Hotmail update to clear your inbox of "greymail"

Hotmail users will soon see a new version of the webmail service roll out to their accounts, as Microsoft set out to rid our email accounts of “greymail”.

The update includes categories and more advanced folder management, newsletter filters and clean-up scheduling for those too lazy to go through their mail manually, new flagging options for dodgy mail and mouse-over pop-up controls.

“We’ve reduced true spam in the Inbox to under three per cent using SmartScreen filtering,” said Dick Craddock, Group Program Manager, on the Hotmail blog.

“But we realised that getting rid of true spam wasn’t enough, because 75% of the email people reported as spam are really legitimate newsletters, offers, or notifications that you don’t want anymore.

“We call this unwanted email graymail, and we’re excited to announce five powerful tools to help our customers take control of their inbox, get rid of graymail, and keep track of the important mail in their inbox.”

Smart newsletter filtering, which among its many features lets you choose to keep only the most recent mail from a contact, sounds very useful, but I’m always a bit wary of too much automated scheduling. Before you know it every over eager pal in your email is being flagged as a bot and important mail doesn’t get through. Here’s hoping the Hotmail team have got this right.