Hotmail Users Beware

And for more than just the usual reasons of getting your mail delivered through the evil empire. This time, they’re deleting your mail without warning as ZDNet point out in Microsoft begins to clean out Hotmail “[a]s part of a series of new storage policies aimed at driving more people toward its paid services”.

So, in addition to Microsoft changing their privacy policy every couple of weeks by adding some extra vendor-sharing checkboxes to their preferences, then selecting them as ‘on’ by default, now they reserve the right to delete email from your mailbox as well. Amazingly, this is being done as a service for customers, as “MSN product manager Parul Shah” says:

“… the deletion of old sent messages is part of Microsoft’s plan to help people manage their e-mail, adding the company figured “if it’s 30 days or older, it’s probably safe to go ahead and delete that.”

But then, he/she goes on to say that “Shah said the easiest way to ensure that messages are saved is to create special folders and move the messages out of the sent file.” So, the same users that need ‘help’ deleting their email are the same ones who know or are able to figure out how to create new folders and move email around.

Unfortunately for many people, they just don’t get it and continue to think they can get something for nothing. If you’re using the Yahoo service, that appears to be true. If you’re still using hotmail (and millions are), you get what you pay for. They have the most bugs, viruses, junk mail and server outages…and now they even delete mail for you even if you’re not over the storage limit. Basically, they’re making their free service horrible in order to drive you to their paid service. It’s a strange way of attracting business in a world with free services that function just as well as their paid services, but the amazing thing is that it works.