On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 11:58:05PM -0400, Rob Szarka wrote:
I report dozens of spams from my personal account alone every day and never receive anything other than automated messages claiming to have dealt with the same abuse that continues around the clock or, worse, bogus/clueless claims that the IP in question is not theirs and suggestions that I check the same ARIN database that I used to confirm the responsible party in the first place.
I gave up sending abuse reports to Yahoo (and Hotmail) many years ago. All available evidence strongly indicates that there is nobody there who understands them, is capable of taking effective action, or cares to take any effective action. That evidence includes not just their complete failure to control outbound abuse, but their ill-advised and ineffective attempts to control inbound abuse (as we see in this thread), their complete failure to participate in abuse forums such as Spam-L, their complete failure to shut down spammer/phisher domains they're hosting, and their complete failure to shut down spammer/phisher dropboxes they're providing. Sadly, Google's Gmail appears to be on the first steps down this same path. I had hoped for a display of markedly higher clue level from them, but -- for whatever reason -- it hasn't manifested itself yet. So in the short term, advising customers that Yahoo's and Hotmail's freemail services are of very poor quality and should never be relied on for anything, and that Gmail is a better choice, is probably viable. In the long term, though, I think it may only delay the inevitable. ---Rsk