Microsoft to squeeze ISPs over Hotmail spam

Posted on 27 May 2005 at 17:13

Microsoft's MSN Hotmail service has made a suite of tools available to ISPs to help them identify spam traffic carried on their networks.

The MSN Postmaster website offers detailed information on email sent to its Hotmail accounts through its Smart Network Data Services monitoring.

An ISP can check its range of IP addresses with the service and find out how much mail it sends to Hotmail, how much is eaten by Microsoft's own anti-spam technologies and identify sources of spam and bulk mailing so that network owners can decide on what action to take.

Microsoft is also implementing its Sender ID authentication protocols within Hotmail, to verify the origin of email and weed out phishing campaigns. However, Sender ID has been a controversial topic, because while Redmond is keen to have it adopted as a global standard, it also has patent protection over certain areas which it is unwilling to fully open up in a way that software sold under an open-source licence can use. Given that something like three quarters of email servers run such software, it remains a sensitive subject.

Still, Microsoft says it fields roughly 3 billion spam emails a day, so it has pretty sophisticated filters of its own already in place. Its SmartScreen technology analyses email for various characteristics before deciding how likely it is that mail is junk. It also uses Brightmail antispam products and allows Hotmail users to set their own filters. Additionally it uses a system from Return Path to check whether the email sender is a Bonded Sender: essentially a white list of senders that conform to certain standards and have a respectable history.

Certainly the black list and white list strategy is something championed by UK antispam experts Spamhaus. It puts the spam ratio at about three quarters of email traffic, but claims that using its lists, it is possible to stop the vast majority of spam before it even hits servers and has to undergo resource-hungry filtering checks. It says UK ISP uxn.com achieved a catch rate of 299 out of every 300 spams (99.6%) with zero false positives.

Hopefully, Microsoft's Postmaster services will not only allow ISPs to see the amount of junk on their network but will also put pressure on them to clean up their act - even with the basic solution described by Spamhaus.

'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. 'With over 200 million active e-mail accounts worldwide, MSN Hotmail is in a unique position to collect and analyze e-mail activity data. Working together, MSN Hotmail and service providers can make their customers happier and more satisfied with the services we all provide.'

More information is available at the Microsoft website. Spamhaus is at www.spamhaus.org.

Author: Matt Whipp