Microsoft has apparently now fixed an issue with its Hotmail and Outlook spam filters that meant its users were being flooded with spam emails.

The company admitted on its support page that it had uncovered a problem, saying, "Some users may be receiving excessive spam mail," although it would not reveal exactly what went wrong.

Shortly after releasing the update on its service page, Microsoft rolled out updates to Hotmail and Outlook that fixed the filters and its own infrastructure to prevent it happening again.

"One will provide short term relief preventing spam reaching your inbox," reveals Microsoft. "The second will be a longer term fix which should stop spam reaching our infrastructure," the company explained.

The problems went on for around 17 hours according to users, which certainly left a bad taste in thier mouths. As expected, annoyed users posted messages of frustration on social media, ensuring Microsoft and their friends and followers knew of the problems.

Erica Jean wrote on Twitter: "HEY @Outlook @hotmail WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE SPAM EMAILS TODAY? I've had almost 60 overnight and they're NOT GOING AWAY," while other users seemed to be in competition to announce how many spam emails they had received.

However, some users saw the lighter side of being spammed by spam.

"Look at all of these great deals I've been missing out on for years," Peck Ed wrote on Reddit. "Now if you chaps will excuse me, I'm off to become a... millionaire getting a great deal on my car insurance with my new Russian bride at the Casino with my free bets."

Jonathan Lakeman joked on Twitter: "Thanks to @hotmail the only genuine e-mail I got all day was from my desolate Nigerian Uncle (I didn't know I had). #slamdunkthejunk #spam."

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to deactivate Outlook.com accounts. To do this, users simply need to click on the account settings tab, scroll down and there should be an option to close your account there.

When you click on this, you'll be asked to enter your Outlook.com password and then taken to another screen that asks you to deactivate your account.

For some reason, when IT Pro clicked on the deactive Hotmail account link, we were taken back to the MSN home page. However, if this happens to you, try clicking here instead, as this allowed us to proceed with the termination process.

If you have a change of heart once you've deactivated your account, as long as you log into it again within 365 days, you can reclaim your email address and username.

Unfortunately, your contacts and emails are likely to have been wiped. So, if you do decide to pursue this route, make sure you've backed up everything first.

Unfortunately, you can't. While users who trialled Outlook.com before its full launch were able to switch back and forth, since the Hotmail brand was retired if you switched over there's no way to switch back and you can't sign up for a new hotmail account.

The option to forward on an email no longer has its own standalone tab, like it did in Hotmail, which has created confusion for lots of users since the Outlook.com switchover took place.

If you need to access this feature, open an email and click on the reply tab. This will result in a drop down menu appearing that features a "Forward" option.

If you click on the downward arrow in the top left hand corner of the Outlook.com home screen, a menu with four tabs should drop down.

Click on the one marked "People" and all of your old Hotmail contacts should be there. If that's not the case, it might be worth flagging this issue to Microsoft to see if they can shed any light on it.

The People tab also lets you populate your contacts list with details of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connections, and message their social networking profiles without leaving Outlook.

Whereas Hotmail provided users with a chronological view of ever email they had received, Outlook.com groups together correspondents that have been sent by the same contact into an ongoing thread, making it difficult for users to pick out individual messages.

It's a similar system to the one employed by Gmail and the online version of Microsoft's corporate Outlook product, but if you're used to seeing your emails lined up in a linear fashion it may take a little while to get used to.

Microsoft appears to have re-jigged the print email function in Outlook since we originally posted our tutorial, much to the chargrin of users.

Previously, when you opened an Outlook email, you would click on the "Actions" button in the top right hand corner, which would result in a drop down menu appearing with a "Print Message" option.

Since then the "Actions" tab appears to have been discontinued and replaced with a "...", as pictured.

If you click on this, a new drop down menu should appear, and the "Print" option is listed at the bottom.

However, as you can see from the comments box below, some users seem to be without an "Actions" or "..." tab at this time, so all we can suggest is using your browser's print page function (CTRL + P) until Microsoft comes up with a suitable alternative.

Although this is hardly an ideal solution because, as well as the email, the Outlook side bars (detailing how many items are currently sitting in your inbox) and the ads along the right hand side, will also be printed out too.

If you click on the setting wheel icon within Outlook.com, you should see a drop down menu with a Leave Feedback option.

Click on this, and you'll be asked to select a box that best describes the nature of your feedback ("I love the new look" or "I don't like the new look"). Once that's done, you'll be asked to complete a form where you can go into more detail about what you do or don't like about the service, and whether or not you would recommend it to others.

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to deactivate Outlook.com accounts. To do this, users simply need to click on the account settings tab, scroll down and there should be an option to close your account there.

When you click on this, you'll be asked to enter your Outlook.com password and then taken to another screen that asks you to deactivate your account.

For some reason, when IT Pro clicked on the deactive Hotmail account link, we were taken back to the MSN home page. However, if this happens to you, try clicking here instead, as this allowed us to proceed with the termination process.

If you have a change of heart once you've deactivated your account, as long as you log into it again within 365 days, you can reclaim your email address and username.

Unfortunately, your contacts and emails are likely to have been wiped. So, if you do decide to pursue this route, make sure you've backed up everything first.

As another busy week in the tech world draws to a close, we take a look at some of the stories that have been getting IT Pro readers hot under the collar over the past seven days.

The IT skills gap has emerged as a major talking point this week, while the fallout from the Hotmail to Outlook switchover continues to be causing problems for certain members of the IT Pro community.

Skilling up

This week Labour leader Ed Miliband named former Tomorrow's World presenter Maggie Philbin as the head of his party's new digital skills taskforce, which aims to establish ways to address the UK's IT skills shortage.

As part of this, the party wants to increase the quality and quantity of IT apprenticeships, and reduce the sector's reliance on overseas firms and outsourcing to fill jobs.

Newby IT Pro commenter Mark Evans seemed less than impressed by the plan, and urged politicians to keep their noses out of technology issues.

