Outlook.com: 400 million active accounts, Hotmail upgrade complete and more features on the way

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When we launched the preview of Outlook.com, our goal was to build the best email service in the world, capable of scaling to over a billion active customers. When Outlook.com came out of preview, it was already the fastest growing email service thanks to your support. The last two months have seen the release of a new, modern Outlook.com calendar, a refreshed Outlook.com app for Android devices, two-factor authentication for your account, new international domains for people around the world, and the release of a preview of Skype calling in Outlook.com.

Today, we're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync.  We're also pleased to announce that we're adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it's easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.

When Outlook.com came out of preview in February, it already had more than 60 million active accounts. However, Hotmail was still one of the most widely used services, with over 300 million active accounts. This made the magnitude of the process incredible, maybe even unprecedented. This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes--equaling more than 150 million gigabytes of data--and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were preserved in the upgrade. Of course, this had to be done with a live site experience that was handling billions of transactions a day.  With your help, we were able to do all of that in just about 6 weeks. We've spent the last few weeks ensuring that everything was completed in line with our high quality expectations. 

We've been focused throughout the upgrade on ensuring that every customer has a great experience. We've been overwhelmed with the response so far, based on the comments we've received.  Here are just a few of the verbatim comments that were sent through the in-product feedback tool:

"Oh my goshwow!!! This is gorgeous! I didn't see this coming - this is a very welcome experience. Thanks for the new outlook.com!" "This is awesome. I'd like to say these changes will definitely make me come back and delete my other accounts like google and yahoo! This is much smoother to navigate and transitioning between skydrive and mail is awesome. This is such a big improvement. I have not played with much of the features yet, but thank you thank you. Alias setup was painless and ease of use is bar none. I'd definitely recommend to my friends." "Wow!! The interface is perfect, modern and feels like Windows 8. I'm really enjoying the new UI approach from Microsoft."

To underscore the differences between the two services, here's a screenshot comparing Hotmail to Outlook.com. You can instantly see the difference in the clean new look. The chrome is minimized so your content is front and center, information is organized so that you can easily see what's most important, large display ads are gone and the entire visual aesthetic is designed to be fast and intuitive. 

 

BEFORE: The final look of Hotmail.com

 

AFTER: The modern look of Outlook.com

Of course, 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, too. It's gratifying in a sense because it means those customers loved the previous set of changes we made. With a communication service that is constantly evolving, we try to strike the right balance between bringing out major improvements and keeping true to what our customers love. Our belief is that as people start using the new experience, they will come to love it even more than they loved Hotmail. We are keenly listening to what our customers have to say, and we'll make the right set of adjustments to ensure that we make the experience as great as it can be. So to all those providing feedback: thank you and keep it coming. In addition, during the upgrade period we experienced a few service interruptions, and we've worked hard to respond quickly to each one. We know you rely on your email and for those who were impacted we apologize and appreciate your continued support.

Here are a few of the most common things we've heard about:

Do I have to change my email address? No, you will always be able to use your Hotmail address. No need to ever change,Do I need to update settings on your phone or other apps? No, since you keep using your same email address, there is no need to change any settings on your devices.What happens with Hotmail Plus? Your Hotmail Plus account will continue to work with Outlook.com, no need to make any changes. As before, your account never expires and you don't see any ads.

You can find answers to other frequently asked questions and more on this page. 

With the upgrade complete we've turned our energy and attention to future innovation and to making Outlook.com even better based on your feedback. You've seen a number of these updates over the past few weeks, and today, we're starting to roll out a few more. We'll be releasing the new SMTP send and SkyDrive integration gradually, so it may take a few weeks before everyone using Outlook.com sees those new features.

You've always been able to send and receive email from other accounts using your Outlook.com account. But, in the past, when you sent email from Outlook.com using a different email address (say, because you switched from Gmail and are still using that Gmail address when you reply to folks), the recipients would see the email being sent "on behalf of" that other account. For instance, this could look like this:

We knew this was a pain point for some people, and could be a real problem if you had a hidden alias, e.g. when Bruce Wayne wanted to send email as Batman. So now we've made it so that email sent from a different account goes through that account's SMTP server. That way, the recipient just sees that account's email address, like this:

This should work for any email provider that provides POP or IMAP access. If you want to take advantage of this feature, in the Options menu , click More mail settings, click Your email accounts, and then scroll down to the section titled Add an email account:

From there, you can add a send-only or a send-and-receive account, and we'll configure the SMTP server settings as part of that. This new SMTP send capability will be available worldwide in the coming weeks.

