Hotmail causes Spam

My Windows Passport (or, rather, LIVE Passport) is based on my original Hotmail address that is years old.  I never use Hotmail.  In fact, I had not even logged into Hotmail for 2 or 3 years.

Recently (last week), I was feeling a little froggy, had a few minutes, so I logged into Hotmail to check out the new Live interface that was released in the last week or so.  After all this time I figured the Hotmail account would be filled with Junk Mail.  I stopped using Hotmail long ago because it was a magnet for Spam.  Microsoft could never seem to figure out the whole Spam thing (check out the Junk Filter in Outlook — they still haven’t figured it out).

So, I log in, the first time in years, and there is NO EMAIL in ANY of the folders.  Cool!  The Spammers have forgotten about me, I thought.  Or, maybe Microsoft had finally figured out the Spam issue for Hotmail.

Tonight I was looking at my MSN Messenger icon in the System Tray, getting ready to change my IM status to “Online”, when I noticed that Messenger said I had 1 new email in my Hotmail account.

OK…so NO email for years, yet suddenly I have a new email?

Guess what the email was?  You guessed it — Spam — someone trying to sell me a warranty on my car.  The email was sent on May 12th, 2007.

So, now I’m scratching my head.  What tipped off this Car Warranty Spammer that I had accessed the Hotmail email account in the last few days.  Was it as simple as logging into Hotmail?

Suffice to say, Hotmail hasn’t fixed the Spam issue.  In fact, I’d say Hotmail actually causes Spam.