Hotmail Spam
Or "why your mail from hotmail may not reach me"
Lately I've been having a major problem with spam sent from hotmail addresses using hotmail's own SMTP servers. This has evaded sanesecurity's signatures and SpamAssassin, even though I've fed about 100 of these messages to sa-learn and also given some to steveb at sanesecurity. Some of these new spams I've been getting even have a negative SpamAssassin score! They are mostly random waffle (not 411, viagra or sex), with a hyperlink embedded. My email address is never in the To: or Cc: fields.. I have tried contacting Hotmail in the past about issues such as this, and its like talking to a brick wall.
Previously, the most obvious spam was rejected by our SMTP servers at SMTP-time, and that which was likely to be spam, but not certain, was delivered to a Junk folder.
Now, I am going to configure my server to accept then silently drop all email which is routed via a hotmail.com SMTP server where my name is not in the To: or Cc: fields. (Technical issues with the way the SMTP servers are setup prevent me from rejecting it at SMTP-time at present.)
This means that if you use Windows Live mail to Bcc me an email then I will no longer receive it. You will not receive an automated reply, in the interests of reducing backscatter.
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