"Politicians and technology go together like turtles and triathlons. There's always a taskforce and there's always some vaguely tech-related (but not scarily so) has been bolted on to sweeten the deal," said Evans.

"[Based] on past experiences of politicians of any persuasion, we'd all be better off if they just carried on taking free lunches from multi-national systems integrators. But then we wonder why a massive procurement system for a government department goes MASSIVELY over budget."

Sticking with the education theme, RichKEngland said it's not the lack of skills that are holding some IT workers back, but how recruitment agencies go about sourcing candidates.

"We have one of the best educated workforces in the world and many cannot get through the employment agencies' petty prejudices in order to get work," he claimed.

"There are thousands of highly skilled and experienced IT engineers who cannot get work as the employment agencies filter them out.

"They exclude older candidates who were in IT before qualifications were common, and lack the apprenticeship schemes and training opportunities offered to younger candidates," RichKengland added.

Hotmail horror

More than nine months after Microsoft began the process of upgrading Hotmail users to its new-look webmail client Outlook.com, and complaints about the look and feel of it continue to trickle in.

JacquiFoulds and David Turton were one of a number of IT Pro readers to express their dismay at the Outlook.com interface this week.

"Why can't I get my emails? What a disaster. It keeps telling me my password is wrong and I've only ever had one password," fumed Jacqui. "It doesn't give me the option to change it. You can stick it."

Mr. Turton was even more scathing in his review of Outlook.com, and even went on to suggest taking legal action against Microsoft for overhauling the service.

"JUST WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HOTMAIL? You must have had thousands of unhappy people complaining," declared Turton.

"I have lost all my folders and contacts which are very important to me. If [only] I could I would take you to court for conning me."

Licensing lies

Enterprises are entering a software licensing minefield by embracing self-service IT models, according to research published by IDC and Flexera Software this week.

The findings suggested that many organisations are failing to ensure that they are compliant with software licensing rules when inviting workers to embrace a self-service IT environment.

However, IT Pro reader Rob Harmer claimed its usually smaller firms, not enterprises, that find themselves on the receiving end of software audits.

"While enterprises are also at risk of audit, they have the size and legal clout to negotiate their way out a settlement. The little fish get burnt at the stake, every time," he said.

Outlook.com, the successor to Microsoft's venerable Hotmail.com webmail service, has celebrated one year since the first beta version of the email Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering was released.

In a blog post to mark the anniversary, Dick Craddock, partner group programme manager for Outlook.com at Microsoft, said: "A year ago today, we introduced the preview of Outlook.com. It was the first step in our mission to reimagine personal email, from the datacentre all the way to the customer experience.

"You've been a tremendous help in making Outlook.com a better service for all of us and the world's fastest growing email service, so we want to take a moment to say thank you."

However, since the beta launch on 31 July 2012 and subsequent full rollout over the course of this year, Outlook.com has been dogged by controversy.

During the beta testing period, which ran until February 2013, users flooded Microsoft's forums with complaints.

Some users were upgraded without their permission and found the "Go Back To Hotmail" button was not working, while others upgraded to the preview voluntarily, only to be greeted with a blank screen when they tried to log in.

Still others managed to successfully upgrade and log in, but found all their Hotmail emails had disappeared.

Nevertheless, Microsoft ploughed on with the upgrade and in December 2012 began introducing ads into Hotmail encouraging users to upgrade to Outlook.com.

Eventually, those who had not already taken the plunge were pushed, as Microsoft began to automatically upgrade Hotmail accounts to Outlook.com.

The process was completed in May, but many users were left confused by the new interface leading IT Pro to produce a tutorial, which is regularly updated, addressing many of the common difficulties raised by readers since the Outlook.com upgrade began.

But despite the glitches, including a major hiccup during migration that left users unable to log in to either Hotmail or Outlook.com, Craddock has hailed the rollout of the overhauled service a success.

Outlook.com now has over 400 million users more than the total population of the USA and has over the past 12 months received 600 improvements delivered in 34 feature releases, which were, according to Craddock, based primarily on user feedback.

"It's been a pretty busy and exciting 12 months (and less than 6 months since we came out of preview on February 19). Thank you all for the hundreds of improvements you've helped us make, and for choosing to make Outlook.com part of your daily lives," said Craddock.

"We're excited about where we are today, the world's fastest growing email service and there's still a ton more to come. So keep letting us know what you want to see next and how we can deliver an amazing personal email service for you," he concluded.

Microsoft claims it now has 400 million active Outlook.com users, after completing work on upgrading all of its Hotmail customers to the redesigned webmail platform.

The software giant confirmed the completion of its contentious Hotmail to Outlook.com upgrades in a blog post, where it revealed the process had required the migration of 150 petabyes of data.

"When Outlook.com came out of preview in February, it already had more than 60 million active accounts...[but] Hotmail was still one of the most widely used services, with over 300 million active accounts," the blog post stated.

"This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes equalling more than 150 million gigabytes of data and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders and personal preferences were preserved.

"With your help, we were able to do all of that in just about six weeks," it added.

The blog post also acknowledges the upgrade has not been welcomed by everyone, something that has been borne out in many of the comments IT Pro has received from readers since Outlook.com first launched.

Many have complained about the product's new Windows 8-like interface, while others have experienced issues navigating the software, which IT Pro has sought to address here.

"Whenever a widely-used consumer service makes any substantial change, there will always be some folks that don't like it, and that shows up in the feedback," the blog post continues.

"Our belief is that as people start using the new experience, they will come to love it even more than they loved Hotmail."

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that Skype would be imminently available within Outlook.com for a select group of users to preview, while the blog post also hints that other new features and functionality will be added in due course too.

"Thank you for all the feedback along the way and everything you did to help make Outlook.com the best and fastest growing personal email out there," the blog post continued.

"We're excited to keep hearing from you and there's a lot more to come. Welcome to the new Outlook.com and onwards to a billion inboxes!"

A firmware upgrade in one of Microsoft's datacentres led to an outage that left users of its Hotmail and Outlook webmail without access to the service for hours.

