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Images and links are now on by default in Windows Live Hotmail for messages from organizations subscribing to Return Path’s Sender Score Certified service, the deliverability concern announced today.

Though images and links have been turned off by default in Windows Live Hotmail—the newest version of Microsoft’s free e-mail service—they have been turned on for Sender Score Certified mailers for several months, said George Bilbrey, general manager of Sender Score, Return Path’s delivery assurance unit.

“When they released Windows Live Hotmail, they released it with this functionality built in,” he said. “It’s just to the point where now we’ve tested enough to make sure it works all the time.”

Though images are on by default for Sender Score Certified mailers to Windows Live Hotmail accounts, they are still off by default in Hotmail classic accounts, Microsoft’s previous free Web-based e-mail service, Bilbrey said.

However, he added: “Microsoft said at [the Authentication and Online Trust Summit] they’re aggressively migrating users from classic to Windows Live Hotmail.”

The announcement is the latest in a series of e-mail-graphics-and-links related developments.

Goodmail Systems announced earlier this month that its CertifiedEmail system had been adopted by Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon.

As a result, six major e-mail inbox providers—the lone major exception being Microsoft—now support CertifiedEmail, including its original adopters AOL and Yahoo.

Introduced in 2006, CertifiedEmail is a scheme under which senders undergo an accreditation process. Once certified as non-spammers by Goodmail, senders’ messages arrive in users’ inboxes with images and links intact and certified as safe by a blue-ribbon icon for 0.25 cents per message.

Key differences between Goodmail’s service and Return Path’s Sender Score Certified program are cost and the structure of the deal between the ISP and the accreditation vendor, said Bilbrey.

Subscribing to Sender Score Certified costs on average about $4,000 a year after an initial application fee of an average of $400, he said. Also, where Goodmail shares its revenue with the ISP, Return Path does not, Bilbrey added.

He declined to specify what specific criteria a mailer must meet in order to be Sender Score Certified other than to say they should be in the “best quartile” of senders best-practices wise.