MSN Forces Outlook POP
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Oct 17, 2001 10:12 AM
from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept.
from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept.
Phoenix-D writes: "Qwest.net, my Phoenix-area DSL provider and ISP, recently decided to hand over their ISP buisness to MSN. No huge deal, right? Well, check out this blurb: 'Due to the Microsoft anti-spam initiative, customers are restricted to use their mail services. Therefore, POP3 service is only available when using MSN Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, or Microsoft Outlook Express.'" Awesome. Microsoft's Anti-Spam initiative forces POP users to use the primary sender of mail worms.
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MSN Forces Outlook POP
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Fool the system? (Score:4, Troll)
Re:Fool the system? (Score:5, Funny)
SPA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SPA (Score:5, Informative)
hmm, that is likely what they *want* - but I doubt that is the case. somebody knows it, and plenty of people could reverse engineer it - there likely just wasn't the need or desire - until now. I have a feeling it won't be long at all until there is an easy way around this.
my easy way around it is not allowing anything msn on my system. (I installed winXP on my computer and even though I disabled msn in all the menus, it ignored all that and still took over and came up all the time - I finally just killed it by deleting its files and all references to it in the registry... amazing how quiet it got after that) - I hate real player for the exact same reason (it asks what you want to do in the menu system, you tell it, and then it goes and ignores that and does what it wants anyway, which is usually to assume command of all file associations regardless of what you asked it to do)
Re: SPA (Score:5, Informative)
1. Open c:\Windows\inf\sysoc.inf in Notepad.
2. Type Ctrl-H
3. Enter ",hide," in the Find What edit window.
4. Enter ",," in the Replace With edit window.
5. Click Replace All
6. Open Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel
7. Select Add/Remove Windows Components
8. Uninstall Windows Messenger
And no, she'll never come back.
Re:SPA(M) (Score:5, Funny)
Cute acronym
(Or should that be: Oxymoron)
uh, isn't pop3 open? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:uh, isn't pop3 open? (Score:5, Informative)
POP3is a lovely protocol but it has one terrible disadvantage: It's a download only process. Oh sure email can be left on the server but there's no flagging, folders, etc. possible.
IMAP4 is an interesting protocol. Many developers (Steve Dorner [qualcomm.com] of Eudora being a notable [cyrusoft.com] one) complain that IMAP makes too many assumptions about how folks are implementing it, the underlying system, etc. On the other hand it works well at this point for managing remote mailboxes, setting flags, folders, partially downloading messages, etc.
So why one over the other? POP is fine for tied-to-one machine folks. You get your mail, you download it, it's your problem. IMAP is suited to those who work from multiple machines or prefer the security of their email being kept on a server.
Guess which population is growing? More importantly guess which population corporate types are part of?
As an email administrator which would you prefer to work with:
Now you see why MS supports IMAP: Their customers really pushed hard for it. Is it part of some big MS-conspiracy? Possibly but there's no good evidence and certianly no rationale.
Furthermore IMAP doesn't give a whit about "Mailer Type" (if it even has such a thing as an option in it's protocol which I doubt.) MS is using their encrypted login as a means to enforce this, nothing so trivially hackable as a client ID string.
Actually encrypted logins are a Good Thing. It's just unfortunate MS is using them as a club to force folks to use only their email products and not supporting industry standard login strategies.
So now we have AOL, the largest ISP requiring their email client (there were trials years ago with opening it up, indeed Claris Emailer still does so though the application was EOL'd 3 years ago by Apple) and now MSN doing the same. Indeed in spite of the fact that there are now perfecty good clients and secure ways of working these folks want to go back to the old "lock 'em in" strategy.
Re:are you sure? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, IIRC (it's been 2 years and I've probably only booted MS-Windows a handful of times since then), somewhere in the mail options for Outlook Express (and Outlook too, I would imagine) there is a checkbox for an option that states something like, "Use Secure Password Authentication (SPA)?" I was never able to find out much information about this Secure Password Authentication stuff, but from what I can tell, it's a proprietary protocol. I had found a short mini-HOWTO-like document that described using MSN under Linux and it made mention of this. I could dial up and login to MSN under Linux (I had to specify the username in a particular way in my dialup scripts, dialed up to UUnet). I could even send email; they just used straight SMTP. What I could not do was receive email, as this required the previously-mentioned SPA.
