As with AOL, GMail and many other free email services, MSN and Hotmail has the same or similar
problems regarding the handling of email and or accounts. All free email providers can, will, and
do block email messages to/from recipients/senders as they see fit to do so. When you call to get
a resolution regarding your email messages either outgoing or incoming, expect a half-dozen or
more replies that they are working on the "problem" and/or securing their systems against
spamming, viruses, or simply shut down "abusive" accounts. In reality, you can never know
what the "problem" really is but you can know that email contents are and will be used as seen fit.
Read the online policies, and it looks like they respect your privacy and you take their word for it?
Free email sites aren't really free since there is always something they get out of it, otherwise
what's in it for them? I will tell you that they make TONS of money with this (free) service and most of
it is revenue by advertisements but that is not all! In short, people who use these services are mostly
entrusting their "imaginably private" messages to these providers and it truly amazes me that they continue
to do this knowingly or ignorantly and so do not realize the potential damages to their personal liberties in
doing so. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you'd like. As a side note, IM's operate in a similar principle that
messages sent to/from a buddy is actually being "recorded" on their IM servers. Talk about a twist!
I've had several people tell me that they sent me email from AOL, MSN, Hotmail, Gmail, and many
other sites and I simply tell them to check to make sure they sent it with the proper email address,
check their spammer programs, and lastly to contact their email provider. My email system is maintained
by me, it has a port 25 and is directly on the Internet, and more importantly, every "connect" to port 25 is
reported to my logs, so I will KNOW if someone tried to send me something and from what IP address it sent
from. However, this says nothing about what happens to the messages as it is sent through my uplink ISP
provider or "higher up" in the infrastructure as to if the message is being monitored, modified, or blocked
by my ISP or by the NSA/CIA/FBI and so on.
So lets not forget that companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Bellsouth, QWest, and other unknown
companies are presumably in working with the government. All of these companies are the
"Big-Boys" behind the scenes and even Microsoft, Google, AOL/Time has to use that infrastructure
in order to connect to the Internet. It is no secret that Bush is trying to get retroactive immunity
for these companies for violating all sorts of laws on privacy regardless of their online stated policies
which changes daily or by the minute.
Just my thoughts.
OSIT