Microsoft admits Passport problems

Microsoft has admitted that problems with its .Net Passport servers briefly locked some subscribers out of their online accounts.

Adam Sohn, a Microsoft spokesman, said: "Some users have been experiencing some intermittent problems with sign-in. It was a networking issue with a small subset of accounts."

Sohn said the company detected problems with the .Net Passport servers later afternoon and the company's technical team had it under control about three hours later. "We think we've fixed it, and we're continuing to monitor the situation," he said.

The outage affected some customers who attempted to sign on to a personalised service linked to Passport, Microsoft's central gateway that millions of consumers use to access multiple websites or services. For example, Microsoft customers use Passport to access the web-based email service Hotmail, MSN Messenger, MSN 8.0 and so-called wallet services connected to third-party shopping sites.

Microsoft has encountered Passport server problems before. Last May, a server glitch disrupted Hotmail service during what the company called a "partial outage."

Thursday's trouble was rooted in the hardware linking the machines that power access to online accounts, Sohn said. "It's more about how the things are strung together and not problems with the actual operating system."

Sohn said the company supports about 200 million Passport accounts, with many subscribers maintaining several different screen names.

Stefanie Olsen writes for News.com