
Ad-free Outlook and Hotmail ($19.95) - captn3m0
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/hotmail/ad-free-hotmail-and-outlook
======
niggler
The claim made about outlook.com is

"Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords
so they can target Gmail users with paid ads. And there's no way to opt out of
this invasion of your privacy. Outlook.com is different—we don't go through
your email to sell ads."

from <http://www.scroogled.com>

How is outlook.com selecting which ads to show? Is there any transparency in
that process, or are they showing personalized ads but just going through the
title (or some other technicality that isn't a 100% email scan)?

~~~
magicalist
They've said they use demographic data based on what you provide at signup for
targeting ads in email.

It's enough to be used fairly effectively (if not as topically), for instance
by correlating voter registration data with name/location data for highly
targeted political ads:

 _For instance, surfers may be shown a shoe ad if they recently visited a shoe
site. Most of this sort of targeting doesn't require your name. Political
targeting does. Campaigns may want to reach only reliable party members, or
independents who might swing their way...._

 _Finding voters online is difficult, since no public record connects voters
to a particular Internet address. That's where Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and other
lesser-known companies come in. Their enormous stores of registration data can
serve as the bridge between particular Internet users and their voter
information...._

 _Microsoft and Yahoo's targeting service combines two crucial factors: their
knowledge of users' personal information and their ability to add cookies to
browsers. Over the years, Internet users have given these companies their name
when they signed up for free programs like the Microsoft suite of services
known as Windows Live, which includes Hotmail. (Microsoft said it does not
sell campaigns access to information users provide when they register for
Office or other Microsoft products they've bought.)_

 _Microsoft and Yahoo both said the cookies aren't connected directly to names
or other personally identifying information. Instead, they use a complicated
process to match coded voter information back to anonymous cookies on
particular users' browsers._

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/how-microsoft-
and...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/how-microsoft-and-yahoo-
are-selling-politicians-access-to-you/)

------
NateDad
I never understood why people were so against targeted ads. By definition,
targeted ads have a higher chance of being something I'm interested in. Isn't
that a good thing?

And yes, they scan your email... news flash - every online email service has
access to your email by definition. Either send it encrypted from the client,
or don't send things you don't want other people reading.

~~~
opinali
Every cloud-based email service "scans your email" and does it a lot. This is
mandatory in order to:

\- Junk filtering, fishing protection and other security protections; all
impossible to implement without deep scanning, analysis and correlation (this
last item is important: some information extracted from your email is combined
to information from other people's emails, in big statistical models and fancy
machine learning jobs). \- Index content so you can search it (unless you want
to only be able to search by subject and other headers... no, 1988 called,
wants its Eudora back). Bing.com may not include results from email, but this
is irrelevant, Outlook.com certainly has full-text search so there's indexing.
\- Implement all kinds of cool stuff, e.g. Google Now right now shows that my
last Amazon order has shipped, a single click on that shows the USPS tracking,
how cool is that. Or more modestly, integration with other services from the
same provider or from others such as cloud storage, office apps etc., or even
simpler features like Outlook.com's ability to automatically sort email into
categories, I doubt very much they can do it only looking at headers. (Even if
they do, in many cases there's enough private info in headers that just not
looking at the email body shouldn't reduce your paranoia.)

In the big picture, the extra scanning for ad targeting is really a very minor
part of the whole. So it all boils down to discussing whether you prefer
targeted ads or untargeted ads, and whether you trust the cloud service to
protect the private information used for this. Notice that this same potential
issue exists for _all_ functionality above, not just for ad targeting; so if
you don't trust GMail as a matter of principle, then you shouldn't trust
Outlook.com either.

------
rrreese
This is something I wish more companies would do with their free products.

~~~
flexie
Until then you can just hide your ads in Gmail:
<http://lifehacker.com/5879757/how-to-hide-ads-in-gmail>

~~~
manojlds
The problem has never been about seeing the ad was it? It's mostly about what
ad and what Google sees to show the ad.

~~~
etherealG
is it a given in any email system that they see this though, i.e. would it
even be possible to make it so that they couldn't see it?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
You could use gpg and a non-browser email client to encrypt your email. But
then you can do that with gmail too.

------
supercoder
Is there something sneaky in the wording of 'no graphical ads' ? Makes you
wonder if they will display text only ads.

~~~
mejackreed
I had the same thought, Microsoft seems to keep saying deliberately, "No
graphical adds".... why not no adds period?

------
jaredstenquist
For those with custom domain names... $20/year vs $60/year for Google Apps.
Ads or not, thats a compelling savings for my many pet projects where I only
need 1 or 2 @projectname.com mailboxes.

It's a shame that Google Apps got rid of the free tier. I've started 2
businesses on the free tier (< 10 accounts) and now pay around $200/month for
each company as they have grown.

Now Microsoft will gain some ground in the email arena.

~~~
mattwdelong
Yikes. If you're paying around $200/month (Not sure if this it total, or for
each service, making it $400/month), would it not be feasible to invest in a
VPS at linode and run your own mail server? You could even hire a decent
system admin to look after it, and still save a few hundred dollars a month.

~~~
Uchikoma
I've run a mail server for 5 years for a NGO. Running your own mail server is
not as easy as running your own LAMP stack. The is SPAM, IMAP, bounces, ...
and many more issues with running your own system. My Postfix is only
redirecting to gmail accounts. If that works - fine, but that's probably not
what a small non-tech-savy business needs.

------
belorn
It always surprise me how willing people are to let other people read, use and
handle ones private emails.

It commonly received as a surprise when I talk about it, but once you give
away your email to be handled by someone else, the emails are no longer
private. If you give it to google, google then owns it. If you give it to
Microsoft, its Microsoft that’s own it. Why are people acting so strange to
the idea that if you give something away, its not longer in your control?