There are a number of ways we've integrated Outlook.com and SkyDrive: a single Microsoft account for signing in, a shared contact list and set of connected networks, the ability to send large attachments, a shared header, and much more.  Today, we're excited to release the direct integration of SkyDrive into the Outlook.com compose experience. When you're sending an email message, you can select files from your SkyDrive and we'll automatically turn those into the right thumbnails with links that have the right permissions tied to people that receive the email. When you insert pictures from SkyDrive, you automatically get a beautiful photo mail. And it's easy to edit the message, and add or remove files and pictures right from the new message compose experience.  This new integration is starting to roll out today and will be available worldwide in the coming weeks.

Here's what that will look like:

We want to give a huge "Thank you" to all of you who have supported Hotmail over the years, for some of you, that's going back as far as 1996.  It has been an amazing journey and we've been honored to provide you with a great mail experience for many years. When we launched the original preview of Outlook.com, we knew that we were committing to building the world's best email with a brand and product experience that spans from consumers all the way to the largest organizations. We're excited to have you join Outlook.com as we write the next chapter in modern email from Microsoft.

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.  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!

-- Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager, Outlook.com

(This post was updated to clarify that the SMTP send capability would also be rolling out over a period of a few weeks.) 

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Praktisch unbegrenzte Anlagen und erhalten Sie aktuelle mit Outlook.com

Outlook.com left preview growing just a few weeks as a worldwide on the fastest e-Mail service. Millions of customers continue to daily join Outlook.com.  We have humiliated by some fantastic reviews and today, we wanted to share more about two features are customer favorites: the ability to simply everything in a single message with SkyDrive and the ability to keep your address book is automatically updated , with information from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn share. We think these features provide you with a better experience and embody the kind and way modern e-Mail be designed, should meet the needs of modern man.

Ten years ago, your e-Mail address book was the best digital repository for contact information about your friends and family.  If you have been busy, you would add phone numbers, addresses, and other information to accompany a friend's name and email address.  And, don't forget to do it, could even every telephone number and address updated each time, if one of your friends moved, got married or landed a new job. But worked out - in fact, we know all like this a lot, that information about friends and family has been overhauled.

Fast forward are no longer the only place today and address books, info about people receive you, that which you are looking.  Social networks are the place to see the latest information about your friends.  For example, the best source for information on occupations and employers of your friends is probably LinkedIn.  Facebook probably has the largest number and the best photos of your friends.  And the latest updates are published by some friends and colleagues may be on Twitter.  It makes you ask, "why we can't have just a universal address book with the latest and most up-to-date information not?"

That's exactly what we want to deliver in Outlook.com. We want to be sure that your address book has the latest and best information from your family and friends.  We did this by removing the walled gardens and combine your e-Mail with the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), to make sure all those contextual information flows Outlook.com. Because ultimately results in this context, you will experience an even better communication.  As you can imagine, this is a standard is "connect" implementation with our partners.  Instead, a deep partnership with each of these services requires this to ensure that we have billions of updates between our networks every day and gives you a modern, high-quality experience to share.

So how does it so far? Millions of people have joined Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Outlook.com.  If it is connected to Outlook.com for these services, not only your address book will be kept informed, but the address book data will be used to make your email experience better.  Outlook.com shows real profile photos up on their messages.  Practically speaking, means that a message like that is above simply personal, if Amy's realistic picture is displayed. In fact, Outlook.com has shown more than 3 billion additional real photos, as above since the start. As well as Outlook.com shows social updates instead of advertising in personal messages, we are social context in your conversations, and 60% less viewing in your email.

Ten years ago was one of the main problems with email storage for all messages.  So, it is natural that Outlook.com with virtually unlimited Inbox comes memory.  But now the worry is often beyond the borders of the plant - your limits as well as the people to send e-Mail.  And this problem has grown only with the exploding capacity and affordability of digital cameras. To solve this problem, we gave every person the Outlook.com, of SkyDrive including 7 GB free cloud storage built right used in. We built also SkyDrive right in your email.  So, now you can simply send everything in a single message by using SkyDrive and you can stop to worry about the limits of the system - your limits as well as the people you are email.

