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The INQ 4-step shafting plan for owners of free email services
The Inquirer ^ | 07-04-2002 | Paul Hales

Posted on 07/04/2002 3:55:42 PM PDT by JameRetief

The INQ 4-step shafting plan for owners of free email services

The Daily Hotmail

By Paul Hales: Thursday 04 July 2002, 18:56

LET'S SAY YOU RUN a nice, free email service, that, mainly because it free and easy, is also stunningly popular. You may have acquired the service by buying it off someone, for instance. And, of course, to keep the users happy you'd have promised to keep the site free. Which you do.

Anyhow, time goes by. You see all these folk coming and going on your site. You flog some adverts to bring in some money, but all these folk coming and going for nothing starts to grate. But how do you get round that pledge to keep the service free?

Try this:

Step one Make users drop in once every thirty days to weed out the time-wasters.

Step two Limit the size of the free space allocated to users.

Step three Make users' addresses available to other users -- particularly useful to spammers. You know spammers will jump at the chance to bombard your users with junk mail that will rapidly eat up their free space. This step might be dodgy because of your own privacy pledges, so do it sneakily. Like, stick some buttons on the site somewhere that users have to unclick to avoid the spam attack. If you don't tell them they're there, they may not notice...

Step four Drop this in their inboxes. Say, on the eve of July 4th:

If you’re taking a holiday this summer, you’re probably going to stop your newspaper delivery and make sure your mailbox doesn’t overflow. But don’t forget there are also a few things you need to do to safeguard your e-mail account while you’re away.

First, you must log in at least once every 30 days. If you don’t, your account will be deemed inactive and closed, and all your messages and contacts will be deleted.

Second, don’t let your account go over the 2MB storage limit. Inboxes have a way of filling up fast, so be sure to check every so often and delete unwanted or large messages. If you don’t, the Hotmail Janitor will randomly delete messages until your account is reduced to 2MB. You can avoid the potential pitfalls of leaving your account unattended by signing up for MSN Extra Storage. For only £19.99 a year, you can take a holiday from your e-mail account, and know that all your messages will be there when you get back.

That should scare the poor, unfortunate, cheapskate fools that think you can get something for nothing in this world and add to your swollen coffers. Cough up, you parasites!! µ

Previous editions
Hotmail dirty tricks slammed by readers
Microsoft shares Hotmail users data without asking
Microsoft moves to further limit Hotmail
INQ readers up in arms over Hotmail
"Free" Hotmail virtually unusable
User bombarded by Hotmail spam



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: email; microsoft; reversal; spam

1 posted on 07/04/2002 3:55:42 PM PDT by JameRetief
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To: JameRetief
Even with the junk mail setting on high I was still getting bombarded with 50 or more spam mails a week. I finally put it on exclusive and everything goes to the junk folder except for those addresses I allow in. Works great now.

2 posted on 07/04/2002 4:12:17 PM PDT by Reaganwuzthebest
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To: Reaganwuzthebest
...and it's free.
3 posted on 07/04/2002 5:07:49 PM PDT by dr_who
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To: dr_who
I have had a GTE/Verizon hookup for about 4 years and I probably get an average of 30 junk mails per day. The longer you have an account the more spam you are gonna get.

If you have a website with your email on it the robots will grab it and spread it all over hell.

The wife has a hotmail account and loves it. She filters most of the junk and what does come through is virus-checked.

4 posted on 07/04/2002 5:20:07 PM PDT by Howie
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To: Howie
I have had a GTE/Verizon hookup for about 4 years and I probably get an average of 30 junk mails per day. The longer you have an account the more spam you are gonna get.

Not quite. Maybe I'll see an increase in spam later on, but after a little over a year with Verizon, I've hardly gotten any. It helps if you don't leave your email address lying around on webboard posts and leave the little "user gives freelunch.com permission to sell his address to every spammer in the country" checkmarks enabled. When I was using Mindspring/Dirtlink, spam was more of a problem.
5 posted on 07/04/2002 5:33:43 PM PDT by dr_who
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To: JameRetief
So what's the gripe here? If you don't like it don't use it- it's not as though you paid up front and didn't get service. Ever notice how the media make the most noise over consumer "crises" that are easy to avoid? Sheesh.
6 posted on 07/04/2002 6:41:22 PM PDT by Squawk 8888
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To: JameRetief
bookBUMP
7 posted on 07/04/2002 7:20:17 PM PDT by S.O.S121.500
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To: JameRetief
If you want a good, free email service, try http://www.myrealbox.com . It's run by Novell, mostly as a demo/testbed of their NIMS/NetMail systems. They do NOT make your address publicly available, and you might want to carefully read the agreement, as they want NOTHING to do with SPAM, either sending or receiving, it.

Mark
8 posted on 07/04/2002 7:38:24 PM PDT by MarkL
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