Microsoft admits Yahoo! Mail problem on Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has finally admitted that it is Windows Phone 7’s integration with Yahoo! Mail that is causing what it is calling “a very small percentage of users” to sail over the usage caps on their data plans and receive significant charges from their carriers.

The problem was first highlighted back in December when over 50mb of “phantom data” was being consumed. It was over 10 days ago now that Microsoft acknowledged that a problem existed, but it has taken until now for them to publish what they think is responsible and how it can be dealt with.

According to a Microsoft representative talking to Paul Thurrott, an “inefficiency” in the way Windows Phone 7’s mail client talks to Yahoo! Mail has been identified. While a fix will be “available in the coming weeks”, users are advised to switch their Yahoo! Mail accounts on their devices to fully manual updates. The bug is in the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, and shows itself when e-mail sent to an invalid address or larger than a particular size appears in the mailbox; this then causes the protocol to attempt to re-download a significant amount of e-mail, therefore accounting for the huge data usage that some users have observed.

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