People usually laugh when I tell them of my hobo adventures and mention that modern knights of the road communicate with each other through Hotmail accounts. Hey, they’re free, you can access them at public libraries and they shut down if you don’t use them for a while, automatically letting people know you’re in jail. What more could you want?

Nevertheless, even I found it a little weird to discover that terrorists use the service as well. According to the New York Times, in an article about messages received from the kidnappers of journalist Daniel Peark: “The e-mail message arrived early today at various in-boxes at The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and at news organizations in Pakistan. It was sent under the name “kidnapperguy” via Hotmail, Microsoft’s free e-mail service.”

So, that’s kidnapperguy@hotmail.com, right? I wonder how much spam those people are getting?