Like much of what Microsoft does, its Hotmail program has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.  Specifically, it collects spam.

Now, it's true that, when Hotmail is configured properly by the user, most of this spam goes directly to the junk mail folder.  However, one would think that the producer of the world's most widely used operating system would have the know-how to block altogether what is obviously mass-mailed garbage with messages consisting of gibberish.  If Microsoft could just develop a program that rejected every message containing every possible variation of the word Cialis from its servers, the contents of my Hotmail folders would be immediately reduced by at least 50%.  These Cialis messages are pointless; they consist of some disguised form of the word (e.g., #C&iaL+is!) and a text made up of heiroglyphics.

I realize that I do have the option of allowing only mail from approved senders or of instructing Hotmail to dump anything that it thinks is spam in the trash.  However, at my end, such an approach risks my losing legitimate messages.  If Microsoft were as intent as it says it is about waging war against the spammers, it would use its expertise to cut them off at the pass, so to speak, rather than placing the burden on users, whose individual blocking techniques do little to stem the tide of unsolicited mail.

Fortunately, Hotmail is only my backup e-mail program, maintained mostly as a place for redirecting junk mail (a task it performs very well).  All of my mail is integrated on my computer with Outlook (also a Microsoft program), but, unlike my other e-mail accounts, Hotmail cannot be integrated in such a way that my spam guard program automatically detects and deletes spam – at least, not until I pull the spam from Hotmail into the Outlook inbox.  My other mailboxes get about half as much spam as Hotmail does, but 95% of that is automatically zapped and can be dumped in one fell swoop from the deleted items folder.  Hotmail requires several steps to get rid of the stuff completely – either by going to the Hotmail website or by performing computer gymnastics in Outlook (which only deletes the spam from Outlook, not from Hotmail itself).

Be that as it may, none of my other mailboxes are inundated with Cialis gibberish the way Hotmail is.  Why do I have a feeling that spammers break into hysterical laughter when they hear Bill Gates pontificating about how Microsoft is going to break their backs?  Can a company whose operating system and browser is so full of holes that it must be patched almost hourly erect an effective blockade against millions of spam messages?  Hell, no, but the fact remains that other, less powerful outfits are doing a better job.

And speaking of patches, has anyone noticed that Microsoft's humongous Service Pack 2 has done little to increase security while vastly increasing the number of nuisance messages (blocking user-initiated actions such as intentional downloads)?  But that's a beef for another time.