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Hotmail: best at fighting spam? (Updated, study commissioned by Microsoft, executed independently)

Feb 13, 2012 10:52 am by Kip Kniskern | 9 comments

According to a new study by Cascade Insights, as cited by an Inside Windows Live post, Microsoft’s Hotmail narrowly beat out Gmail (and they both significantly out-performed Yahoo! Mail, and an unfiltered web host account) in a test by the independent firm.

The test signed up newly created email accounts to a number of newsletters and both legitimate and suspicious looking websites, and let the email flow in. After a little over a month (from Nov. 14, 2011, through Dec. 20, 2011), results were tallied, and Hotmail narrowly beat out Gmail (HAM refers to legitimate emails, ie: newsletters they signed up for, etc.):

You can check out Cascade Insights at CascadeInsights.com and read the full report here.

The Inside Windows Live blog post reveals that their efforts to reduce spam with Hotmail, which back in 2006 ran at some 30% of all Hotmail email, have continued to make improvements, citing a further 25% since they last publicly updated the numbers in August 2011. At that time, Microsoft claimed to have reduced “SITI”, or “spam in the inbox” from 30% to about 3%:

The post also claims that customer complaints related to spam have dropped by 40% in the past year, that questions about managing safe and blocked sender lists have dropped to “near zero”, and that there’s still work to be done, for example around “phishing attacks”.

Are you noticing less spam in your inbox? Do you notice better performance between webmail services if you use more than one? The two (so far) commenters on the blog post seem happy:

This is exactly why I love my Hotmail account and hate my gmail account. I get literally hundreds of spam messages in my INBOX each week in my gmail account with over to 800 on average in my spam folder at any given time. (auto deletes after a certain period of time). I haven’t had a spam message in my Hotmail account for years!� CrazyTegger
The graymail support is a major differentiator between Hotmail and Gmail. Oddly enough, Gmail has turned into my spam bucket while Hotmail is the place where I, “do work”.� phouse

Update: We contacted Sean Campbell, co-owner of Cascade Insights, to clarify the source and commission of this study. His reply:

Microsoft commissioned this study, however we executed the study independently of any influence from Microsoft. Our researchers had full reign over the methodology and approach.

Just so you know.

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http://www.r-gate.net/ Mohamed Tair
Yeah, interesting post about mail services
thanks ^^
http://twitter.com/mikemuch Michael Muchmore
Note, however, that Gmail delivered more good emails: False positives–losing a critical email that you wanted–can be more treacherous than dealing with spam.
- scottswigart
  As stated in our research, our investigation was designed purely to measure SPAM in the inbox. Our research was not designed, in any way, to measure false positives. No numbers in our report should be construed as any measure of false positives. There is a more detailed explanation of this in the research report.
- Anonymous
  i never lost critical email in hotmail. i still see some spam in my gmail account. i dont mind little bit of spam because i can help them in future by marking the email as junk. but the thing i hate abt gmail is the ads that appear based on the content of my email. its just creepy. i hate it. i dont hate gmail but i hate the ads based on the content of my email. i dont want even a computer to read the content of my sensitive/extremly private financial emails.
  sorry bro
Fred A.
I noticed many months ago that I get almost no spam. Keep up the good work Hotmail team. Oh, and I don’t lose any critical emails either.
- Anonymous
  i kno. i was a hotmail customer. i moved to yahoo because of spam in hotmail (earlier days) and i started experiencing the same thing in yahoo and some1 told me hotmail improved their spam filters. i moved back to hotmail and i am really happy with the results. i dont see spam in my inbox. i am also happy with the evolution of skydrive.
  ps: i like gmail but its creepy when u see ads based on the content of your email
Anonymous
i dont see any spam in my inbox. i am happy with hotmail. i see few spam mails in my gmail account. yahoo is filled with spam. this was the reason i moved back to hotmail. i am happy with my decision.
ps: i like gmail but it feels creepy as if some1 is watching u (aka ads based on the content of my email). google should stop doing that.�
Anonymous
Now if we can get everybody to leave the name “Hotmail” alone. They talk about how it is not a cool name or it just doesn’t sound right when you give someone your email address….WHATEVER! Stop trying to change the name.
- Anonymous
  FWIW, if someone doesn’t like HOTmail, he/she could always check out COLDmail (http://coldmail.com) Of course, that service seems to have gone cold itself, since they said (at the EMD forum) that they’d be up and running last year. But still, nothing. Only sign-ups. :-( I guess SAYING one is starting an email service is easier than actually STARTING it. ;-)