Knowing that more than half of the monthly systems contain one billion messages, we wanted the process to attach photos and files, such as a natural extension of the things that you feel are already doing. So we don't ask you to find out how SkyDrive with your Inbox.  Instead, we have integrated "Attaching with SkyDrive" directly into the familiar experience of files to an email attachments.  This makes it very easy for you use SkyDrive, send hundreds of files and/or large files via SkyDrive instead of conventional plants.

So how does it so far? SkyDrive already use almost half of the people with Outlook.com - let them share much more tons of photos, Office documents, videos and other large files.  And we are sure that this only go up, because people capture and share more memories to keep.

With Outlook.com newly from the preview, we are just starting.  Thanks for the support so far. We have heard much feedback and of course have more news to share soon. We would like to hear from you new ideas for we can continue.

--David Law, head of product management, Outlook.com

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Check your schedule with a modern calendar experience for Outlook.com

Today we release a new, modern calendar experience for Outlook.com. Outlook.com calendar has been completely redesigned with a modern, intuitive interface which puts you in control of your schedule. Our calendar service is faster than ever, helps, focus the on the events and appointments, and tasks that you have added to the, and you can take your calendar on any device. The new Outlook.com calendar rolls out now available and are all over the world this week at https://calendar.live.com/.

The new, modern design of the Outlook.com, along with many Microsoft products, optimized "Content over chrome", i.e. in the case of calendar, your events and appointments are in the foreground.

 

We also have navigate and getting information to your calendar faster than ever before. You can add or edit events with a single click, enter an event by simply dragging of the mouse over the area of the date or time, you add tasks, without having to open a new page to the and jump to a specific date simply by clicking on the date.

Another important part of our design philosophy is to ensure that a consistent behavior that adds you up more than just the individual parts. You'll see the in as the new calendar naturally in the same family with your Inbox, address book and SkyDrive fits:

Today's calendar is wholly of course across the Internet-it has to work surprisingly well on your mobile devices.  Used sync Outlook.com Exchange ActiveSync email, calendar, and address book on your Smartphone, Tablet, in the new Outlook-2013 with the apps, Gmail, calendar, and people on your new PC or tablet with Windows 8. The Outlook Connector can integrate your calendar with earlier versions of Outlook desktop software. Connecting your calendar on the mobile device is.

You connect your Microsoft account, can access services such as Skype, LinkedIn and Facebook to see your friends birthdays in the calendar automatically from these services added. Current weather forecasts for many regions and breaks for a growing list of regions their calendar also shows you. You can import calendar (ICS files) or subscribe to public calendars from other services. iCalShare offers you thousands of holidays, sport and other calendars that you can subscribe to with one click. Or try to export a Google Calendar, and then you import Outlook.com, into your calendar by clicking the import link in the header.

We prioritize your privacy and your calendar is private so of course by default.  But we make it as easy as possible to share your calendar with others. All what you need to do is, click 'Share' in the header menu. When you share a calendar that others can access to the calendar, but as an owner, you determine who can add events to and edit. You can set it up in just a few clicks of the mouse.

You can either privately share the calendar with specific persons (by entering their e-Mail address), or you can click on "Get link", and then email or post this link anywhere you want.  You can also subscribe to change notifications on a shared calendar. So if a parent adds to or an event-a family meal, football game, doctor's appointment changes, make date night-you will be sure that the whole family by e-Mail informed. And can you so many shared calendars as you like.

Whether you're already using Outlook.com for your email, or you are looking for just a new, modern calendar, you can get started with each e-Mail address at Outlook.com calendar , as soon as your account is updated.

We are looking forward to your opinion.

--David Dennis, senior program manager lead, Outlook.com calendar

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Information about the Hotmail / Outlook.com failure on March 12

Outlook.com links preview a couple of weeks, and heard that we shared, that we begin the hundreds of millions of people, with Hotmail on the new, modern Outlook.com experiences to update.  We had done several pilots during the preview period and learned a ton. Overall the upgrade is very frozen - upgraded people have much more quickly than we had expected.  The vast majority of people who use our services are enjoying a smooth experience during this time and the new experience of Outlook.com.  That is, we had a problem yesterday and offer a deeper insight into what was going to happen.

Before we want to dive, in the detail we anyone sincerely to apologize, which could be accessed during the interruption to their emails. Failures are something we take very seriously and invest a significant amount of our time and energy in doing our best to prevent.

