Microsoft called hypocritical over spam

Microsoft recently launched a high-profile campaign against spammers but some critics say the company should be more introspective if it is serious about reducing the scourge of unwanted email.

The software maker and some of its competitors that provide internet service and web-based email are outdoing one another with highly publicised anti-spam campaigns. These have ranged from lawsuits to technology and policy initiatives.

In the most recent example, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates sent a letter on Tuesday to customers in which he explained some steps his company is taking to reduce spam. The letter came a day after The Wall Street Journal published an anti-spam column penned by Gates.

But some companies and organisations working to curb spam accuse Microsoft of grandstanding, saying that the Redmond, Washington, company has demonstrated a preference for splashy press events over difficult technology fixes or product sacrifices. These critics have seized on the company's own statements that it is focusing on reducing the amount of spam its users receive, rather than the spam its users and servers send.

"Microsoft is behind the times," said Laura Atkins, president of the SpamCon Foundation. "In general it's nice to see them finally catching up with everyone else - and they are working hard to rein in abuse - but they have to work a lot harder," Atkins said. "Microsoft has its own spam problem."

Microsoft, however, rejects those contentions, citing recent projects and the long-term nature of any effective solution.

"Spam is a central issue for our customers and we are taking a multifaceted approach to address the problem," a Microsoft representative said. "We did not get here overnight. It will take time to see the impact of the efforts we are making across technology, legislation, enforcement and self-regulation."

In February, Microsoft announced a series of lawsuits against spammers. In March it imposed a 100-message cap on users of its free Hotmail email service (the restriction does not apply to paid Hotmail accounts). In May, Microsoft unveiled more anti-spam features for Hotmail and its MSN online service and submitted to the US Senate written testimony by Gates urging legal spam restrictions. And last week the company called an international press conference to publicise more suits against spammers.

But even such a busy anti-spam schedule has failed to convince Microsoft's critics that it is doing enough to help stem the spam tide.

Deficiencies in Microsoft's spam behaviour range across a number of its divisions that offer email services, according to Atkins and others. These include the company's small-business-oriented bCentral portal; MSN, which has its own email service; and Hotmail, a separate, web-based email service that uses many of the same systems as MSN but operates under different rules.

Perhaps the loudest hew and cry against Microsoft emanates from some network administrators tracking the spam problem, who claim that a sizable chunk of the spam now clogging the internet's arteries emanates from Microsoft's own servers.

These spam watchers complain that while Microsoft has implemented badly needed controls on Hotmail, such as technology designed to identify software robots and prevent them from registering for accounts, Microsoft has left loopholes large enough to run rivers of spam through the related MSN email service.

"Hotmail has the combination of daily limits and having to prove you're human, which makes it not useful for sending spam," said John Levine, author of several computer technology books and a board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE). "MSN has neither of those, so we're seeing a lot of spam."

MSN email is available for a free two-month trial. As a result, Levine said, someone could use a purloined credit card number to open the account, send torrents of spam, and then cancel the account before the credit card is charged and subsequently determined to be stolen. That process could be repeated several times a day by a single person, he said.

Levine and others further isolate the MSN spam problem to a protocol that Microsoft uses to integrate its various email services and email management applications, including Outlook. Called WebDAV, the protocol lets people write their own interfaces to an email system, and it is through this protocol that Levine believes spammers are jacking up MSN's spam output.

Methods of using WebDAV to send email through Hotmail's servers - but without going through the website or Outlook - are well documented online.

"With the right tools, a smart network engineer would be able to see that almost all of the email coming from the Hotmail/MSN servers that are used for WebDAV is spam," wrote one spam expert who requested anonymity. "We have seen direct evidence of this."

Worse, WebDAV critics say, the protocol makes it easy for spammers to alter their return addresses and other header information - a chronic headache for network administrators trying to identify spam and its origins.

"If you have a Hotmail or MSN account, when you set up your account in Outlook Express, you can set it up with any return address you want, and the Hotmail/MSN mail servers cheerfully send mail with any old return address you want," Levine said. "Hence the problem."

Paul Festa writes for CNET News.com.