hotmail blocked

**minimidnight** · 3rd July 2003

Work blocked the url hotmail.com, which was fine. As I just went to msn.com and signed in there.

I then decided to use outlook express to view my hotmail accounts. As I wanted to archive my emails. I have no internet connection at home and am pissed at IT. Basically it was all working fine. msn and express. But I have come back from Glastonbury (which was amazing I might add) and now I can`t get access via any site I have tried loads of ways.

And Express now comes up with errors "Unable to poll for new messages on your HTTP server. " Basically the new emails appear, but they are blank. sometimes I can delete them other times I can`t do anything. This is very frustrating...........
Please what methods are there for veiwing your emails on restricted systems. I am applying for jobs and require my email. so any ideas...

**arlow1** · 3rd July 2003

think its just hotmail itself went down 2 or 3 times in the past two days

**minimidnight** · 4th July 2003

Lets hope thats whats going on

But i some what doubt that, i reakon they have blocked all methods of getting to a hotmail sign up. i have tried various msn sites and ebay etc...

Oh well i`ll keep trying.

oE · 6th July 2003

mini just remember that every attempt might be getting logged by your it staff ;-)

oE.

**GETanner** · 6th July 2003

May be of no use what so ever to you BUT ...

Have a look at Hotmail popper www.boolean.ca , a free bit of software that allows you to use a POP3 mail client to access Hotmail.

May work as the firewall could only be stopping http access to hotmail.com and Hotmail Popper could be using some other method but I don't have a scooby how it works just that it works a treat on my system at home.

G

**NEVETS** · 21st July 2003

Just setup a yahoo account, and use ur outlook for that instead. Most Companys now block/filter MSN accounts due to junk mail...but yahoo seems to work...

**Speedlock** · 22nd July 2003

Originally posted by NEVETS
Just setup a yahoo account, and use ur outlook for that instead. Most Companys now block/filter MSN accounts due to junk mail...but yahoo seems to work...

IIRC, Yahoo! now charge for POP3 access although access via the web continues to be free so this will only work if minimidnight's employer has not blocked access to *.yahoo.com or *.yahoo.co.uk.

Originally posted by GETanner
May work as the firewall could only be stopping http access to hotmail.com and Hotmail Popper could be using some other method but I don't have a scooby how it works just that it works a treat on my system at home.

Hotmail Popper uses HTTP to communicate with Hotmail's mail servers so this won't work either unfortunately (Outlook uses POP3 to communicate with Hotmail Popper which in turn communicates with Hotmail via HTTP).

The only solutions that immediately spring to mind are as follows;

a) Use the POP3 account that your ISP provided you with (if you have one).

b) Sign up for a POP3 account with the provider of your choice (there are a few free ones on the web if you have a quick search).

c) If you desparately need to view your Hotmail e-mails while you are at work then you could set up Hotmail Popper on your home machine to poll for new e-mail every few minutes and create a rule to forward all incoming e-mails from the Hotmail account to your work e-mail address (or to another POP3 address as I suggested above, which you could then configure your work e-mail client to receive). This suggestion assumes that you have an 'always on' Internet connection at home.

d) Use VNC (or a similar remote access app) to access your home machine from which you could either browse to the Hotmail web site or simply view your home e-mail client which you would have set up to retrieve the contents of your Hotmail inbox (either in OE or with Hotmail Popper). Again, this suggestion assumes that you have an 'always on' Internet connection at home (and a static IP address).

e) If you do have a static IP at home then you could set up an HTTP proxy on it and use your work machine to access the Hotmail web site via the proxy.

Hope this helps.

--Speedlock

**marcode** · 22nd July 2003

Originally posted by Speedlock
a) Use the POP3 account that your ISP provided you with (if you have one).

Originally posted by Speedlock
c) If you desparately need to view your Hotmail e-mails while you are at work then you could set up Hotmail Popper on your home machine to poll for new e-mail every few minutes and create a rule to forward all incoming e-mails from the Hotmail account to your work e-mail address (or to another POP3 address as I suggested above, which you could then configure your work e-mail client to receive). This suggestion assumes that you have an 'always on' Internet connection at home.

Originally posted by Speedlock
d) Use VNC (or a similar remote access app) to access your home machine from which you could either browse to the Hotmail web site or simply view your home e-mail client which you would have set up to retrieve the contents of your Hotmail inbox (either in OE or with Hotmail Popper). Again, this suggestion assumes that you have an 'always on' Internet connection at home (and a static IP address).

Originally posted by Speedlock
e) If you do have a static IP at home then you could set up an HTTP proxy on it and use your work machine to access the Hotmail web site via the proxy.

did u even read the original post speedlock?

Originally posted by minimidnight
I have no internet connection at home

**Speedlock** · 22nd July 2003

Originally posted by marcode
did u even read the original post speedlock?

Oops, missed that bit hehe :oh:

But point (b) still applies so hopefully I have helped to solve his problem.

And hopefully my suggestions will be of some use to other people who do have an Internet connection at home and want to access those areas that our employers deem worthy of blocking via a firewall.

--Speedlock