At 13:35 PM PDT on March 12, 2013 there is an interruption of the service, some of the people concerned access to a lesser extent, of SkyDrive service, but primarily Hotmail.com Outlook.com. Availability has been fully restored in the course of the afternoon and evening and 5:43 am PDT on March 13, 2013.

In the afternoon of the 12th, in a physical region in one of our data centers, we conducted our regular process of updating the firmware on a central part of our physical plant. This is an update, it had not done before successfully, but in this particular case in unexpected ways. This mistake led to a rapid and extensive temperature spike in the data center. This tip was important enough, before it was reduced, it causes our guarantees to come to space for a large number of servers in this part of the data center.

Access to mailboxes prevents these security measures installed on these servers and also does not prevent automatically to allow failover and continued access for other pieces of our infrastructure. Parts of the infrastructure of Hotmail.com Outlook.com and SkyDrive hosts this section of the data center, and so were some of the people who are trying to influence access to these services.

As soon as the protective measures on these systems appeared, the team was immediately alerted and immediately began to work to restore the access. On the basis of the failure scenario, there was again a mixture of infrastructure software and human intervention, which was necessary to the core infrastructure to bring online. Requiring this type of human intervention is not the norm for our services and restoring significant time added.

Show you, that brought team access in waves through the night. The majority of the affected mailboxes have been restored before midnight and 05:30 rest completed fully.

We hope that this helped to provide understanding of the incident and again we sincerely apologize and regret the impact of this failure had on you all.  Now that we are through the resolution, we are also hard at work to ensure that that does not happen again.

https://status.live.com always the best and most reliable way to get real time information is specifically for all service issues that we take, and if you are logged in, in, is adjusted, based on the health of your specific account.

--Arthur de Haan, Vice President

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Outlook.com leaves preview as the world's fastest growing email service go from 0 to 60 million in just 6 months

Last summer, we have published a preview of the Outlook.com, a new modern e-Mail service from Microsoft.  Since then we have been humiliated by the fast pace of the adoption with more than 60 million people, who are already actively using Outlook.com.  During the same period, we have received lots of feedback and made many improvements.  Today, we are glad to announce the next step in this journey: Outlook.com comes from preview and people everywhere can get started and try it at Outlook.com.

Today is an important milestone in our mission to provide the world's best email experience, people everywhere.  See also, the starting point for a comprehensive marketing efforts around the world to show us that will Outlook.com you can get.  And because we are sure that we start Outlook.com that is available and ready for 1 billion people scaled, best email service for consumers to update soon hundreds of millions of Hotmail users on the new experience of Outlook.com.

When we launched the preview, languages about Outlook.com as fat progress from scratch to build a new e-Mail service from the data center on the usability and everything in between.  Now more than ever email plays a decisive role in how things to do it. Therefore, Outlook.com as focus developed removing barriers and people, the email service:

Deliver a beautiful, combined fresh and intuitive interface to modern browsers and DevicesKeeping she really a people to their friends and colleagues about the networks UseProviding intelligent and powerful to Inbox today's mail program must be to inform people, including SkyDrive for virtually everything in a single email putting in the control by their privacy to prioritize.

As part of the preview, we wanted to have also a call and make sure that we build the e-Mail service, what you really wanted the.  Our aim was to learn from feedback that scale Outlook.com according to experience to optimize and make sure that we could, to deliver on our vision of a new modern-e-mail for 1 billion inboxes.

It was slightly more than 6 months since he released Outlook.com preview and reception which has to date significantly exceeded our expectations; more than 60 million people, already actively using the Outlook.com.  This number stands for people, the in several times in the month via the Web to sign client or Smartphone to use our service.

The preview we have listened and learned a lot about your favorite features and how well Outlook.com on our vision for modern email deliver.  Millions of people are, for example, Outlook.com with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn currently on their friends contact info, updates, photos and tweets link.  And quite a few people have expressed appreciation that Outlook.com replaces advertising with the latest updates from Facebook or Twitter if you read email from one of your contacts are.  In fact the average 60% saw people show less if you use Outlook.com, because they get much more relevant updates from their friends.

