Hotmail password ban
By Sumir Singh

Hotmail, which is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, has announced two new features to help protect its users.  The first feature lets you report if a friend’s account has been compromised.  Hotmail is the first among the many popular email systems to implement this security feature.

The next equally important feature which will roll out soon is the blocking of bad and weak passwords

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We‘re making another addition to the long list of account security and protection features that we’ve released over the last year. We will now prevent our customers from using one of several common passwords. Having a common password makes your account vulnerable to brute force “dictionary” attacks, in which a malicious person tries to hijack your account just by guessing passwords (using a short list of very common passwords). Of course, Hotmail has built-in defenses against standard dictionary attacks, but when someone can guess your password in just a few tries, it hardly constitutes “brute force!”

Common passwords are not just “password” or “123456” (although those are frighteningly common), but also include words or phrases that just happen to be shared by millions of people, like "ilovecats" or "gogiants."
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