Hotmail - no action taken

[g4mby]

I seem to be getting a standard response from most of my abuse reports to Hotmail, the first few lines are as follows:

Unfortunately, we cannot take action on the mail you sent us because it does not reference a Hotmail account. Please send us another message that contains the full Hotmail e-mail address and the full e-mail message to:

    abuse[at]hotmail.com

The header always shows a line similar to:

Received: from omc2-s23.bay6.hotmail.com ([65.54.249.33])

by mx4.mail.uk.clara.net with esmtp (Exim 4.52)

id 1EVRjT-0000qJ-AJ

for x; Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:45:11 +0100

Clara.Net is my ISP. Why are Hotmail dismissing my reports and apparently taking no action? I don't understand what is going on here as the IP address of 65.54.249.33 does belong to Hotmail.

An example of such a mail can be found at: http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z820728165zdb...91d71536c96e8bz

[agsteele]

I may be wrong but as best as I can tell, the message does not originate from a hotmail address - although a hotmail ip is in the route.

It appears that Hotmail demands that the report must concern Hotmail as the originating ip and this particular message doesn't fit the bill.

Anyone else have greater insight?

Andrew

[turetzsr]

...My guess would be that the key words are "Hotmail account." They're looking for someone against whom they can take action. If the spam did not come from a hotmail account, they can't very well close down the spammer.

...That does leave open the question of how this spam made its way through their server if it didn't come from a hotmail account. Good luck getting to someone at Microsoft who is able and willing to deal with that ....

[lcusdtech]

As a newb here I can venture a guess. Looks to me like the hotmail server relayed the spam from an open proxy. And based on their e-mail resonse, looks like they don't care. Or maybe they just don't know whats going on. Oh and isn't msn and hotmail esentially the same? Could be a valid msn account that was used in the spamming. Either way I agree with turetzsr, good luck finding someone there that cares.

[Jeff G.]

Please just resubmit your complaint to abuse[at]hotmail.com. The odds are that eventually your complaint will reach someone who understands it and will do something about it.

[g4mby]

Please just resubmit your complaint to abuse[at]hotmail.com.  The odds are that eventually your complaint will reach someone who understands it and will do something about it.

35089[/snapback]

Thanks, I'll do that.

[g4mby]

As a follow-up, I've resubmitted the offending e-mail directly to Hotmail four times explaining that sending the report through SpamCop results in an acknowledgement and a further email to say that no action will be taken. The speed at which the replies come back suggest that there is a mechansim to detect whether a Hotmail address exists in abuse reports and my reports are unlikely to be read by anyone.

[Wazoo]

Pay attention to just how you "format" your e-mails. I kept adding tings to the "front" of an ever-growing back-and-forth e-mail with a number of MSN and HotMail addresses .. eventually running into a Not/Idiot that took action on the "first IP/e-mail address seen" .. which turned out to be my account data in an included copy of a bounce from yet another MSN address referenced in one place, found as non-existent on an MSN server ... That particular HotMail address of mine, created when HotMail itslf was but a couple of weeks old (much predating Microsoft's purchase) .. at any rate, my HotMail account was cancelled "for spamming" .. yet the content of all that dialog was about trying to complain about the abuse of a webTV link into the SpamCop.net newsgroups ... and no, I never found anyone that either could speak, read, understand, reply in plain English ... ust the typical "press F7 for this action" type response ....

[Jeff G.]

Hotmail.com has proven itself to be ignorant of RFCs - please see http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/tools/lookup.p...ain=hotmail.com for details.