Outlook webmail passwords restricted to 16 chars – how does that compare with Yahoo and Gmail?

Outlook.com, Microsoft’s relaunch for Hotmail, has already had over one million new sign-ups from users keen to try it out.

Jokers were also quick to grab available email addresses, beating Microsoft’s CEO to the punch by grabbing [email protected] and [email protected], for instance.

Although these addresses were no doubt acquired for fun, there can be little doubt that phishers and spammers also raced to acquire email addresses that they might try to deploy in attacks and scams in the future.

But what caught my eye when reading Twitter today, was discussion about something else related to Outlook.com – the maximum password length it imposes.

It seems that Outlook.com won’t let you have a password of longer than 16 characters. (The same was true of Hotmail)…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.