Deleting Hotmail Account

[Zhukov]

So people in my hotmail contacts list have been getting spam that seems to originate from MY email account; this is embarrassing and annoying, and I have no idea why it's happening. I don't use hotmail for anything (No friends on MSN anymore) so I would like to delete it, but I figure there might be some account somewhere on the internet that requires me to have my hotmail open. Microsoft live or something like that.

Any advice?

[Sam]

YOU'RE WELCOME.

[Fathom Zero]

Probably not worth thinking about. You can usually change your email info on all those accounts. Having done that, just delete it.

[Zhukov]

Thanks Sam.

[10,000 Volt Ghost]

Mine used to do that too. I just deleted my contacts from it.

[soundtest]

Deleted mine for the same reason. I've used Gmail since it launched and I don't use MSN anymore, so there was no need to keep it. I'd check my Hotmail account every 6 months to clear out the spam and email from friends' zombie Hotmail accounts. I can only assume mine was doing the same thing. It's odd how MS has just completely given up on Hotmail. The millions of people that still use it must be worth something to them, so I don't know why they don't at least try to improve it.

[Pentegarn]

Someone told me if you create a contact named aaaaaa@aaaa.aaa it will pop in your list first. Then when these spam viruses try to send you an email it sends them alphabetically. If it sends there first the email returns as undeliverable. Supposedly if that happens the program stops sending email thinking you have no real addresses to spam.

I don't know if/how that works but I did it anyway. At the very least you would get an undeliverable message alerting you that someone is sending messages to your contacts who is not you.