So, besides the fact that everybody already knew, that this won't stop spam unless they block outbound port 25 to all hosts, you can still send mail through their servers any way you like. The problem is actually getting to the mail you receive.
(Addendum: After I started working for an ISP a few months later and was getting free dialup, I stopped sending in payments. They cut me off after a couple of months but never came after me for the $400.)
Re:what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
hey moron boy, you call AOL, Earthlink and MSN being a vast choice? wait till you install Windows XP and tell me how many choices you get if you're a first time user. the argument isn't that Microsoft is anti-competitive to geeks but that they are anti-competitive to people that buy computers at walmart.
of course I know that I can get net access from the local mom and pop. (in fact I just did yesterday) but I know people that are MCSEs that don't know they can use some other ISP even that they exist. Microsoft does have a monopoly and they are extending it by leaps and bounds with XP. Once everyone has XP installed do you think they'll buy Nero or Easy CD Creator? No of course not Microsoft has closed them out by including rudimentary cd-burning in the OS. thats not anti-competitive? then what the hell is? the list goes on and on. how can we stand by and just let this shit continue? how can you?
This seriously brings into consideration whether or not you have a soul.
Re:what?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't. I haven't and won't buy Windows XP. I paid $40 for a boxed SuSE distro, to financially support an alternative. I don't buy any MS software, because I think it's crap.
That is how capitalism works - the people "vote" with their money. I can't think of a single common application that Microsoft can do that can't be done on mac, linux, solaris, etc.
The government does not exist to protect stupid consumers from themselves. If you want to change the software industry, start spending money in it.
Re:what?! (Score:4, Insightful)
As I have said, the courts are wrong. Fully wrong. The existenance of competition by definition disproves the existenance of a monopoly. Monopoly is a vacuum of competition, the ability to control the market, and the ability to fix prices. Microsoft has nonoe of those things going for it. No monopoly.
That's just not true. I can't play Diablo II on Battle.net on my x86 PC without Windows. There is lots of hardware that only have Windows drivers (like winmodems). Fortunately, there are some equivalent functions that do not require windows, but not all functions have a non-windows equivalent.
Playing one single game or single application or one single piece of hardware doesn't mean that you are in the midst of a monopoly or not. Compatibility is a feature of an OS - specifically, MS has many many compatible apps - linux has less. OS X has even less, etc. If you need a certain feature (compatibility) you should search for an OS and platform that provides you that benefit.
All functions you might want to do on a PC have a non-MS equivalent. You may not be compatible with a specific implementation, but it is still achievable without MS. In traditional monopolies that is not possible - AT&T for example - to use a phone in anyway you needed AT&T. In Standard Oil if you wanted any oil for anything you needed them. There is no equivalent with MS. Anything (playing games, relaxement, web surving, development, databasing, word processing, etc) can be done without MS, and whats more, it can be done cheaper without them.
And thats the bottom line. MS loses market share everyday to Linux/*nix. They lose developers everyday to Linux. They lose mind share everyday to Linux. This is continuing proof that even if they at one point did have an OS monopoly they dont have it now.
The courts were wrong. They were wrong in 1995 and they are definately wrong today. Everything MS said about linux during the trial is now true. At work yesterday my MS-friendly bosses got a "How to Compete With Linux" marketing kit. MS is scared of Linux, because they know its an alternative.
I dare claim that MS isnt a monopoly. I dont care about Karma, but in the course of the day I went from 50 (the max) to 38 currently. Virtually all of my posts have been modded down to below 0, and in many cases -1. They started at 2. Slashdot is in denial of the facts.
You're not forced to use it (yet) (Score:5, Informative)
Currently, the plan is to transition those customers who:
Have Qwest.net Internet Access using an analog dial-up line, Qwest DSL 256, Qwest DSL Select, or Qwest DSL Deluxe connection and,
Use the Windows operating system.
MAC Customers: MSN is working on a MAC solution for your Internet access needs. Until that time, there will not be any changes to your Qwest.net Internet Access service.
No mention of Linux, but I'd assume they'll treat non-Windows the same (until they have a Mac-only fix, of course).
Hmmm - taking a second look at the capitalization on "MAC", it looks like they don't have a "solution" for anyone using a network card
Very, very funny... (Score:4, Funny)
"Q: Why should I transition my service to MSN®?
