Microsoft adds hacked friend account reporting to Hotmail

SOFTWARE VENDOR Microsoft has added a feature to its Hotmail email accounts where users can report that a friend's account has been hacked.

Dick Craddock, group program manager at Hotmail, acknowledged in a blog post that account hijacking is "a big problem" at Hotmail, and that a better approach to countering it was needed.

He said Microsoft noticed that in many cases when an account is hacked, friends notice it long before the user does, simply because of the spam and phishing attempts sent to people on the user's contacts list.

This led to Microsoft adding a "My friend was hacked!" report feature, which can be accessed from the 'Mark As' menu. From here you can also report an email as a phishing scam.

A hacking report can also be sent when moving an email to the Junk folder. Users simply need to tick the box where it says "I think this person was hacked!"

Once a report has been made Microsoft will investigate the account and most likely flag the account as being compromised. Other factors such as the under the hood spam detection are also used to identity compromised accounts.

Unfortunately, there is some potential for abuse here. If you fall out with a friend they could mark your account as being hacked simply to annoy you. While Microsoft might not lock your account if it doesn't identify it as sending spam, it could create an unfortunate situation as an act of spite.

Initially Microsoft was only able to let users report fellow Hotmail accounts as being compromised, but it decided to add support for Gmail and Yahoo Mail as well. While neither of these can make the reports, Hotmail users can report Gmail or Yahoo accounts that they believe have been hacked. Microsoft will forward those reports to Google and Yahoo to deal with.

Microsoft is also addressing a worrying trend of simplistic common passwords that are being used on its service. It revealed that many people actually use passwords like "password", "123456", "ilovecats" and "gogiants". Over the coming weeks it will introduce a system that will force users to pick a stronger password.

Hacked accounts, phishing scams and an endless wave of spam are some of the things that led many to leave Hotmail in the first place, especially in comparison to the strong spam detection of Gmail.

Microsoft admitted that it has identified thousands of hacked accounts in the past few weeks alone, showing how successful hacked email accounts analysis can be. This feature could help open up Hotmail as a viable email service again. µ