Hotmail is getting some serious love from Microsoft in recent weeks, with a roll out of an audacious ‘use any email address with Hotmail’ challenge to Gmail users, to today’s revelation that new popular email platform is adding on serious new security.
Just what is changing? As of today you can turn on full-session HTTPS encryption, via SSL of course, keeping your email session safer than ever before. You can enable the setting for your Hotmail account here, if you are a user.
Microsoft is also turning on encryption for a variety of other services:
Also starting today, SkyDrive, Photos, Docs, and Devices pages all automatically use SSL encryption, transferring all their data over HTTPS.
We are not sure what exactly is prompting Microsoft to add-on extra security to their products, but it sure is welcome. Hotmail is a very, very popular email tool, and anything that will help keep millions of people safer is aces in our books. We do wonder, however, if this sort of upgrade can in fact chip away at Gmail’s momentum, or if Microsoft is merely slowing Hotmail’s decent from market leader to has-been.
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