Microsoft Hotmail in spam hot water

Found on The Inquirer on Tuesday, 22 June 2004
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According to NRG Maariv, Hotmail has been shutting down accounts on the basis of accusations of spam rather than any fact.

In fact all you have to do to get an enemy's email account shut down is to email Hotmail's abuse team, accuse him or her of spamming and the boys and girls at Microsoft will have their account closed no questions asked, the report said.

In two cases, spammers spoofed the sender's address so it looked like it was sent from a Hotmail account, while they were actually sent through an Israeli ISP. In both instances, the spoofed accounts were shut down.

Just to prove that the two other cases were not one off's, the hacks at NRG Maariv opened a new account with Hotmail and sent no email from it.

Then they filed a spam complaint, saying it came from the new Hotmail account. To make it look convincing they attached Internet headers from an old spam and inserted the new Hotmail address.

Within less than 24 hours, they received a message saying the new account had been shut down without appeal.

I guess this will give some kiddies ideas. You can let MS shut down the account of someone you don't like easily; perhaps you can even register it to yourself later, what opens new possibilities for scams.