Outlook.com of tools for the treatment of newsletters and promotional E-mail sends less than 80% of the typical Inbox make out, are another set of features well preserved and busy. Outlook.com comes with swing, a simple but powerful function, people clean up their Inbox move, archive, or delete e-mail (and that this happens automatically in the future) will help when they want to.  It's a very satisfying feeling when you regain control, once you are hundreds or even thousands of messages from the Inbox to sweep.

Outlook.com is also supposed to hundreds of photos, videos, and everything people want in a single brh make it simple-to send all powered by SkyDrive.  SkyDrive have used almost half of the people with Outlook.com already more than half a billion photos and Office documents.

We're very excited by the adoption of the preview and how it delivers on our promise of a fresh, new e-Mail service since.  In the preview we see an enormous amount of, how people used the service.  "Early Adopters" have told us what they liked, what they want to see next, and what we do, so that more people had to change.  And we add the new features and optimize the services scale used.  Now that Outlook.com from Preview comes, we will be kicking off a tremendous boost in several countries the world, even greater awareness and adoption of Outlook.com.  Our goal is to make the new and compelling features of Outlook.com everywhere aware and make it easy for them to Outlook.com as a new e-Mail service to try.

When we say we are confident that Outlook.com is the best e-Mail option for consumers, we mean it.  Outlook.com comes out as a preview, we also announce that we soon all Hotmail users on Outlook.com upgrade. The upgrade is seamless and immediate for people who use Hotmail.  Everything from your @hotmail.com email address, password, messages, folders, contacts, rules, OOF, etc., without interruption in the service remains unchanged.   When upgraded, they get everything, what the benefits of the redesigned Outlook.com erfahren-- a fresh, intuitive user interface, many new features and better performance.  And we won't always make your e-Mail address in a @outlook.com-address switch, if you do not want.

We expect that all of the people that are updated with Hotmail this summer.  And for who the new advantages of the Outlook.com experience are encouraged, there is no need to wait. Today can be the application simply updated in the Outlook.com and we'll take care of the rest.

We want to thank the more than 60 million of you, the already Outlook.com active.  We sincerely appreciate the feedback you have sent to us and you have played the valuable role to make happen to today's news.  Of course, there is much more to come, but for those of you who have been waiting to try it, now is your chance. Outlook.com is from the preview, and it's a good time to update. We are looking forward to your opinion.

--David Law, head of product management, Outlook.com

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Over 25 million active Outlook.com users, and today we’re making it even easier for Gmail users to switch

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"The best reason yet to ditch Gmail" - Farhad Manjoo, Slate.com

Since the new Outlook.com launched in July, the positive feedback has been overwhelming.  Outlook.com was recently named one of Time Magazine's "50 Best Websites of 2012", won PC Magazine's Best Software and Internet Web App awards and has received a number of other accolades around the world.  To date, over 25 million of you are already actively using the new Outlook.com:

We found that about a third of Outlook.com users are active Gmail users trying Outlook.com for the first time.  We wanted to learn more, so we hired a research firm to recruit hundreds of Gmail users - people that use Gmail as their primary email service - and asked them to try Outlook.com.  We asked the Gmail users to sign-up for Outlook.com addresses, forward email from Gmail to Outlook.com, and try Outlook.com's best features.  The Gmail users loved it.  Specifically, they shared the following opinions with us:

They prefer Outlook.com's clean user designOutlook.com does a better job of blocking spam and it outperforms Gmail when it comes to helping manage unwanted messages like newsletters and daily dealsOutlook.com makes it easier to share photos and Office documents

The best part was, after spending just five days with it, 4 out of 5 of these Gmail users said they would switch to Outlook.com.

As millions of people have made the switch to Outlook.com, they've told us about the features that made the transition easier:

Keyboard Shortcuts: customers can choose to set up keyboard shortcuts in Outlook.com to mirror the shortcuts in the Outlook desktop app, Gmail and others.Quick access to search operators: quickly find mail by clicking "/" and then using "To:", "Subj:", etc. Tab/Send: rapidly send messages by clicking the "tab" key from the compose window to automatically shifts focus to the "Send" button Conversation threading: you can also optionally turn on conversation threading (i.e. the ability to see all responses in a conversation via just one view).

But it's still early days.  We continue to listen to feedback on what enthusiasts want next - including making the switch from Gmail even easier - and build those features.  So over the next few weeks, Outlook.com users will start to see these new features in their inboxes:

One-click Archive: from the inbox, select messages and click the Archive button to move the selected messages to the Archive folder (or any other folder of your choice). It's a fast and simple way to move messages out of your inbox to find later.

