How Hotmail is doing on the spam front

So, how is Hotmail doing with its spam problems? This very issue has come up in news.admin.net-abuse.email recently, so let's take a look and see.

This week we accepted exactly one email from Hotmail, which may or may not have been spam.

Also this week, we refused 84 messages from Hotmail that came from non-Hotmail email addresses, mostly msn.com but including domains like 'ukwiningnotice.com', 'usm2005lot.net', and 'infonotification.com'. Msn.com users rejected included ones called british_lotterywinnings and vhfprizecenter1. (For some reason, posing as UK lotteries seems popular with the Hotmail-hosted people who spam us.)

This week we also rejected 15 Hotmail messages because they came from bad areas of the network; 8 from SBL-listed IP addresses, 4 from CBL-listed ones, and 3 because they were from bad network areas. Two IP addresses tried to send multiple emails through Hotmail:

• 213.185.106.3, a CBL-listed Nigerian IP address, sent three; two from apavel1 and one from jamesangulu
• 84.41.216.20, SBL-listed since June 25th, sent two; one from aliwaheed3 and one from aliwaheed12.

Thus, this week Hotmail is 99% unwanted email and at most 1% email we actually wanted. Not exactly a good ratio; Vernon Schryver's remark definitely applies.

(Past summaries of Hotmail.com spam can also be found in SpammerRoundupI.)