In a blog, Arthur de Haan, vice president for Windows Live test and service engineering, said that the outage happened after the firm attempted to update the firmware on a core part of datacentre infrastructure. The outage affected some people's access to a small part of the SkyDrive service, but primarily Hotmail.com and Outlook.com, according to Microsoft.

"This is an update that had been done successfully previously, but failed in this specific instance in an unexpected way," said de Haan. "This failure resulted in a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the datacenter."

De Haan added that the spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused safeguards to come into place for a large number of servers in this part of the datacentre.

"These safeguards prevented access to mailboxes housed on these servers and also prevented any other pieces of our infrastructure to automatically failover and allow continued access," he said.

Once the safeguards kicked in on these systems, the team was alerted and began to work on restoring access. A mix of infrastructure software and human intervention was needed to bring the core infrastructure back online., according to de Haan.

"Requiring this kind of human intervention is not the norm for our services and added significant time to the restoration," said de Haan.

The majority of the impacted mailboxes were fully restored before midnight and the rest completed by 5:30 AM local time.

De Haan said that the company regretted the impact of the outage had on users.

"Now that we're through the resolution, we're also hard at work on ensuring this doesn't happen again," he said.

As reported by IT Pro, this is just the latest in a series of outages the Microsoft webmail service has suffered. At the end of February, a planned upgrade of Hotmail users to its new Outlook.com resulted in users unable to access emails when they try to sign in via its desktop and mobile sites.

Last September, Hotmail users reported problems stopping them from accessing emails.

Users of Microsoft's web-based email services have been hit by another round of technical difficulties, as the firm's Hotmail to Outlook.com upgrades gather pace.

According to the software giant's Service Status page, Hotmail and Outlook users have experienced email access problems since yesterday evening.

The firm's cloud-based storage service SkyDrive also experienced service troubles that made it difficult for users to add, edit and remove files, but these were fixed in the earlier hours of this morning.

"You might not be able to see all your email messages. We're working to restore service right now," said the company in a Hotmail service update.

"Fixing the problem is taking longer than we hoped...We apologise for the lengthy interruption in service," it concluded.

The downtime reports are appearing on Microsoft's main Service Status page, suggesting this is a wider-scale outage than the one that blighted Hotmail users last month.

At the time of that outage, Hotmail users complained that Microsoft had not kept them updated about when the service would be resolved.

In a statement to IT Pro at the time, Microsoft said, because of the small percentage of users affected by the outage, affected users would have seen a personalised status update when they logged into their accounts.

The migration of Hotmail users to Outlook.com is expected to be completed in the summer, but has been beset with issues so far.

As reported by IT Pro last week, many users claim to have been updated without being notified first and have complained about the system's new Windows 8-like user interface.

Updated: Microsoft has since claimed yesterday's Hotmail and Outlook service problems were caused by an unexpected temperature spike in one of the firm's datacentres.

In a blog post, the company said the temperature rose in a "rapid and substantial" way following a firmware update at a core part of the physical plant.

"This is an update that had been done successfully previously, but failed in this specific instance in an unexpected way," the post stated.

"This [temperature] spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused safeguards to come into place for a large number of servers in this part of the datacentre.

"These safeguards prevented access to mailboxes houses on these servers and also prevented any other pieces of our infrastructure to automatically failover and allow continued access," it added.

This article was originally published on 13 March, but updated to include details of Microsoft's response.

Microsoft's planned upgrade of Hotmail users to its new Outlook.com service hit a snag today, with numerous reports of users being locked out of their accounts.

The problem seems to be affecting existing Hotmail users that have recently upgraded to Outlook, preventing them from accessing their emails when they try to sign in via its desktop and mobile sites.

Based on IT Pro's own investigation, non-Hotmail users that have signed up for Outlook.com accounts do not appear to be affected at this time in the UK.

Hotmail and Outlook.com users have used the social networking site Twitter to express their frustration at the service trouble, which is thought to have been going on for several hours.

One user, @WillGorgeousy, wrote: "@Microsoft Looks like the migration to Outlook isn't working. Hotmail down on the web. Keep us posted on any updates."

Meanwhile, Hotmail user ‏@LouboutinJools claimed: "Absolutely nothing but grief with my Hotmail account since I [moved] to Outlook. Put it off for as long as you can."

IT Pro approached Microsoft for clarification about the number and general location of the affected users, but was still awaiting a response as this article went to press.

In the meantime, the Microsoft Support account on Twitter confirmed that "Hotmail/Outlook services are down" and that it is working to fix the issue.

The account also advises users to check its service status page, which at the time of publication reported no problems affecting Hotmail or Outlook.com.

News of the outage comes less than a week after Microsoft announced that it was stepping up its efforts to get Hotmail users to migrate to Outlook.com, as it prepares to retire its aging email brand.

This isn't the first time Hotmail users have run into problems with the move to Outlook, as many claimed to have been switched to Outlook.com without permission back in August 2012, and reported problems accessing emails.

Updated: Since IT Pro broke news of the Hotmail/Outlook outage yesterday, Microsoft have been in touch with a brief statement. In it, the company said the problem has now been fixed.

"Hotmail and Outlook.com experienced a short-term incident that caused a small percentage of customers not to be able to access their email. We worked quickly to resolve the issue, and service is now restored to normal; we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers," a company spokesperson wrote.

Whether or not yesterday's problems will affect Microsoft's reported momentum, when it comes to getting users to ditch Hotmail in favour of Outlook.com is anyone's guess, as the company recently claimed its new email client already has 60 million active users.

Hotmail users will officially start being upgraded to Microsoft's Outlook.com email service, which has been officially launched today.

The firm claims that 60 million users have signed up to Outlook.com since it was made available for preview six months ago.

David Law, director of Outlook.com product management said that Microsoft has taken feedback on board to improve the service before launching it worldwide and moving users off of Hotmail.

"Through the preview, we've heard and learned a great deal about your favourite features and how well Outlook.com is delivering on our vision for modern email," he said in the Official Microsoft blog.