A: There are many reasons why you should transition your service:
With more than 230 million visitors per month, MSN is available in 33 markets and in 17 languages.
(Source: Jupiter MediaMetrixTM Digital Media Report, April 01 for US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Switzerland. Data are an aggregation of above listed countries.)
When you upgrade your service, special promotions are available to you.
Quality, reliability and speed.
Technical support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at no charge!
Continue to enjoy POP3 e-mail service, with an option to switch to the world's largest Web-based e-mail service, MSN Hotmail®, via MSN Internet Explorer and get up to nine e-mail screen names for you and the rest of your family. (Due to the Microsoft anti-spam initiative, customers are restricted to use their mail services. Therefore, POP3 service is only available when using MSN Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, or Microsoft Outlook Express.)
Instant messaging from MSN Messenger Service, the fast growing instant messaging service.
You get more space for your personal Web site from 5 MB to 30 MB.
Easy access to great resources from MSN that help make your life better.
Catch up on the latest news from MSNBC
Listen to your favorite music
Play games
Send instant messages
Create an online photo album for your family
Personalize your home page with weather, sports, news or local events
Shop from the convenience of your home
Invest your money wisely
Search for information
Send online greeting cards
Plan your vacation
Take care of your family's health (This one is amazing)
And, so much more
Even funnier... (Score:4, Informative)
Q: What does the MSN® and Qwest® alliance mean to me?
A: Under the agreement, MSN will become the preferred Internet Service Provider (ISP) for some Qwest.net Consumer Internet Access customers. Qwest and Microsoft® are working together to provide consumers with best-of-breed MSN content and services via Qwest's Internet infrastructure. Customers will benefit from this joint offering in many ways including... (emphasis added)
Ummm...according to the Consumer Reports Sept. 2001 issue, MSN was rated as the worst Internet provider.
Nice to see that Microsoft not only squeezes the consumer, limits choice, but also engages in bald-faced lying!!
Re:Even funnier... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Even funnier... (Score:5, Funny)
already slashdotted? Well how can they tell (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it loaded now, but it's slow.
Any way, how can the tell what POP3 you're using? And why would POP3 stop spam? Wouldn't SMTP be where the action is? (I'm assuming that's what they mean). Are they looking at headers (easily emulated by spamware, ineffective) or some other signature? And I don't see how this will stop spam, anything like that is easily emulated. More and more stupidity.
Re:already slashdotted? Well how can they tell (Score:5, Informative)
Talk about anticompetitive... (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy way to end this... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to really get their sphincters to pucker, send a copy to the Justice Department.
Re:Easy way to end this... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the logical challenge is not that great.
1. Some QWest customers do not own Microsoft Windows.
2. Because of an MSN initiative, current customers require Windows to access thier paid for e-mail accounts
3. Windows is a Microsoft product
4. MSN is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft
Microsoft is therefore requiring thier customers who currenlty do not own Windows to buy a in order to continue a service. If there are no other DSL providers in the area, Microsoft is - wittingly or not - leveraging another monopoly to stiffle compeditive products.
Soko
I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could see this being legit if, somehow, it prevented the SENDING of spam...but it seems like, if anything, it could only possibly prevent your receiving it...that's like telling someone...well, i don't know what that's like telling someone, because it just seems ridiculous...
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Informative)
They are probably switching the POP3 servers to SAP, then setting SMTP servers to only allow mail from that IP after a POP3 check is successful (and for a small window of time). It's how Gateway.net (a UU.Net based solution like MSN) did it a while back, but without the SAP.
if they really wanted to stop spam (Score:5, Interesting)
I signed up for hotmail before MS ever took it over. I never used the email address in any form online, never even had any mail to it. I basically just had it because. After MS took over it litterally filled the account with junk mail.
Re:if they really wanted to stop spam (Score:4, Interesting)
How guessable was the address? I've seen spammers try dictionary-based email guessing attacks on our work domain, which only has a few dozen email addresses. With hotmail, the hit rate for a dictionary-based attack has to be amazing. It might even be worthwhile for spammers to try suffixing up to two digits on each dictionary "word". The entire process would be not unlike trying to crack unix passwords, only much more effective.
