No compromise
Microsoft has rolled out what it hopes will prove a particularly useful feature to Hotmail - the ability to flag another account as compromised. The tool means that on receiving spam emails from a contact, you can flag that account as likely to have been compromised.
To the end-user this is little different to marking any other email as junk. In the background, however, Hotmail's anti-spam filters take notifications of compromised accounts into consideration when deciding if content is spam. In fact, Microsoft says that an email having been called out as received from a compromised account will be one of the stronger indicators it uses to determine spam emails - as it's entirely possible that the person doing the flagging could be the first to receive that mail.
Flagging a user's account as potentially compromised also locks it down, stopping any spammer from accessing it further. The next time a user tries to log in to the account, they will be taken through steps to verify their identity and restore access.
Particularly noteworthy is that this feature doesn't just work with Hotmail accounts - although that was a limit of the initial implementation. Microsoft has worked with both Google and Yahoo! enabling users of those providers to recover compromised accounts, too.
In similar Microsoft news, the company has rolled out a Windows Phone 7 app for controlling Windows Home Server devices. As well as enabling control of the system, the device also enables steaming of media stored on a Windows Home Server to a Windows Phone 7 handset. Not the most exciting addition to WP7, but nice to have if you own a Windows Home Server.