"For example, millions of people are connecting Outlook.com to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up-to-date on their friends' contact info, updates, photos, and Tweets. And a number of people have expressed appreciation that Outlook.com replaces advertising with the latest updates from Facebook or Twitter when they're reading email from one of their contacts."

Law claimed on average users see 60 per cent fewer ads when using Outlook.com. Microsoft plans to kick-off a major marketing campaign to promote the service and claims that it is ready to scale to a billion users.

However, not everything has gone smoothly with the planned migration. When the Outlook.com service was originally debuted in August 2012, Hotmail users vented their frustration as they were automatically upgraded without being consulted.

There appeared no way to switch back to the Hotmail service and some users were left without access to email.

Microsoft tried to remedy the situation by providing a step-by-step guide to upgrading, but it remained adament that the Hotmail brand would be phased out.

It remains to be seen if the upgrade goes smoothly. This is the second mass migration which Microsoft is working on con-currently.

The firm is also retiring its long-serving Windows Live Messenger service on 8 April and moving everyone over to the Skype platform, which it purchased in 2010 for $8.5bn.

Microsoft has assured Hotmail users that it will not force them off the email platform just yet, despite announcing plans to ramp up its Outlook.com advertising efforts in the coming weeks.

The software giant announced plans to rebrand Hotmail as Outlook.com at the end of July, and urged users to register and try out its new web-based email service.

The important thing for us is to get the word out there as quickly as we can.

In the early days of the new product's release, IT Pro was inundated with reports from disgruntled Hotmail users who struggled with the transition , but since then the platform has been adopted by more than 25 million users.

In an interview with The Next Web, David Law, director of product management at Microsoft's Outlook.com arm, said the company will start advertising the service to Hotmail users via inbox ads and emails this week.

"We want to make sure people know they don't have to change their email address, or their password," he explained. "Also, they won't lose any emails or calendar entries.nothing changes, except they get the new UI."

At the moment, there is no set switch-off date for Hotmail, he added, but the company is hopeful that all users will eventually make the jump to Outlook.com.

"Our goal is to get everyone over from Hotmail to Outlook. We're going to push this quite a bit, as an optional upgrade," said Law.

"At some point, we will end up moving folks over. It won't be months, but we haven't set a date for it yet...The important thing for us is to get the word out there as quickly as we can," he added.

A number of Hotmail users were locked out of their email accounts by a login glitch earlier today.

The problem had been reported by a slew of Hotmail users on social networking site Twitter, who after inputting their username and password claimed to have been either redirected to the login screen again or faced with a blank, white screen.

"Is Hotmail down? I cant access my email on my Android app and the webpage is not available," said @XboxSONJ2012

"Hotmail is down again, just goes to show how out-dated they are and how poor there service is. Switching everything over to Gmail later," added @AshleyLLoyd5.

Microsoft's live status screen confirmed that Hotmail, Messenger and the firm's cloud storage service SkyDrive were experiencing unspecified technical difficulties earlier.

Meanwhile, according to a status report on website uptime monitor Downrightnow.com, Hotmail had been suffering problems since around 11am today.

At the time of writing, the problems appeared to have been fixed.

In a statement to IT Pro, Microsoft said: "Some Microsoft services experienced a short-term issue that caused a small number of customers not to be able to access their accounts.

"We worked quickly to resolve the issue, and service is now restored to normal. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers."

Microsoft has issued some further guidance to help ease Hotmail users through the transition to Outlook.com, after many admitted struggling with the switchover.

The firm announced Outlook.com as the successor to its consumer webmail service Hotmail last week, as it fights to win back users from Google's Gmail platform.

Since then, Microsoft has been encouraging Hotmail users to try a preview version of Outlook.com, with seemingly mixed results.

As reported by IT Pro on Friday, Hotmail users have been flooding the software giant's web forums with reports of problems they have encountered since switching to Outlook.com.

In the first few days alone, we've seen several million people upgrade to Outlook.com.

For instance, some users claim their accounts have been upgraded to Outlook.com without their permission, while others are struggling to access the new site at all.

Many have also reported losing access to their old Hotmail emails post-upgrade.

IT Pro has also been inundated with complaints from disgruntled Outlook.com users, with several readers calling on Microsoft to ditch the venture and keep Hotmail.

"Having used proper, professional Outlook I thought to myself, "what could go wrong?' Well, almost everything," claimed one reader, calling themselves Blue5creen0fDeath.

"[It] looks clunky, hides away the option to change back to Hotmail, keeps opening up new windows [and] causes confusion."

When IT Pro approached Microsoft for a response, the firm's press team directed us to a blog post, which contains a step-by-step guide to moving from Hotmail to Outlook.com.

The blog post was published on Friday afternoon and claims "several million" people have upgraded to Outlook.com since it was first unveiled.

In it, users are urged to think very carefully about adopting an Outlook.com address, with the software giant stating that it is a move that is difficult to undo.

End users are also warned that switching to an Outlook.com address means they will have to login with their new email address and password to use other Microsoft services, including Xbox and Windows Phone.

"If you use a Windows Phone, you will need to reset your Windows Phone to factory settings, and then set it back up with the new account name," the blog states.

"You will lose all [your] personal data when you do this, so make sure you have [it]backed up."

The blog post does not provide any guidance to users that may have encountered post-switch problems, much to the chagrin of some of the site's visitors, who have left feedback in the comments section.

However, Microsoft is encouraging users to give them direct feedback about the problems they may be having.

"We've built Outlook.com to be modern email for the next billion inboxes. We hope you like it, and we want to hear from you," the blog post concludes.

"Our product team uses your feedback to make the product even better. So, tell us what you think, and thanks for using Outlook.com."

Hotmail users have been left fuming at Microsoft after being automatically upgraded to an Outlook.com email address without asking.

There have been over 55 pages worth of complaints in the Microsoft Answers forum and IT Pro readers have also been in touch to confirm they are having problems.

There are four major issues being reported:

1) Some users have been upgraded without their permission. The "Go Back to Hotmail" option does not seem to work for everyone.