It gets even worse, of course. Once a single spammer gets a hit on your address, he can turn around and sell your address to more spammers. The number of spammers with your address will only increase.
Re:if they really wanted to stop spam (Score:4, Informative)
Never had a single spam in it... until two days after I signed up for the Passport (being careful to uncheck the "share my information" boxes) and began using it (only to sign into Windows Messenger).
It has gone from 0 spam/day to 6-8 spam/day, in less than one week.
I've now blackholed that email address and cancelled the Passport. I've also created a new Passport with a poisoned address (passport@DOMAIN.TLD). If I receive spam to it, I'll know those whores sold it off, even though I specifically selected not to have that done.
Re:if they really wanted to stop spam (Score:5, Funny)
Then every other day you get a message saying that your account is too large...
One way to find out... (Score:5, Interesting)
user user
pass password
list
Replace popserver.msn.com with the actual pop3 server. I have no clue what it actually is.
Third Party smtp (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Third Party smtp -- is BAD (Score:4, Informative)
Odds are, it's not based on the from address, but based on the originating IP address. [as to just allow 'from: *@msn.com' is setting themselves up as a third party relay for messages with forged headers.] It may also not be MSN, but it may be UUNet, who I believe MSN rents POPs from.
Now, for the solution -- tell the faculty to follow the instructions from their ISP for their home machines, not the instructions from the university, which is for local machines. If they have to have a from address with MSN in it to use the SMTP servers, just tag on a reply-to address.
The only whining that might take a little bit of a work arround is for those folks who use a laptop from both home and from work. You need to use an ISP that can push DNS server information to you in the PPP negotiation, or a broadband connection with DNS defined by the DHCP server, so that they're getting dynamic DNS at home, and using DHCP sending DNS at work, so they have dynamic DNS there. Then, they need to put in a non-FQDN for the SMTP server.
For example, you have someone at isp.net, and work for lame.edu. The isp has a host named smtp.isp.net which they can deliver their mail to, and you have a machine named smtp.lame.edu which the faculty [why do the faculty always complain the most?] can use when they're on campus.
When off campus, they're using the dns servers at isp.net, and so, when sending to 'smtp', it looks up 'smtp.isp.net'. When on campus, they're using the dns servers at lame.edu, and so, 'smtp' would be 'smtp.lame.edu'.
If you have enough users on their system, you can normally get issues pushed through to someone more signficant at the ISP, so that you can find some working solution before having the users try it. [Our university's been in talks with AOL for a week or two, as it seems that when we set up a Trend virus firewall, we opened ourselves up for third party relaying, and AOL started sporaticly dropping our e-mail when their spam traps were triggered]
Outbound 25 is still outbound 25 (Score:4, Interesting)
MSN allowing outbound port 25 connections from a dialup customer is a step backwards for spam prevention. As someone who's being affected en mass by their changing policies, your university should contact them, and inform them that they either need to make provisions for your case, or that your group will have to make sure that your users take their business elsewhere, and find an ISP that you can work with.
If the faculty members were using their university e-mail addresses, and not their MSN one, they will have no issue in moving to a new ISP, save for the initial time in re-configuration. If they were using their local MSN e-mail address, and they're not willing to give it up, then they have to weigh the costs & benefits in switching. The only ones who are really screwed in this situation are not those that are concerned with third party relay, but wished to use some other non-MS client to read their mail from.
Realisticly, you should be using authenticated SMTP to see if there's some prick in the dorms starting up his own little spamming business. You should not expect outside ISPs however, to allow your users to connect to the server from a dialup connection. [Hell, we don't even allow allow relaying for connections from off-campus, although, that was a recent change [this morning] due to the lack of being able to authenticate with the trend micro virus scanner in front of the SIMS mail cloud, and we're just waiting to see how many users start complaining as they didn't get the messages regarding the policy changes]
Ok, where's Outlook for Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only are they forcing you to use Outlook, they're forcing you to use Windows. (I believe it's available for Mac too, yeah...).
MadCow.
badly worded (Score:4, Insightful)
"When using Outlook express, Outlook or MSN explorer you will only be able to use pop3"
I think they need to clarify that (and I have a feeling they will if I know slashdotians).
