Hotmail bailed out after forgotten bill

Hotmail users had an unlikely hero to thank for restoring their service when it suffered a glitch on Christmas Eve - a Linux programmer and his credit card.

Hotmail users had an unlikely hero to thank for restoring their service when it suffered a glitch on Christmas Eve - a Linux programmer and his credit card.

US based Michael Chaney saw that Microsoft's free email service was experiencing problems because the software giant had not paid the $35 fee to re-register the password.com site address, which is used to verify passwords and user names for Hotmail's 52 million users.

Without the payment, the domain name was suspended. Up to half of Hotmail's users may have had problems logging into their accounts.

While Microsoft was scratching its head over the problem, Chaney accessed the website of Network Solutions, which maintains the .com domain, on Christmas Day and paid the fee, restoring the domain name and the service within hours.

"I couldn't think of any negative consequences and I knew that I was probably restoring the email service to a lot of Hotmail users," said Chaney.

He said Microsoft thanked him for paying the bill and offered to refund the cost, but added that the embarrassment could prove far more costly than the $35.

"No-one can know for sure how much money this episode has cost Microsoft, but the lost future revenue is larger than the immediate tangible losses," he said.

Microsoft said that it was grateful to Chaney for limiting the outage duration and that it has launched an official investigation into the matter.