Microsoft has confirmed once an email is switched to Outlook, it cannot be changed back.

"Unfortunately there is no way to rename to an existing account. This is something we're investigating for future improvements," Microsoft said in the forum.

2) Not everyone has been able to upgrade to Outlook.com with some users being greeted with a blank screen and others with error messages.

3) Most worryingly, some users have been unable to see their old emails from their Hotmail account after upgrading.

4) Problems are also being reported with the Hotmail Human Interactive Proof (HIP) validation process. Errors are appearing saying the characters don't match with the ones in the 'picture'. Microsoft has recognised this problem in the forum and is working to fix this issue.

IT Pro readers have been complaining that there is no way to return to their old email.

"I tried backing out, but have found my old Hotmail account - which I have had for over twenty years - has been de-activated so that I can't send or receive email from it in Windows Live," noted Obray.

"Even after I clicked on Go Back to Hotmail, it has still left my Hotmail account email in a subfolder to the inbox. This is really disappointing. I think MS needed to think this out a bit more before sending people down this path."

Members of the IT Pro team have had similar experiences. Our Editor and Technical Editor had their Hotmail and Live accounts upgraded automatically. However, old emails have been transferred over to the new inbox and any messages sent to the old addresses do appear, which isn't the case for everyone.

Meanwhile, the News Editor's attempts to revert back to Hotmail resulted in her machine crashing. The Editor on our sister title Cloud Pro managed to log into Hotmail and was given the choice of whether or not to upgrade.

It appears that if you are logged into any of your Microsoft email accounts and go to the Outlook.com website, your ID will automatically be converted.

The safest way to keep your existing account appears to be to log out of all accounts, then proceed to Outlook.com to sign up as a new user.

Although, readers concerned about any of the issues raised above, might want to consider holding off on upgrading for now.

Microsoft has been informed of these issues, but is yet to respond.

Software giant Microsoft has reportedly plugged a security hole in its Hotmail email service, which allowed hackers to access accounts and reset passwords.

The problem was made public by researchers at Vulnerability Labs last week in a post on its website, which contained details of how hackers have exploited the flaw.

"[It allows] attackers to reset the Hotmail/MSN password with attacker chosen values," said the post. "Remote attackers can bypass the password recovery service [and token-based protections] to setup a new password."

If successful, hackers are then able to gain unauthorised access to Hotmail and MSN accounts, it added.

It is not know how many of the 350 million Hotmail users from across the globe had been targeted by the scam. However, it has been claimed that Moroccan hackers had been planning to use the flaw to reset the accounts of up to 13 million users.

Hackers aren't interested in breaking into email accounts because they want to read your spam. They want to steal your identity.

Moreover, a report on Sophos' Naked Security blog claims videos detailing how to exploit the flaw had been circulating on YouTube for some time.

"Hackers aren't just interested in breaking into email accounts out of curiousity or because they want to read your spam," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in the blog post.

"No, they're also interested in stealing your identity and perhaps using an email account hack as a method to crowbar their way into other online accounts under your control."

When contacted for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson told IT Pro: "Hotmail engineering teams are working hard on not only protecting accounts, but also on recover[ing] them."

They also revealed the firm has launched a new, "streamlined" recovery tool to help affected users regain access to their accounts.

Microsoft has sought to make brute force attacks on email accounts a thing of the past by banning weak passwords.

The Redmond giant said it wants to stop users placing themselves at risk by using passwords like "password," "123456," "ilovecats" or "gogiants."

"This new feature will be rolling out soon, and will prevent you from choosing a very common password when you sign up for an account or when you change your password," said Dick Craddock, group programme manager at Hotmail, in a blog post.

"If you're already using a common password, you may, at some point in the future, be asked to change it to a stronger password."

Microsoft has also created a new feature which allows Hotmail users to report hacked accounts.

"It's easy: when you get that spam message supposedly from your friend, you just click My friend's been hacked!' on the Mark as' menu," Craddock said.

"You can also report an account as compromised when you mark a message as junk or otherwise move a message to the Junk folder."

A good week?

The Hotmail announcements round off a positive week for Microsoft in terms of security.

The company saw its Internet Explorer 9 rated as the best browser for blocking socially engineered malware.

In NSS Labs tests, IE9 managed to block 92 per cent of that particular type of threat, compared to 90 per cent for IE8. Safari, Chrome 10 and Firefox 4 all got just 13 per cent.

Microsoft has apologised after 17,355 Hotmail accounts had their contents emptied just before the turn of the year.

The Redmond giant said Monday it had located the root cause of the issue and the affected customers had their mail restored on 2 January.

Microsoft said the issue was caused by a "mailbox load balancing between servers."

"As with all incidents like this, we will fully investigate the cause and will take steps to prevent this from happening again," explained corporate vice president for Windows Live Chris Jones, in a blog post.

"We're very sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused to you, our customers and partners."

One user who commented on the blog post claimed Hotmail pages were still not working at full speed today.

Inboxes on affected accounts started emptying on 30 December and some users were so irate they launched a Facebook group to share their frustrations.

Some users claimed they had only been left with one email in their inbox the "Welcome to Hotmail" message.

With Facebook having launched its new Messages service, and with Google's Gmail bidding to take a chunk out of Hotmail's market share, Microsoft faces strong competition in the email segment in 2011 and could do without such glitches.

Microsoft had launched a big PR campaign in 2010 in a bid to boost Hotmail popularity, even though it remains the most widely used free email service in the world.

In June, a refresh of the service saw the addition of support for attachments of up to 10GB in size, whilst a new Sweep menu allowed the inbox to be organised more efficiently by making it easy to clear away unwanted messages.

In November, a new feature allowed account holders to use Hotmail's various features with any email address they use.

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in its Hotmail webmail service that allows you to use Hotmail's various features with any email address.

Hotmail accounts have been able to receive emails from other accounts for a while now, as long as they support the POP3 email receiving technology. Hotmail addresses can now pose as another address when sending emails too, so emails sent from Hotmail appear to be sent from a GMail address, your work address or any other address you choose. This therefore allows you to use Hotmail features, such as sending huge attachments, with any other email address.