Re:badly worded (Score:5, Informative)
No it couldn't. "A is only available when doing B" means: "Do B, only then A is available" and not "If you do B only A is available". Since "A" equals to POP3 here, and i see no alternative mailhandling to POP3 in the FAQ it translates to:
Use MSN Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, or Microsoft Outlook Express to be able to send and get e-mail.
the more you tighten you grip (Score:3, Insightful)
- some girl with sticky buns on the sides of her head, Star Wars
This has been rumored for some time. One can escape assimilation by paying an extra $10/month and going to OfficeWorks, although rumor ALSO has it that even OfficeWorks won't be safe from the Evil Empire.
Someone mentioned getting around this. The problem is the DMCA. As I understand it, it's now illegal to do that kind of reverse engineering, i.e. the type that allowed *nix users to connect to SMB via Samba. So basically, through emrbrace and extend, MS can technically and legally exclude non-conformists.
To switch ISPs requires a 3-week downtime. This is done to eliminate the "slamming" phenonemon that plagued Long Distace carriers. I being one of the "renegades" running an alternative OS, have been looking into alternatives.
The problem is that I work from home (so I have between 3-5 machines networked into a DSL line) and it would create no small problem if I were to have to connect via modem for 3 weeks. Although given the alternative, I may be purchasing a modem...
MSN requires Secure Password Authentication (Score:5, Informative)
Not when they are an anti-competitive monopoly. (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree that this isn't exactly a rights issue, I complete disagree that MSN or MS can do whatever they want. The FOF has survived appeal and it is now a brave new world for MS. Every move they make is fair game for legal scurtiny. You can cry about the supposed free market all you want but that ain't the real world and in this case I'd rather nip this in the bud before MSN gets a stranglehold share in the marketplace.
Microsoft Anti-Spam initiative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if this weren't Microsoft, who brought us everything that is good, I'd say the whole thing is just an outright lie.
New virus for Outlook...? (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?disp
Just another reason to be SSH tunneling (Score:3, Informative)
And of course if you are tunneling to your mail server directly, pop3 being in plaintext isn't such a problem. If it'd work with other authentication means, I don't know. However, it seems to me like a good alternative.
Re:Just another reason to be SSH tunneling (Score:5, Informative)
Try here [sunysb.edu], here [uoregon.edu], or here [google.com] for information and links on SSH tunneling. The second one (on uoregon.edu) actually covers doing it for e-mail.
How to avoid this crap: (Score:5, Informative)
For the SMTP server, use:
"macsmtp.email.msn.com"
and your normal user/pass .
They don't have it working right for Mac clients; tada.
I've been using this for about 2 months now on my Windows and Linux machines and it works great.
Personally, I am more concerned with why I can't send mail to anyone using AOL/Walmarts ISP: wmconnect.com .
Old news (Score:3, Informative)
99 Trial Baloons (Score:3, Interesting)
What we need is an electronic version of the Amnesty International letter writing tables. People could log in, get presented with a list of the most eggregious offenses against free and open software, and have the links to send polite emails to those companies asking them to change their practices. Maybe this type of approach would have kept Congress from passing DMCA...
Microsoft Anti-Spam Initiative (Score:5, Funny)
As part of our ongoing effort to reduce junk emails to our loyal customers, the Microsoft abuse management team has created a new "real-time black hole" domain block list. This list is used to check all mail routed through our servers (increased in volume thanks to our new deal with Qwest) for known spammer domain names.
You may be interested to note that leading this list are the following notorious domains. These sites should be avoided for the protection of our revenue stream... errr... customers:
Additionally, our upcoming Microsoft World Browser will include protection against websites hosted at these domains. Thank you for your cooperation as we work to improve your user experience on the web.
Sincerely,
Microsoft Support
More reason to get a domain or forwarding service (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither one really requires technical knowledge to use, both are cheap (avoid the free mail forwarding services - if they're not making money, they're not going to be "permanent"), and they're generally simple to set up particularly if all you need is to have mail forwarded to your current ISP. ISP gets bought out? New terms are something you don't like? Switch ISPs. Once you're set up with your own address, the ISP just becomes a bandwidth provider.
Uh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There may be some decent reason to do it with SMTP, but not with POP. That's simply an excuse to restrict their users to their product...
I am a Qwest customer and have more info. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am currently a Qwest customer in Phoenix, and have more details on the current situation.