Running a email server is not hard. if its a company, running a email server +
webbmail is as hard as installing two extra packages in debian and doing a
single dns change. If you don't have a server, buy a old laptop/media station.
Its email, its not going to demand processing power beyond simple spam
filtering.

On that note, wonder if my phone can get postfix installed...

~~~
rtpg
99.9% uptime is nice ( where I'm at right now has had server outages more
often than gmail has had).

Having a decent spam filter is nice (I've had loads of false positives in
things I've tried elsewhere).

There is the idea that google/MS could just fall off the face of the earth,
and then I look pretty stupid having loads of things connected to that
account. That bothers me enough to where important things get thrown onto an
email adress I'm pretty sure won't disappear for a while.

As to reading my mail... robots are reading my mail. This is a pretty valid
"Chinese room" in my opinion. Nobody's actually understanding my mail, what do
I care. The ads are usually pretty relevant to things I need though (I've
clicked on more of the text ads than I would ilke to admit).

~~~
belorn
> 99.9% uptime is nice

Pick a random (not broken) piece of hardware. Install debian stable on it with
base install + postfix + roundcube. Configure: grey listing, black listing,
and auto-update (relative easy, and there is a bunch of tutorials if needed).
Leave it alone until once every 2-3 year where it will need a aptitude update,
aptitude upgrade. It will run as long it has power and network connectivity.
If you are a company and either the power or network is down, email is
unlikely to be high on the priority list.

Spam: ~0. Might get one every full moon or so. After 5-10 years it might get a
bit worse, but adding SpamAssassin tend to get rid of it.

As for Chinese rooms, do they leak information? Do they give out mail if asked
by someone with money/power? Sure, one can say "I got nothing to hide so what
do I care", but then that's what all email then must be. You can never again
say: "This email is private and mine. I and only I have control over it". If
you are a doctor, lawyer or any person dealing with private information, then
it mean that any email given to you are defacto public.

~~~
fps
Roundcube is not gmail. The gmail interface is the killer feature that no one
has been able to replicate, and it's the thing that pulled me back after 6
months of hosting my own email. I was in gmail withdrawal, and seriously
considered not having an email account instead of dealing with roundcube, mutt
and K9 anymore. Roundcube's interface is a great replica of Apple mail from 10
years ago, but it's seriously painful to use compared to the comfort and the
features of the gmail interface.

------
kmfrk

        No account expiration
    

Does that mean Outlook still has that _absurd_ system from Hotmail?!

~~~
hosay123
You mean the one where if you stop using an account, it gets deleted?

~~~
exhilaration
Google doesn't do that. You can create a Gmail account for a project or event
and they'll never delete it. Maybe you want a Gmail address for a yearly
event, which you'll only use for 2 months out of the year - Gmail can do that
for you, and for free.

------
friendly_chap
"No graphical ads"

Brace yourselves, text ads are coming.

------
bobsy
Does anyone know how outlook.com handles expiration?

In the terms it says you must log in every 270 days. Sounds like plenty of
time but I have old gmail account which I use once or twice a year. It would
probably have been deleted if it was with hotmail/outlook.

The worrying thing would be the email address going back into circulation with
someone else. Wouldn't they start to get your mail? Couldn't they retrieve you
password on websites with the associated email?

This scenario isn't too unlikely as the old gmail account I mention above is
associated with login details for 50-100 websites. I simply moved to a new
email address and only check it when I need to login into an old site and have
lost the password.

------
mhd
Hmm, but they still allow POP/IMAP for free? Most companies who want money for
their premium mail service (e.g. mail.com/1&1) include that with removing ads,
which seems a much bigger incentive.

I do kinda like the new outlook.com interface, but the way the conversation
view works makes it basically unusable to me. Not that MS ever had big taste
in that regard, as I still blame Outlook for basically establishing top
quoting as standard.

------
mtgx
I'll stick with free e-mail.

~~~
niggler
What happens if google stops providing gmail? Suppose that, for example,
google has some losing quarters and is pressured into making cuts and they
decide to axe gmail. What happens then?

I am an unabashed fan of google voice, but there I know that it would be
possible to get the number out (thanks to legislation), see
[http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...](http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1316844)
. I don't have similar assurance with gmail.

~~~
magicalist
what happens if Microsoft raises the outlook price per year to some level I'm
unwilling to pay? At some point, it just comes down to a calculated risk.

~~~
pyre
That's why you pay for a domain. Then you can move your address wherever you
want.

------
imwhimsical
I find $19.95 a little too much, just for getting rid of ads.

~~~
bonaldi
How much do you think the ads are making them?

~~~
michaelmartin
Not a lot when the second benefit they list is not needing to log in to keep
your account active...

------
qompiler
adblock-plus is free

~~~
supercoder
Unfortunately the servers and employees to run the service is not.

~~~
qompiler
I understand that very well, I constantly thinker about possible ways to make
revenue without ads. If you are really honest about it to yourself you will
realize it's not a very solid business model. People can easily circumvent ads
and/or just ignore them.

~~~
mattmanser
Ad block is only effective because not many people use it.

If it were even vaguely popular all major sites would have found a way to stop
it working, they'd be a constant war going on.

~~~
bliker
I cannot imagine how could somebody prevent browser extensions injecting code
to websites. As a happy user of ad-block I have seen some sites that force you
to turn it off. Like iconmonstr.com But that can be easily circumvent.

~~~
unbeli
For example, by making it difficult to tell what part of the website is an ad.

------
kodemunky
Since when does HN publish spam/ads?

