Hotmail Cutting Back On Spam
Last Updated on Thursday, 9 December 2010 07:49 Written by Alan Tuesday, 25 May 2010 08:00
I don’t use Hotmail, I use Gmail. But I have been tempted to open a Hotmail account just to check it out and run some tests and I think now may be the time. Microsoft announced, recently, several innovations to help fight spam. I don’t know exactly how Gmail does it, but periodically I notice a sharp drop in the number of spam emails I receive per day. Inevitably though, after a couple of days, it shoots back up to the previous level. Here’s what Microsoft says on their blog:
New spam-fighting innovations include:
- More advanced IP and content filtering – Hotmail receives over 8 billion messages per day, giving us 8 billion input variables to work with and learn from. Each message we receive further informs SmartScreen’s IP filtering algorithms, making SmartScreen even “smarter.” Because Hotmail is the largest webmail service in the world, it also receives more telemetry on bad IPs than most any other service – either directly or through third parties. This gives our spam filters more opportunity to inform their artificial intelligence than pretty much any other service.
- Spammer infrastructure detection and destruction – SmartScreen not only blocks spam, it uses “x-ray vision” to see behind the URLs contained in malicious email to the source URLs, which we can then block along with their IPs. This means spammers have to abandon their current infrastructure and pay for new places to hide out. By making it more expensive to continue their business, we are taking away their economic incentive.
- Time-traveling filters – We can’t always identify a new spammer the moment they start sending spam. But once we identify one, we can go back and clean out spam that they’ve already sent to your inbox before you ever see it. We call this a time-traveling filter, because in some sense we are able to go back in time and get rid of the spam even after it’s been delivered!
- Personalized spam filtering – One person’s junk mail is another’s desired piece of mail. Using artificial intelligence, Hotmail personalizes spam filtering according to the individual preferences of each of the 360+ million customers who use Hotmail, reducing false positives while improving effectiveness at the same time.
- Tagging – Hotmail tags each message you receive, whether in your inbox or in the Junk folder, to help you understand little bit more about why the message was categorized as it was. For example, if you previously marked messages from a sender as junk, we’ll tell you that, or if you use a client email program with Hotmail, we’ll tell you when that program has rules that result in moving a particular message to another folder. This gives you more direct control of spam management in your inbox unlike any other service.
Windows Quick Tip – Keyboard Shortcut
Last Updated on Thursday, 9 December 2010 07:50 Written by Alan Wednesday, 19 May 2010 08:00
If you like keyboard shortcuts for some of the things you do – like Control-C for copy, then here’s one you may not know about. Well, at least I never knew until just recently. If you’re like me and frequently have lots of windows open at the same time, then hit Windows-D to minimize all of them and show your desktop.
ted – Another Way to Get TV Shows
Last Updated on Thursday, 9 December 2010 07:53 Written by Alan Friday, 14 May 2010 08:00
If you cut the cord on cable or missed an episode of your favorite show the ted could become your new favorite program. It scans the internet looking for your show and then uses your bit torrent program of choice to download an episode or an entire season or whatever you tell it to.
After you install it just open it and click Add Show (make sure you have a bit torrent program installed and running). You will be presented with a pre-populated list of shows to choose from, or you can enter your own by clicking on Add a custom show at the bottom.
When you add a show it will ask where you want to begin – for instance season 1 episode 1 or just last week’s episode, etc. Once a show is added the program will scan the internet for episodes. When it finds what it’s looking for the download will automatically begin in your bit torrent client.
Want to change the settings for a show? Right-click the show and choose Edit.
From there you can change a variety of things such as the season and episode number, choosing a particular episode, the RSS feeds ted looks at, and quite a few other tweaks.
Now for the skinny on ho well it works. For some shows such as the Clone Wars it found every episode and new ones were available within a day or two of their air date. For others, such as Flash Forward, it went great until about two-thirds of the way through the season and since then has not found any of the most recent episodes. Strangely, one of the RSS feeds it looks at is from EZTV and when I go to their site on the web these episodes are available, but ted doesn’t see them. I have tried playing with the feeds in ted to fix that, but alas, it still fails on those shows.
I am only using a for a few shows and for those it seems to be hit and miss, depending on the show. Overall though, it’s one more good tool available for everyone to try out.
