 995. You’ll also want to click “Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.” Then save the changes.

That’s it. Kick up your feet and wait for the emails to start trickling in. This bit can take a few hours depending on how much info gets pulled across, whereas sifting through all that mail and labelling it can take days, unless you select it all and press archive. My preferred option.

And just as a footnote, guess how much space my twelve years of emails took up in my new inbox. 38MB. Excellent, only 7,300MB left to go then.

The chances are that you will have heard of GMX, but the chances are that you also won’t have used its services. The press release I hold before me triumphantly claims that 100,000 UK users have now signed up to its free email service at gmx.co.uk – but that’s still a few shy of Google Mail.

So, the difference. Interestingly, the first line Robin Rudat, head of GMX’s Mail Services International, came out with was privacy: “We use the idea of a piece of mail. The subject line is free [to index], but the content is like a closed letter – we can’t access this.”

Essentially, GMX is out-do-no-evilling Google.

At present, there aren’t any adverts on the service, but of course it can’t go on like that forever: GMX is part of 1and1, which prefers in general to make money from its services. We will, apparently, see adverts appearing in the second half of this year (they’ll appear as banner ads at the top of the home page (where it currently says, “Welcome! Your Ultimate Choice for Webmail”).

Another interesting approach is a weekly development cycle. GMX claims it has a highly active community of people suggesting ideas. For example, when you drag and drop an email into another folder it previously didn’t open up any subfolders. Someone pointed this out and within a week the feature was made live.

There are lots of other nice features too. The way it can pull in all your webmail accounts (not just POP3 ones like the rest can, but non-POP3 ones too) and let you reply to them as if you were replying direct from that account; integrated file storage (you get 1GB for free), so that you can save attachments direct from an email; support for all the major browsers, including Safari.

It’s all nice and good, but is it going to be enough to pull people away from Hotmail and Google Mail?

I remain to be wholly convinced – especially as there’s still no IM integration and no wider package of office applications to tie into. One thing in its favour, though, is that because far fewer people have signed up for the service it’s more likely you’ll be able to get the email address you want.

If you’ve used GMX I’d be interested to know what you think about it, and also if you’re a current Hotmail or Google Mail user what would it take to move you away? Isn’t it enough, in the end, that it just works?