Microsoft. Doing it right.
I get a small trickle of spam from various Microsoft subsidiaries, and, as I do for most of the big mail hosts (yahoo, google, etc) I bounce the spam back to their abuse desk with a tinned “this is spam from one of your machines, please deal with it.”
When I bounce spam back to google, I get a magnificent page of doublespeak that boils down to “if you don’t report it on our special webform, we don’t care about it”. When I bounce spam back to yahoo, I get, if I’m lucky, a magnificent page of doublespeam that boils down to “we’ve developed a fancy mime type for spam reports and we won’t even look at anything else!”, and if I’m not lucky (which is most of the time,) I get a tinned “this message didn’t come from yahoo” even though the very first Received: line on the spam that I bounce shows that it comes from a yahoo machine.
But when I bounce spam back to microsoft, this is what I get:
- I have closed the accounts w.m0030@msn.com and m_wilson001@hotmail.co.uk that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
- I have closed the account miss.k032@msn.com miss.k032@msn.com that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct.
- I have closed the account (nbad20242@msn.com) that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
- We have taken appropriate action on the account (wia1_631@msn.com and p.williams001@hotmail.co.uk) that you reported in compliance with the Code of Conduct (COC).
- I have closed the account akomab11@msn.com that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
- I have closed the account (r.ruthwi@msn.com) that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
- I have closed the account (stephanie.ams3@msn.com) that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
- I have closed the account maylin1_4_3@msn.com that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (COC).
- I have closed the account {mrs.marwa215@msn.com } that you reported, in accordance with our Code of Conduct (CoC).
Now that’s the sort of response to spam I like to see. Not the outright lying that yahoo does, not the sort of snooty “we’re the phone company. We don’t care” response that google barfs out at me, but a simple presentation of a spammer’s now-dead maildrop.
Microsoft, you’re doing it right.