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Hotmail Gets Antivirus Protection

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

July 14, 2004, 10:21 AM

Microsoft has rolled out the first of its initiatives to fend off recent competition from rival e-mail services, offering Hotmail users free antivirus protection. "By using MSN Hotmail, you have the only free global e-mail service to both scan and clean incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses and worms," Microsoft wrote to customers. The company will announce additional Hotmail upgrades in the coming weeks, including increased e-mail storage as a response to moves by Yahoo! and Google.

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By wormeyman

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 11:01 AM

I though they always had anti virus?? wouldn't it make more sense to have it as you would save bandiwdth by not sening viruses?

Score: 0

By efraincgarcia

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 1:09 PM

It's probably going to scan the actual emails. I know it scans attachments. Perhaps it will scan HTML's for malacious scripts.

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 11:03 AM

I agree. WHat free e-mail service out there also doesn't have antivirus? It's pennies for them to implement, and they've all been doing it for at least three years.

AV is to protect hotmail more than the individual customer.

Score: 0

By madda

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 11:11 AM

maybe microsofts version is more integrated, and detects more viruses than other vendors virus detection!

Score: 0

By rseiler

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 2:10 PM

Does anyone know specifically what AV Hotmail had before? Surely they had *someting* in this area, whether it was just incoming and not outgoing, or whatever. It's not possible that the system was completely wide open.

Score: 0

By _jaz_

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 2:22 PM

They had the same antivirus as they have now (McAFee).
The difference is that before, it just was scanning incoming attachments and telling the user if they had viruses or not.

What it does now is Scanning *and cleanning* both, incoming and outgoing mails.

It's not a big move, but it might help diminishing the big advance of auto-sent mail viruses.

Score: 0

By madda

posted Jul 15, 2004 - 6:21 AM

dont think autosent mail viruses are a problem as they cannot auto send to a webmail client, that woud involve too many through connections between too many programs! the only way it could work is if you are checking your hotmail account through Outlook or Outlook Expres or something like that!

Score: 0

By mjm01010101

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 7:12 PM

How is a webmail service going to clean a local client trying to post a virus? activex? scary stuff.

Score: 0

By hehon

posted Jul 14, 2004 - 10:12 PM

It's misleading advertising. Hotmail has had anti virus email scanning for over 2 years. It's a cheap ploy to try to get users to use Hotmail over other email providers.

Score: 0

By John_D

posted Jul 15, 2004 - 3:46 PM

If i am correct...the older A/V that MS was using was only scanning when you attempted to open/download an attachment to your system. Otherwise there was no incomming/outgoing protection on the Hotmail service ( unless it was internal and invisible).

Or maybe im wrong :P

Score: 0

By hehon

posted Jul 17, 2004 - 2:34 PM

That's the only thing that is important. If the user doesn't download the attachment, theres no possible payload.

Score: 0

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