In short, the Hotmail team has added the ability to mark your friend's compromised account as "hacked", opening the door for the Hotmail staff to recover the account, also certain passwords are no longer allowed to be used by users (e.g., "password", "123456", "ilovecats", etc.).

^[1] I think both of these are terrific (simple) steps towards a more secure email for people who are not informed enough to protect themselves better online.

(via The Next Web)

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1. This feature will be introduced for new accounts and when users change their passwords. There is no mention of a prompt, or similar mechanism, to change passwords for those whose passwords are currently insecure. ↩︎