Back in March, I signed up for Qwest DSL Select, which is a $20 per month DSL line at 640 Kbps, 272 Kbps guarenteed. Once connected, you are "always on". You are not guarenteed to connect but once your on you can remain on no matter how long it is. I also pay $20 for the Qwest DSL ISP which is now owned by MSN.
Over the summer I was charged for the DSL modem which was supposed to be free as a promotional gift. Additional charges were also added for services I did not pay for. It took two months to get the charges off and many long phone calls with people saying like "I don't know how to do this," or "I don't think my supervisor will allow."
A week and a half ago, Qwest started disconnecting my "always on" connection after each two hours of connectivity. Then there was a five minute (I call it a penalty) to wait until I could connect again. I downloaded a connection manager, and set it up to disconnect me automatically after every 1 hr 50 mins, and then immediately reconnect. It cuts out the stupid 5 minute wait. I do this for two reasons, downloading and gaming, those are very sensitive to 5 minute lags of course. 10 second reconnects are a miniscule problem in comparison. However I found that I am still getting disconnected every half-hour (with out the 5 minute penalty) and its still annoyed the heck outta me
After the first 5 days of this, I call in asking whats going on, this is not the service I originally agreed to. They say it is part of the plan, but if I didn't like it, I could switch to MSN ($20 a month, which I know still disconnects my uncle tells by the way) and the "regular" DSL for 32.50 a month. HUH? Its the same 640 Kbps line an MSN? what kind of switch is that?
So as you can see they're trying to harrass us into paying more. This was not happening a week ago. To fix this problem I was very smart. I ordered on the day after I called the COX INTERNET and DIGITAL TELEPHONE for $40 dollars a month (you have to buy your own cable modem). In comparison you pay $72 a month with qwest for broadband DSL and phone. They were advertising that on the radio today like it was something great and I know it isn't YOU'RE PAYING about $15 dollars a month more than I have been. IT'S A SCAM. THANKFULLY, I'm getting COX in exactly one week, yes I'm counting those days. I urge every switch to COX now to show them how bad they are.
Now that I told you that, check out the Arizona Republic article [arizonarepublic.com]. It tells about the scams Qwest is involved in here and Microsoft is also to blame now seeing the new information on SlashDot. They're like about the worst companies around. I know six other people have switched in the the phoenix area to COX because of the same reasons! Share this information because it's true.
How to set up mail with MSN (Score:5, Informative)
I recently got laid off at a leading teleservices corporation that did technical support for MSN. This is because they completely dropped the contract with MSN (for what reasons I have only heard speculation and will not repeat here). I can assure you though that it was not because our standards were not good. Although it sounds like I am tooting my own horn we had probably the best call-center for all MSN service judging by the number of people calling back with ticket numbers started by people in other centers. I also judge this by the way the people wrote up their tickets without specifying what in the hell they did forcing me to go back through all the troubleshootings steps. (end rant)
First of all, MSN has two types of mail. They have the "legacy" POP3 system and the new web-based e-mail. You can find this information at MSN Support Services [msn.com].
Web-based mail is kind of like what it sounds. It uses the same mechanism (XML over HTTP) that Outlook Express >=5 uses to access hotmail. However the server for @msn.com accounts is different from the server for @hotmail.com accounts. If you have an @msn.com web-based account you can go to http://supportsevices.msn.com/us/oeconfig/ to configure OE and then go to tools accounts and read the server name out of there. Note, this is also true for free @msn.com accounts. Note that only Outlook Express 5 or greater or Outlook XP can use this mail. Obviously MSN Explorer and the hotmail.com website itself are compatible with this.
Anyway, it seems the real issue is that these people would like to use their new MSN POP3 accounts with e.g. fetchmail. To correctly configure Outlook Express for MSN POP3 e-mail you must use the outgoing (POP3) server of pop3.email.msn.com (go figure) or the incoming (SMTP) server of smtp.email.msn.com. Furthermore you must select the "Log on using Secure Password Authentication" option as well as select the option under Outgoing Mail server that "My server requires authentication". You then must press the settings button and be sure it is using the same settings as the outgoing mail server. That is it logs on using SPA with the same U/P as the POP3 server.