More and more keyboard shortcuts: Outlook.com has dozens of keyboard shortcuts and we're adding even more. And better yet, we don't need to list them all in this post because you can now find all available keyboard shortcuts by simply typing a question mark when you're in your inbox.

More customization of your inbox: we added several new ways to make your inbox look and work the way you want.

   We added more color themes:

 

We added the ability to toggle between "Reply" and "Reply All" as the default option.  We also heard that, after deleting a message, some people want to return to their inbox and others want to see the next     message. Now you can set that default option, too.  Both options are available via the Options page. 

Outlook app for Android: Many of us use Outlook.com as much on our phones as we do on a PC. For devices like Windows Phone and iPhone that support Exchange ActiveSync, you have built-in support for Outlook.com - no download necessary. Android devices aren't consistent in their native support for Exchange ActiveSync, so starting today you can install an Outlook.com for Android on your mobile phone. The new app is free and works on all Android 2.x devices and higher.

If you're one of the tens of millions of people that have made the switch to Outlook.com, we thank you.  We're committed to making Outlook.com the best email service and we appreciate the feedback you continue to provide. 

If you are a Gmail user and are still on the fence, take a look at our new features and give Outlook.com a try with just a few simple steps. 

Thanks again for using Outlook and, as always, keep the feedback coming.

David Law--Director, Product Management, Outlook.com

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Really want to do some winter cleaning? Switch to Outlook.com for the best email experience across all your devices

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We were very surprised to see Gmail announce last week that they'll soon end support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), unless of course you're willing to pay Google for your email.  It means that many people currently using Gmail for free are facing a situation where they might have to degrade their mobile email experience by downgrading to an older protocol that doesn't sync your calendar or contacts, doesn't give you direct push of new email messages and doesn't have all the benefits of Exchange ActiveSync.

So if you want a better email, especially on your phone or tablet, it's time to join the millions who have already made the choice to upgrade to Outlook.com.

To learn more about how to get started with Outlook.com, check out the technical spec for Exchange ActiveSync in Exchange 2013 just follow these simple steps:

To learn more about setting up Outlook.com on your mobile device, see our simple instructions here.

  

For those still on the fence, a quick introduction to why EAS is so important for a seamless experience across devices could be helpful. There are many protocols for sending and receiving email.  POP and IMAP were designed decades ago, were considered state-of-the-art at the time, and are still used by millions of people.  Both were created before mobile phones really even existed.  To have a great email experience in 2012, a protocol needs to do more than just send and receive messages on a PC.  It needs to work really well on a variety of mobile devices, to sync not only email but also your calendar and contacts, to do this automatically, and in a way that preserves battery life.

Exchange ActiveSync was first introduced in 2002 as a way to help you have a great mobile email experience. Since then, it has continued to improve, with a number of optimizations specifically for mobile devices, including tablets:

Designed around Direct Push of information so a device can be updated in near real-time when an email is received - so you can get notified when there's new email instead of having to constantly check manually. Unlike IMAP or POP, EAS also syncs calendars and contacts.Setup is much easier because EAS supports AutoDiscover so you don't have to remember and type server names; instead, you simply type in an email address and password to set up a new device over-the-air.Built with bandwidth and battery life as key design considerations; for example, sync requests are bundled for all folder syncs in order to optimize the amount of battery required

You can read more about these innovations and a whole host of other nitty-gritty details in the history of Exchange ActiveSync.  It's because of these advanced consumer benefits that many devices choose to natively support Exchange ActiveSync-whether that's a Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, or even a number of Android devices.  You can see more detail in this chart of some of the other devices that support EAS. 

We hope you have a wonderful winter holiday. As you enter the New Year, we encourage you to seize the opportunity to upgrade your mail to a service that puts the consumer first and gives you a great mobile email experience. 

 --Dharmesh Mehta, Senior Director, Product Management

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Outlook.com increases security with support for DMARC and EV certificates

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In a previous blog post, we talked about our goal of making Outlook.com the best and most-used personal email service on the planet. That means building a great service with all the features you expect from modern email, but it also means building a service that is known for world-class reliability, industry leading spam protection and rock solid security features.  Today we're announcing two new enhancements to Outlook.com that help protect your email. 

