Microsoft may be sharing your personal information without your knowledge!

Microsoft bought Hotmail in early 1998. Microsoft recently added a couple new boxes to Hotmail registration - "Share my e-mail address", "Share my first and last names", and "Share my other registration information". the problem comes with Hotmail accounts that were created prior to this change. For existing accounts, Microsoft nicely completed two of those boxes for you, in effect allowing Microsoft to share your e-mail address and the other registration data such as your gender, occupation and birth date with outside companies.

Want to check to see if your info is being shared? It's easy to check:
Go into Hotmail.
Click Options (to the right of the tab that says "Address Book").
Click Personal Profile (in the upper left corner).
Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see whether the boxes marked "Share my e-mail address" and "Share my other registration information" have been checked.

If they are checked, uncheck them and save.

Do they give out your password? What privacy invaders, I've been using MSN Messenger for my hotmail account since 1998 when they first came out with it.

Dear lordy.....i used to use hotmail

I just recently had to change my password because Jeanie, a friend of mine, was getting e-mails entitled 'Password' from MY e-mail address which I did not send her.

Which isn't good because she really does know my passwords because we share a site and need to access e-mails etc.


Also- is anyone else that has Hotmail receiving e-mails that say 'Hey There' or 'How Are You?' etc in the subject line and the size of the e-mail is like 187 kb. but when you open it it's completely blank and no attachment etc??? I keep receiving e-mails like that. Since I have a website and receive numerous e-mails from people I don't know I need to open e-mails from them, but these stupid blank ones keep filling my account up where I have to delete them ASAP.

I've got an email address there, but it's a free one so I didn't have to put in billing info or anything. If someone has my password, it doesn't matter, because I haven't used it in like, 5 months.

Oh my god! Thanks for posting this. I had no idea that Hotmail was so impersonal. I'm going to go to the options right away and uncheck that share email and registration stuff.

yes i have it, thanks for this!!

Yeah, I use it. Unfortunately. Does anybody ever get those emails that are typed in some kind of foreign language? It looks like its written in Japanese. I usually just block the crap, but I still get it sometimes.

Huh, those boxes were checked on mine. I'm glad I read this post.