Because of this MSN states that you MUST use Outlook to get your MSN POP3 mail. This is not entirely correct. What you must have is a client that supports SPA. Why is MSN doing this? MSN's reason: to reduce SPAM. However they tell customers simply this because most of their customers are rather computer illeterate (especially the former AOL lusers). The real reason is that since they contract out Dial-up Points of Presences (Pops, not to be confused with POP3 e-mail) that either A) they must use the POP3 before SMTP hack, or B) You must login to the SMTP server to send mail. If they didn't do this then any jackass dialing into one of those POPs even with another ISP would be able to send tons of SPAM through MSN servers. There have been plenty of /. articles about this before and anyone familiar with how contracted out POPs interfere with the ability to allow SMTP access to only your subscribers should know what I am talking about.
Now, MSN /could/ have simply kept the plaintext login POP3 and only required you to use a plaintext login for SMTP. However they decided that not only should they require a login for SMTP but at the same time they should require secure password authentication for both POP3 and SMTP. In other words, if they were going to have to have people change their Outlook mail settings they might as well knock out the ability of people to sniff the packets and retrive their users passwords while they are at it.
Problem is that apparently SPA in Outlook is an MS specific thing. Well, what do you want them to do. The only way for outlook to support not sending the login in cleartext is to use SPA. So therefore they enabled SPA on their mailservers and disabled clear-text logins. Of course theoretically they could include some other more open method of secure password authentication for use with other clients, or they could open up the MS SPA protocol. Or they could just say the hell with it because they only officially support MSN using MS software on Windows OSes (which actually does NOT include WinCE, you must contact your OEM for WinCE support with MSN).
Basically all that needs to be done is for other mail clients to support MS SPA. How to do this I am not really sure as I have not put much thought into it as I don't use MSN myself except for free accounts. All the free accounts use hotmail based e-mail.
There is of course another option. You could always "upgrade" your account to web-based from POP3 and then either go to the hotmail website to get your e-mail or use Outlook Express >=5 or Outlook XP to get your email in a real mail client (if you can call Outlook a real mail client, but hey, at least's it better than www.hotmail.com). There does exist a script (PERL I think) for retrieving mail from hotmail but I have looked at that code and it is really really crappy (apologies to the guy who wrote it, but I am sure he also knows that it is nothing more than a quick hack). Theoretically there is no reason that Evolution should not support the MS HTTPmail protocol. Turn on HTTP logging in the Advanced tab of OE properties and then open up the log in notepad. You will notice that the schema is relatively easy to figure out even though to the best of my knowledge it is not published anywhere. Evolution already uses XML extensively and has all of the framework necessary for parsing XML. I assume it also has the framework necessary for accessing an HTTP server in general. Therefore it should be rather trivial to write an MS HTTPmail backend for Evolution. In fact, I am surprised that no one has done so (I guess none of the developers use hotmail). I have toyed with the idea of doing one myself but 1) I use balsa, and 2) I have not done any programming with XML. However now that evolution is fairly stable I may go ahead and write this. Hell, I don't have anything pressing to do until Monday except clean the garage so we'll see. There's never a bad time to learn more programming techniques, and XML is one of the most popular things today so not only would I personally benefit from learning XML but also benefit with being able to access hotmail from evolution. And note well... if I do write this I do intend to support the advertisement properties as best as possible (i.e. opening up a small frame at the bottom and displaying a webpage in it). I know it seems stupid, but hey, they deserve to get paid even if they are MSN. And if anyone really wants to they can just change the code later to take out the ads.
Anyway, I hope this clears up a lot of the confusion people are having with this. I see at this point over 600 comments have been posted, a few reasonable, most along the lines of fsck Microsoft. People, I hate MS as much as everyone here. They are theives and crooks and must be beaten. However, as the cliche says: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The only way MS will be beaten is when people stop bitching about them and just go do better than them. Every time I bitch about MS to my mother she reminds me: Then go write something better. While everyone has argued this point to death the bottom line is that in some respects MS software is "better" than open-source/free software. Even if only in the marketing sense of better.
-Dave
Re:For all those who defend M$ here. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I was a Qwest customer using Linux, I would be pissed (I am not a Qwest customer...).
Their reasoning seems to be that network snoopers could overhear plain-text passwords coming into the pop server and use that to send email through the SMTP servers. Why not just use Qmail with an SSL X509 cert? Would provide better protection in general...