"We understand. You already have at least one email address and you probably don't need another. You may also use your existing address for things other than just email, such as signing in to online shopping sites, which makes changing even more challenging. Also, you might have an address that you really like, but a similar name might not be available on another email service. So we looked for a way to make it easier for people to give Hotmail a trial run," said Microsoft's Dick Craddock on the Windows Live blog.

"Today we begin rolling out a feature that makes it easy to use Hotmail with any existing email address. Just as you can use Microsoft Outlook with an address from any service, you can now do the same with Hotmail on the web."

The feature can enabled by clicking on the Option link in the right hand side pane of the main Hotmail window, choose More Options and then click the Sending/receiving email from other accounts link.

Microsoft is rolling out this new feature to Hotmail accounts now. Although new to Hotmail, Google's GMail service has had the ability to pose as other email addressees for a while now so users can, for example, use that service's anti-spam filters with other addresses.

"We're just starting to roll out this change today, so it may take a few days to reach all of our customers worldwide. When it does, please give it a try, and let me know how it's working for you," Craddock added.

Microsoft has begun upgrading Hotmail users to an all-new version of the webmail service offering support for larger file attachments and the ability to view content from an increased number of third-party services from within the Hotmail window.

Possibly the most significant development in Hotmail Wave 4 is support for attachments up to 10GB in size. Also new is the Sweep menu, which allows the inbox to be organised more efficiently by making it simple to clear away unwanted messages.

Images no longer have to be sent in full to recipients' inboxes they can instead be hosted on Windows Live SkyDrive slideshows and previewed in inboxes to save space.

In addition, you can now access third-party services such as YouTube, Flickr and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter without having to leave the Hotmail page. Fans of Gmail-style conversation views can now replicate that look in Hotmail too, though unlike in Gmail you still have the choice.

From today, Hotmail's 360 million users are being upgraded to the new version one "cluster" of accounts at a time, though with hundreds of clusters in total to upgrade, it may be some time until everyone is using the new look.

"If you don't see these features today, please hold on just a little while longer--everybody will be upgraded this summer," wrote Mike Schackwitz, Windows Live Hotmail team programme manager, on the Windows Team blog.

The revamped Hotmail first shown off by Microsoft last month also offers integration with the newly launched Office Web Apps, allowing users to view and edit attachments within Hotmail.

Microsoft has unveiled the next version of Hotmail, showing off several new features which already exist in rival Google's Gmail.

Hotmail remains the world's biggest webmail service, although it has trailed behind Gmail in terms of features for many years. Now it appears Microsoft is keen to close the gap.

Among the list of new features being introduced into Hotmail are in-message previews of YouTube videos and Flickr photos, a facility that graduated from Gmail's Labs earlier this year. "Now if someone sends you a YouTube link, you can view the video right there in your inbox," David Law from Microsoft's Windows Live team said.

Web Apps

Microsoft is also playing catch up with the integration of its Office Web Apps into Hotmail. Documents attached to emails can be saved into Microsoft's online storage service, SkyDrive, and edited using the Web Apps. It means recipients won't need to have Office software installed on their PC to access and make changes to files.

In a bid to rival Google Docs, Microsoft is also talking up the collaboration features of Hotmail/Office Web Apps. Instead of sending each member of the team a copy of the same document and battling with multiple revisions, users will be able to upload one copy of the file to SkyDrive and edit the same file. Hotmail will send out alerts each time someone revises the document.

Microsoft insists this business-like feature will be useful for consumers too. "A lot of people don't use the data analysis tools in Excel, but they have children's football schedules or picnic sign-up forms in Excel," insists Law. "This is a good opportunity for us to add those consumer features [to Hotmail]."

Other features

Other new features being brought to Microsoft's webmail service include better photo handling. Photos can now be uploaded to SkyDrive folders and shared with fellow Hotmail users, instead of sending copies of each photo as an attachment. Photo folders can be set to expire after a set number of days, and recipients can also be given the option to add their own photos to the folder - allowing people to share all the pictures from one event in the same place, according to Law.

Hotmail also has a new photo album viewer, making it easier to flick through photos shared via SkyDrive.

Microsoft, which insists it's vastly reduced the amount of spam reaching Hotmail users, is making other attempts to clean up people's inboxes. A new feature called Sweep allows users to set up simple rules, such as moving all the email alerts arriving from Facebook to a dedicated folder, which they can check once a day, leaving the inbox clear for more important messages.

The Conversation View introduced with Office 2010, which (in theory, at least) groups messages in the same conversation into a single thread has also been added to Hotmail. This, again, is a feature that has been standard in Gmail since its inception.

The new version of Hotmail will be rolled out to users from July.

Revamped Hotmail plays catch up with Gmail

Microsoft has updated its webmail service Hotmail, adding a few features that have long been available in Google's Gmail. PC Pro

Government to name new digital minister soon

The new coalition government could name a new minister in charge of broadband as early as this week, with MP Ed Vaizey mooted as a top pick. BBC

Researchers step closer to stopping laptop battery fires

Cambridge researchers have found a way to see inside lithium batteries as they work, which should help find a way to prevent laptop fires. IT PRO

Spotify unveils new price plan, caps new users

Streaming music service Spotify has tweaked its price plans and placed a 20 hour a month cap on uninvited new users. Telegraph

A security researcher has claimed that some of the passwords stolen from Hotmail, Gmail and other webmail services were the result of a data theft trojan rather than a phishing attack.

Originally 10,000 Hotmail passwords were leaked onto the pastebin website, posted by an anonymous user. Later on, Google confirmed Gmail had been targeted as well.

Although Microsoft and Google have both said that the passwords were taken as a result of phishing, ScanSafe security researcher Mary Landesman said there was no way that the companies could have been totally sure of this.

Speaking to IT PRO she said: "No offence to, and I don't mean to undermine either Microsoft and Google, but certainly neither one of them can actually definitively either."

