Hotmail, Firefox, and Adblock

I’ve had a Hotmail email address since before it was owned by Microsoft, circa late ‘97. Back then, the webmail interface was plain, simple and to some extent, it was ad-free! Slowly but surely, Hotmail changed and “the man” wanted to make money. It was only a matter of time before ads littered the Hotmail interface. The only way you can have an ad-free webmail experience with Hotmail is to upgrade to their Hotmail Plus service at $19.95 per year.

Of course, there are alternative webmail interfaces that expose you to ads in varying degrees but if you happen to have a Hotmail email account for as long as I have, then you will understand that picking up and changing email addresses is like moving to a new home in another state. It takes some planing, patience, and time. It just plain sucks!!!

“Take back your grandfathers web“, I say!?!?

Want to remove most of those pesky Hotmail ads? If your answer is yes, I don’t blame you one bit. Here is how you can do it using Firefox and Adblock - a Firefox Extension.

Requirements:

1. Firefox
2. Adblock extension

From here on out, I am going to assume that you have the Adblock extension properly installed and working. This means that you have downloaded and installed the extension and that you have restarted Firefox. Please double check before you start to flame ;).

On to the steps…

1. Fire-up Firefox
2. Go to: Tools > Adblock > Preferences
3. In the pop-up window add the following filters, one filter at a time, to the “New Filter” section
   

    *cb1.msn.com/hm/footer.arm*
    *cb1.msn.com/hm/header.arm*
    *cb1.msn.com/hm/signup.arm*
    *rad.msn.com/ADS*
    *ads.msn.com*
    *hm.msn.com*
    

4. Close the Adblock preferences window and test it by going to http://hotmail.com

Tweak it to your liking as Adblock is a very powerful tool. From http://adblock.mozdev.org/: “New filters can be added by right-click on an ad and choosing the Adblock option“. If everything worked as it should, you will see something similar to the following screenshots:

Below are some screenshots of how Hotmail looks with MS IE 6.0 which can be used as a comparison.

In my experience, I have found that this combination blocks most but not all of Hotmails ads yet allowing you to use their webmail service as you normally would. However, like all things tech, your mileage will vary. Keep in mind that these instructions might be obsolete if Hotmail decides to change the way they load their footer, header and signup pages. Also, the ads that you are blocking out are still there but you just cant see them because of the Firefox + Adblock combo doing their magic. Hope that lets you sleep better at night.
Enjoy!