Posted 11/03/09 at 07:45:03 AM by Paul Lilly

We first covered Xobni's plugin for Microsoft Outlook in our '20 Essential Tricks Every Outlook Users Needs to Know,' and apparently we weren't the only ones impressed with it. Xobni has notched over 3 million downloads in its belt and has drawn the attention of IT managers interested in deploying the plugin to their employees. They're about to get their wish.

"We're announcing Xobni Enterprise, our second revenue-generating product in three months," Hozer stated in a blog entry. "Xobni Enterprise consists of a web-based admin portal that allows IT administrators to easily control, customize, and deploy Xobni across their organization."

According to Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte, Xobni, or 'Inbox' spelled backwards, is already being used by employees in 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Xobni Enterprise will make it easier for those and other businesses to deploy and manage the plugin through a Web-based portal. Customers will also be able to add their own custom extensions.

Xobni Enterprise is available now "with pricing options to fit the needs of any business."

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Posted 11/02/09 at 08:32:25 AM by Paul Lilly

Google's support forum has filled with messages from Gmail users who say they've been receiving 502 error messages all weekend. Many complained that the 502 blues left them without email service for 30 hours or longer.

But what those affected found most frustratingly was Google's slow response to the problem. For most of the weekend, Google kept mum about the situation and didn't reference the hiccup on its 'Apps Status Dashboard,' nor did the company respond to support requests, according to the complaints.

"I've been reporting [the outage] since yesterday evening but all's been quiet from Google," one user wrote. "The worst part is, no one I know who has Gmail is experiencing the problem. This is ridiculous."

Google did finally acknowledge the problem on Sunday afternoon, and was apparently able to resolve the issue by late evening. The company hasn't yet disclosed what caused the glitch in the first place, but did say "less than 0.001 percent of Gmail users" had been affected.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Are you stuck using Outlook at work? We feel your pain. Compared to the alternatives, like Mozilla's light-weight and customizable Thunderbird client, Outlook is slow, bloaty, and downright unwieldy. Add to the fact that it isn't free and Outlook doesn't appear to have much going for it.

But whether you use Outlook because you have to or have grown accustomed to its interface and are reluctant to switch (or maybe you just want to justify the cost of Microsoft Office), we have some tricks to help you manage your email and contacts like a pro. After all, if you're going to use Outlook, no matter what the reason, you might as well get the most out of it, and we're here to help you do just that.

Hit the jump to get started!

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Posted 10/20/09 at 09:07:49 AM by Paul Lilly

Going strictly by the numbers, those who are rocking their email through Yahoo have a lower credit score than, say, Gmail users. In fact, according to Credit Karma, an online credit checking service, Yahoo email users tend to have the worst credit of all.

Credit Karma combed through its database and ranked the average credit score by email provider. For what it's worth, BellSouth and Comcast took the top two spots with the highest credit scores, while Gmail came in third with an average score over 680. Then it dips down, with MSN, Hotmail, and AOL taking the next three spots with an average credit score of 665 or less.

The rankings are based on credit scores from 20,000 users, so the sample size is arguably enough not to skew the results. So then the question raised is why the disparity? Credit Karma didn't say. Maybe Yahoo's spam filters trail the competition, or as Mashable.com surmises, maybe the lower ranked email addys represent a younger audience.

We don't have the answer, but we'd like to hear your theories. Hit the jump and sound off!

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Posted 10/14/09 at 09:06:10 AM by Paul Lilly

The gurus at Google Labs have developed a new feature they say will eliminate those times where you inadvertently fire off an email message to the wrong Bob (or Jim or Tracy or Wendell or...you get the idea).

The feature will also let you know which of your friends are the most popular (to you), because that's basically how it works. Start typing in an email addy or contact name and the "Got the wrong Bob?" add-on will alert you if it thinks you've accidentally included someone you don't usually email as part of the group.

"If you normally email Bob Smith together with Tim and Angela, but this time you added Bob Jones instead, we'll warn you that it might be a mistake," Google explain in a blog post. "Note that this only works if you're emailing more than two people at once."

Perhaps going overboard with the whole "Bob" thing, Google Labs also said it has changed the name of "Suggest more recipients" to "Don't forget Bob."

You'll find both of these under the Labs tab under Gmail settings.

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Posted 10/11/09 at 01:24:53 PM by Justin Kerr

Email spam is on the rise, no surprise there, but new information is suggesting that these emails could be coming from good old mom and dad as well. According to researchers over at Websense, personalized spam emails are being sent from tens of thousands of compromised accounts spanning all of the usual suspects including Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail.

Security researchers have suggested that given the sheer volume of spam emails being observed, the recent leak of some 10,000+ Hotmail accounts obtained through a phishing scam isn’t the only source of compromised email addresses, and it is very likely malware key loggers have helped to contribute to the rise in fraud. "The quantity of people hit makes me think that it was key logging — the success rate for phishing is only about one in 1,000," said Shulman, chief technology officer for security firm Imperva. "Secondly, when I went through the list of email account credentials, there were entries with the same username, but a slightly different password, which suggests that they're typos.

According to Patrick Runald from Websense “"Generally phishing is declining and being replaced by key logging, and considering the number of compromised accounts, it could be a combination of both." Apparently it also helps if your password isn’t 1-2-3-4-5. Time to go change the combination on my luggage!

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Posted 10/07/09 at 12:00:02 PM by Paul Lilly

Over 10,000 Hotmail email accounts were leaked to the web earlier this week as the result of a massive phishing scam, which may not have taken a whole lot of effort. After all, if you're going to choose "123456" as your password, compromising your account is like shooting fish in a barrel.

In this case, there were 64 said fish in a barrel full of over 10,000 compromised Hotmail accounts, making it the most commonly used password of the bunch, according to a researcher who combed through all the posted accounts.

About 42 percent of the passwords consisted of lowercase letters from "a" to "z," and just 6 percent secured their email accounts by mixing alpha-numeric characters. And almost 2,000 passwords were only six characters long (the longest was 30 characters).

An interesting side note - a bunch of the top 20 passwords were Spanish names, which might suggest that the victims were of Spanish origin or lived in Spanish-speaking communities, Wired.com reports.

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Posted 10/06/09 at 08:15:17 AM by Paul Lilly

In what security experts are calling one of the biggest security breaches of all time, Microsoft on Monday confirmed that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail account usernames and passwords were leaked to the Web. The Redmond company says the breach was likely the result of an elaborate phishing campaign.

"We determined that this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email to Computerworld.

Neowin.net first reported the incident, claiming that "more than 10,000" credentials had been compromised. But the number could actually be much, much larger. Neowin.net said it only saw a partial list representing usernames starting with the letters "A" and "B."  Dave Jevans, the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), surmises that the actual number could be over 100,000 accounts.

"A 0.5 percent rate, which is what 100,000 users would represent, isn't unreasonable for 10 to 20 million users," Jevans said. "They wouldn't have to spam every user to get that."

According to Microsoft, Hotmail stands at 400 million registered users strong, though the company didn't say how many of those are active users.

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