Over the past several weeks since we announced Outlook.com, we've continued to work to deliver you the highest levels of security and protection technologies.  Today, we are excited to announce two important new security features that help fight common phishing attacks and provide you with even more protection.  The first is complete support for DMARC, a standard that makes it harder for someone to deliver phishing mail to your inbox.  And the second is support for Extended Validation Certificates (EV Certificates), which provides a more secure SSL connection when you are using Outlook.com. We're proud to be the first major email service to provide this higher level of safety and security. Taken together, these new security measures help prevent attackers from stealing your account information and protect your account from phishing attacks.

One example of a common phishing attack is when someone fakes the sender's address, and uses that to try to trick someone into giving up personal information.  For example, an attacker could send mail that looks like it is from a legitimate bank and ask for account verification to trick someone into giving their account name and password.  The attacker could then use that name and password to access the actual bank account.  Today we help prevent these phishing attacks by supporting email authentication standards for sending and receiving email--including SPF, SenderID and DKIM--as well as our own email filtering technology. 

DMARC is a new policy enforcement and reporting standard that builds on SPF and DKIM providing more deterministic outcomes of authentication-failed messages.  Microsoft has been a core participant in the DMARC standards body since its inception. We share their mission to fight against domain-based phishing, along with Facebook, PayPal, Gmail, ReturnPath and others. This standard helps prevent phishing mail from getting into your inbox, and helps senders understand when an attacker is trying to send phishing mail from their domains. 

Our DMARC implementation helps protect you by making it easier to visually identify mail from senders as legitimate, and helps keep spam and phishing messages from ever reaching your inbox. If a sender supports DMARC, we put a trusted sender logo next to their email indicating it is legitimate. The effect is cumulative; the more the email sending services that use DMARC, the broader the protection offered against phishing. 

DMARC helps protect email sending services by giving them valuable information about mail coming from their domain.  As part of DMARC, senders get reports on email that comes from their domain (good and bad), as well as how much of their traffic is passing/failing email authentication checks. This info helps them plan their authentication deployment as well as better understand the nature of the attacks on their domains.  They can also request that messages using their domain that fail authentication be quarantined or rejected, and receive data extracted from failed messages such as header information and URIs from the message body, to provide them visibility into the types of attacks that are targeting their brands.

This combination of protection for readers and senders allows DMARC to help the entire email ecosystem and we are happy to be fully compliant with DMARC for received mail. 

A second type of phishing happens when an attacker puts up a website that pretends to be from one company, but is actually from another.  SSL is an important part of protecting against phishing, but there have been recent cases where some SSL certificates have been compromised, which allowed attackers to impersonate SSL sites.  EV Certificates make your browsing experience more secure than plain SSL by adding confidence that you are interacting with a trusted website and that your information is secure. 

EV certificates are deeply vetted by the Certificate Authority, providing significant assurance that you can trust the sites that use them.  These certificates require a minimum of 2048-bit encryption, which is far more secure than what is commonly used with standard SSL.  The green address bar in your browser provides immediately recognizable assurance that your connection to the service is as secure as it can be from prying eyes. Contrast that with the key length standard SSL uses-in many cases, it can be fairly low, creating a false sense of security.  EV certificates deter phishing attacks by preventing malicious sites from masquerading as the trusted service. While malicious sites might try to impersonate a site's UI or brand, they cannot replicate the browser's green bar.  And by deploying EV certificates broadly we can apply 2048 bit encryption not just to your login, but to your actual mail content as well.

EV certificate support in Outlook.com is rolling out now, and will be coming soon to SkyDrive and our other services.  And of course, the same level of protection is extended to Hotmail.com and Live.com customers while they are upgrading to Outlook.com.  We have chosen one of the most-trusted Certificate Authorities (CA) to issue our EV certificates--Symantec. You can easily verify the authenticity of our webpages by using the enhanced display supported by most browsers, which includes the name of the company or entity that owns the certificate--in this case Microsoft Corporation--and a distinctive green color shown in the address bar to indicate that a valid EV certificate was received.

 

Security is a top concern when choosing an email service, and it's a top priority for all Microsoft development efforts, products, and services. We're never done and will always keep improving.  But we believe that Outlook.com is the best email service available, and now Outlook.com offers even more security enhancements that you won't find anywhere else.

--Krish Vitaldevara, Outlook.com Program Management Team

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