Hotmail Goof Spooks MSN Subscribers

By Nate Mook | Published November 17, 2004, 9:14 PM

Microsoft is apologizing to MSN subscribers after accidentally sending them a test message with incomprehensible text that was meant to remain internal. Users encountered the notice after logging in to Hotmail following a system upgrade that boosted user storage space.

The seemingly random message worried some MSN users who feared their e-mail accounts may have been compromised, but Microsoft was quick to quell any speculation.

"This afternoon, some MSN subscribers signing in to Hotmail may have encountered a test page that was inadvertently posted to the service," a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews. "MSN has removed the page and Hotmail is functioning as usual. Anyone who encountered the page could click "continue" to go directly to their Hotmail inbox."

The message to users read: "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this lBurger? Now thats a fire! Ice cream!"

"The test page posted as result of an inadvertent action by MSN. The text on the test page was irreverent and was not meant for posting, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our customers," the spokesperson added.

Comments

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Looks like they goofed up on that one. I find it humorous that this happened. Shouldn't be anything to worry about. I always delete those messages from MSN before reading them anyway.

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yuk uk

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Copyright infringement anyone?

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Now the MF's have blocked access to hotmail via Outlook. It now requires you to pay for it. What a joke in the time of massive free storage hotmail is still only 2MB now without access via outlook to move the messages it’s useless ! I thought I remember a statement from Microsoft saying they had many new improvements coming to stop people moving to Google and Yahoo? Well this one did the opposite I now opened a Yahoo account and get free Outlook access and 100MB storage !

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Most users get 250 Mb storage in November, like i have now :-)

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LOL. Microsoft is trying to get back what is stolen from them and they just keep blewing it up. Wait till gmail goes public, that will probably be the downfall of hotmail. I was recently invited to gmail and i noticed imediatly that it's much better and faster than hotmail.

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I'd also like to switch to Yahoo as my primary address, if you can in fact use Outlook Express for free.

How does a person set that up? Yahoo provides to docs on this.

Dan

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check out http://www.bluebottle.com
It has 250MB inbox, supports POP/SMTP, awesome method of spam blocking - similar to earthlink's spam blocking if you are familiar with them. Also, no ads on your e-mail webpages, no ads in outgoing e-mail.

Also try Mozilla Thunderbird as an alternative to MicroShaft Outlook. http://www.mozilla.org

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