The article linked to here Outlook switch leaves Hotmail users open to cyber-squatting | News | PC Pro prompts me to wonder whether the avalanche of problems people seem to have with their Hotmail accounts at the moment isn't afterall an engineered and willed move from Microsoft to force its hotmail users to shed off their old emails, as it were, and still remail faithfull and sign up with them under outlook.com - instead of moving on to some other free email service, as I defintely will do if I don't get my hotmail account (or at least all my old emails) back.