In light of the agonies I described in an earlier thread trying to report a 419er's mail drop on Hotmail, I was pleased to discover that not all providers are as obtuse as Hotmail/Live/MS:

Not only did he tell me that he took action, he apologized for having forced me to play detective to get a reporting address. Then, he thanked me for reporting (!) and even grasped the subtle distinction that I was reporting a scammer and not a spammer.

-- rick

Such a rare occurance it deserves a distinction of some kind!

Nice work Rick - encouragement for us all to keep trying.

Yes indeed. I was working on 'Plan B' for 419-ers but certain technical difficulties have been encountered and I can now gratefully drop that project.

Where do I get a "meat eating robot"; it'd make a perfect office security system!

Well, the days of "MENSCHENJÄGER MARK ELF" (Cordwainer Smith's story, "Mark Elf") seemed upon us with the "Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot" - EATR - robot - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10287597...l?tag=mncol;txt - but then feasible deniability kicked in:
http://www.robotictechnologyinc.com/images...20July%2009.pdf

As written elsewhere:

EATR X-69, refelctively, "Does 'move' include 'yelling, screaming and kicking'? It did a bit of that."
EATR X-42, confidently, "Definitely. Yelling, screaming and kicking are certainly classified under 'movement' in my book."
"OK, that was a moving plant then, we'll know next time and they're easier to classify. Let's find some more."
"Yeah, gotta keep the energy levels up. This non-lethal warfighting is demanding work."
"Heh, slippery little suckers, aren't they?"

But we digress.

IME, if the report is the first they get, you may get a real reply. Sometimes, they don't believe it - until they get other reports - but especially if it looks as though you do know what you are doing (like the dig), they may pay attention and be grateful enough to reply.

Yahoo is usually good about saying they took 'appropriate' action, but this last time I reported one, I didn't point out that I knew where the email came from and was only reporting the drop box 'to protect the gullible' and it was definitely one of the first they got so they didn't pay attention and sent the boiler plate about how to read headers.

I always wondered about the 'appropriate action' replies, but, in the light of this last reply, it probably does mean that they have closed the account.

Long ago, I manually reported an open relay (or proxy, I don't remember which) to a smallish domain. I got a prompt reply saying it wasn't possible. And then shortly after that (15 minutes maybe), an apology because the server admin had received several more reports and discovered it was so. Things happen fast in the server admin world! If your report was the 100th, you may not get a reply, I bet.

Miss Betsy