"I think they came out with phishing as the most likely explanation in their minds without having really gone over the lists in great detail," she added.

Landesman said that there were a lot of indicators in the password lists that are consistent with data theft rather than phishing.

"It doesn't mean that 100 per cent of the list was derived from either source [phishing or trojan], more likely a combination of sources," she said.

The researcher said that one tell-tale sign of a possible trojan was that 1,369 of the account records appeared more than once and as some as many as five times.

"Phishing scams do not typically vet the usernames and passwords when they receive them," she said.

"The fact that there actually seems to be failed login attempts is much more indicative of a keylogger or some sort of trojan capture."

She also said on her blog post that previous lists of known phished accounts generally saw some victims left nonsensical messages as they realised that they were being phished, but this list had no such entries.

She said that although '123456' did appear in the list as a password, it still only appeared 63 times out of the 10,000 records, and by and large most of the users had respectable passwords, so were potentially less likely to fall for a phishing scam.

Microsoft and Google had not responded to our request for comment on Landesman's remarks at the time of publication.

If you've ever felt that you could be read like a book, then IBM will want to hear from you, as it revealed that it is working on a genetic code reader', using nano-sized holes drilled into computer chips.

Microsoft's Hotmail service was the latest to come under attack from phishing this week, as it revealed that more than 10,000 accounts had been compromised. It probably wasn't so hard to gain access to many accounts though, as it came to light that many of the passwords were just '12345'.

At least Microsoft had some good news, as the EU dubbed its browser ballet solution a "very satisfactory resolution" to anti-competitive complaints.

Meanwhile, the US has claimed that it has cracked the largest phishing scam ever, in conjunction with Egyptian authorities.

Apple stormed off in a huff from the US Chamber of Commerce, saying that it disagrees with the chamber's policy on climate change.

Did you know that the internet was created in Harlow? Well sort of. Professor Charles K. Kao, dubbed the father of fibre optics', has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his groundbreaking work he did in the UK in the 1960s.

If you ever have trouble deciding what to wear to for work then things are going to get even tougher for you in the future as analyst firm Gartner has predicted that by 2013 enterprises will have to issue guidelines on the suitable appearance of avatars the little cartoon pictures that people use to represent themselves in the online world.

We also heard word that Dell is set to release a smartphone in the US with network partner AT&T next year.

Are you ready for digital books? Amazon has finally sorted out its licensing issues it seems, as it announced that it would be making its Kindle reader available in 100 countries worldwide, with it arriving in the UK on 19 October.

And if you're feeling like you no longer need the best part of 2,000 then Sony has an ultra-light laptop for you in the form of the X-Series notebook.

The phishing attack that exposed the details of 10,000 Hotmail users has revealed that 12345 was the most popular password of those caught out, according to a security researcher.

That's alarming news given the glut of information and warnings that pepper the internet, especially given the fact that the second most popular password was 123456789.

The information was revealed by security research Bogdan Calin on his blog. Calin reviewed the list of 10,000 Hotmail accounts posted on PasteBin by hackers and discovered that of the 9,843 valid passwords, 82 of them used one of these two numbers.

Also popular, and equally weak, were the passwords 12345678, 1234567 and 111111 - which all featured in the top ten.

The rest of the top ten was filled out with names such as alejandra, alberto, and alejandro, leading Calin to suspect that the phishing kit was targeting Latinos.

Another interesting fact to be pulled from his research was the longest password, which came in at a staggering 30 characters and was "lafaroleratropezoooooooooooooo". The shortest password, on the other hand, was only one character long.

In general, Calin found that the majority of the passwords were between six and nine characters long, with the average password eight characters in length.

Hotmail users weren't the only ones caught out by the phishers, with GMail, Yahoo and AOL also reporting that their users have been targeted.

Microsoft has confirmed that Hotmail customers were hit by a phishing attack, resulting in the release of thousands of passwords online.

Last Thursday, an anonymous user posted details of over 10,000 accounts - with addresses starting with the letters A or B - on a developer site.

Although the precise cause of the leak is still unclear, Microsoft said that once it had learned of the issue, it requested that the credentials were removed and launched an investigation.

A spokesperson said in a statement: "As part of that investigation, we determined that this is not a breach of any Microsoft servers."

The statement added: "Subsequently we are taking measures to block access to all of the accounts that were exposed and have resources in place to help those users reclaim their accounts."

Microsoft also said that phishing was an industry wide problem, and advised users to keep anti-virus software up to date as well as renew passwords every 90 days.

IT security firm Sophos said that users of Microsoft's online services should change their passwords, and the fact that the accounts began with A or B suggested that it could be the "tip of the iceberg".

"My recommendation for users of Microsoft's online services is to change your passwords immediately," said Sophos senior security advisor Chester Wisniewski in a statement.

"You are better to be safe than sorry, and password rotation is something we are often to lazy to do," he added.

The password details of thousands of Hotmail accounts have been leaked online, according to reports.

Technology website Neowin.net said that Windows Live Hotmail was part of a possible phishing hack, and that an anonymous user posted details of the accounts on developer site pastebin.com last Thursday.

Neowin.net said it had seen part of the list posted, and could confirm that the list was genuine and mostly from Europe. The list apparently showed over 10,000 accounts from the letters A to B, but there was a suggestion there could be additional lists.

The report said that accounts only used to access Windows Live Hotmail were affected, including @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com accounts.

"Microsoft has been made aware of the claims that Windows Live IDs and passwords have been made available on the web," Microsoft said in a statement.

It added: "We're actively investigating the situation and will take appropriate steps as rapidly as possible. Microsoft is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers and believe they deserve to have their personal data used only in ways they have agreed to, and in ways that provide value of them."

The top ten websites, lead by Facebook, gobble up half of UK surfers' internet time, according to new research.

The top ten websites take up 45 per cent of users' internet time, the report from Nielsen Online found and increase of three per cent from the previous year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top site was Facebook. One of every eight minutes surfers spent online was on that social networking site. The second most visited site was Microsoft's Windows Live, which includes its email service Hotmail.

"Between just the two of them, the two most heavily used web brands - Facebook and MSN/Windows Live - account for almost 11 billion of the 48 billion minutes that Britons spend online," said Alex Burmaster, European communications director for Nielsen Online, in a statement.

"That's over one in every five minutes and highlights just how competitive the online space is for both publishers and advertisers when it comes to capturing consumer attention," he added.

In April this year, the average Briton was online for 22 hours and 20 minutes, up from 34 per cent last year. Neilsen Online suggested Facebook could be one driver behind the jump, as it added 3.8 billion minutes over the year to 6.2 billion. Its market share by time climbed 5.6 per cent to 12.7 per cent.

Second-ranked MSN/Windows Live slid nearly a percentage point to 9.2 per cent, but added over a billion minutes in the past year. Third-ranked Google gained 0.4 per cent market share to 5.3 per cent, adding 950 million minutes.

Microsoft and Apple rounded out the list, which Nielsen Online attributed to the popularity of Windows Media Player and iTunes.

Because the top 10 firms are winning so much traffic, it leaves the other 7,625 brands watched by Neilsen battling it out for the other 55 per cent. While such smaller brands might not appreciate the big brands' dominance, Burmaster said it's not a bad thing for increasing online advertising.

"The major players have had a pretty good year in terms of the increasing amount of time people spend on their websites and applications," Burmaster added. "This bodes well for the online industry as it attempts to attract the big brand advertisers by providing a more meaningful platform to engage consumers, particularly through the vehicles of entertainment and communication."

The top ten web brands in the UK:

1 - Facebook (market share 12.7 per cent)

2 - MSN/Windows Live (9.2 per cent)

3 - Google (5.3 per cent)

4 - eBay (4.1 per cent)

5 - Yahoo! (3.5 per cent)

6 - AOL Media Network (3.0 per cent)

7 - BBC (2.3 per cent)

8 - YouTube (1.9 per cent)

9 - Microsoft (1.5 per cent)

10 Apple (1.5 per cent)

UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been criticised by a security vendor for using a Hotmail account for government business - an account that was subsequently hacked by Nigerian scammers.

Reports said that the fraudsters sent out hundreds of emails carrying the heading The Right Hon Jack Straw MP' to constituents, government chiefs and council bosses among others.

Mr Straw's adviser could not be reached for comment at the time of publication, but according to the Telegraph, Mr Straw said there were no security issues as the email address of his Blackburn constituency, rather than his ministerial account, was targeted.

However, Rik Ferguson, solutions architect at Trend Micro, said that he found it shocking that Mr Straw was using a Hotmail account to conduct government business.

He said: "If you go to the Jack Straw website, you'll see that is what's listed as his contact email address.

Ferguson outlined why he thought using Hotmail would be a problem: "Number one is that it is out of the control of any of the government IT systems.

"Any of the data within that Hotmail account is not backed up or controlled. And it won't be accessible via the Freedom of Information Act I would imagine, because it's not part of government systems."

Ferguson also said that if Mr Straw was using it for constituency or possible parliamentary business, especially for someone responsible for setting up the hi-tech crime unit, he should have taken the responsibility in using encrypted email.

He said that encrypted mail technology was now available from more than one vendor, but that its full potential wasn't being realised.

Ferguson mentioned laws in the US that prevented politicians from using non-sanctioned email systems to carry out official business. A Federal investigation took place during the US elections when Sarah Palin's Yahoo account was hacked.

He said: "The law says that if the data isn't backed up then it can't be made available by request, then you shouldn't be using it for government business."

Microsoft did not reply directly to IT PRO's request for comment on the issue of Hotmail use, but did state that it does not recommend sharing personal account information with third-party websites and that customers who choose to share their account information risk putting their private information into the wrong hands.

Microsoft went on to recommend that, for their own safety and security, users keep their account passwords secret and change them regularly.

The next version of Windows Live, Microsoft's web-based apps and services product, will see services such as email, instant messaging, photo hosting and other office applications merged into a single service.

The company has announced the plans as it looks to create a fully-integrated and easier-to-use online user experience for Live. Right now, the various components of Windows Live, such as email and web-based IM, exist as separate services within the Live environment.

Microsoft aims to use Windows Live to compete against popular social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, which both started to open their fast-growing websites to outside software developers last year.

The new Windows Live service plans to feature a main profile page that updates users to their friends' activities within Windows Live and on more than 50 outside web services including Yahoo's Flickr photo site and job-focused social networking site LinkedIn.

"It's a race to see who will work better and faster with everyone else," said Charlene Li, founder of consulting company Altimeter Group. "It's the recognition that you can't be an island of yourself."

The company's Windows Live strategy is also central to its plans to wrestle away online advertising revenue from Google, which has used its dominant search engine to expand into email, online word processing and other businesses that compete directly with Microsoft both online and on the desktop.

Microsoft plans to roll out the new Windows Live services, which will include a revamped email, calendar and a new photo application, in the US over the coming weeks and then make it available in 54 countries including the UK early next year.

Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live, pointed to Microsoft's Outlook application, which brought together email, calendar and contacts programs into a single integrated software suite, as a model for how it wanted to tie together a loose network of web services.

He also noted that the latest Windows Live release is focused on creating a more polished user experience, which, in the past, may have been sacrificed in order to get new applications out quicker.

Microsoft also plans to increase the size of its free storage service to 25GB from 20GB.

Microsoft boasts more than 460 million Windows Live users and analysts said the goal for the company is to keep that audience in front of the company's sites for as long as possible and to prevent defection to other web destinations.

"I don't think Microsoft is going to steal a whole lot of eyeballs from Facebook or MySpace," said David Card, research director at Forrester.

Facebook has 120 million active users and many of those rely on its mail and chat applications to communicate with friends instead of traditional email and instant messaging services such as those offered by Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

Last year, Microsoft paid $240 million (162 million) for a 1.6 per cent stake in privately-held Facebook.