Microsoft Fights to Weaken Washington Anti-Spam Law

An anonymous reader writes "According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft (probably their MSN arm) is pushing for a change in at least Washington's anti-spam law. Some analysts claim that the changes contain holes that will allow Microsoft to be exempt from the law." Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.

Comments

Re:Where is the logic?

[nfras]

The logic is pretty simple. Microsoft want to stop other people spamming Hotmail subscribers. It costs them money in bandwidth, storage etc. Microsoft like to send their customer base "email updates and special offers". As the vast majority of computer users use some MS product (be it Hotmail, Windows, Office etc) that gives them a very large number of people to send email to. At the moment, if you use Hotmail you will get a monthly email from Hotmail which will mention some commercial services available and some of their sponsors. If they are unable to do this they will lose the revenue from people who pay to have their products/services included in this type of email. While not unsolicited it is (in most cases) unwanted.
Microsoft want to be able to reduce their costs from being spammed but still want to benefit from eing able to send bulk email to their subscriber base.

BillBlocker!

[KC7GR]

I've been spammed many times from MSN, and from other spammers hiding out in the Redmond Empire's IP range. I've had their entire set of IP ranges in our mail server's 'Deny' list for nearly two years. No regrets whatsoever.

For those who want to do similarly, and who run their own mail servers, let me save you a little research.

If you run qmail or a similar package with rblsmtpd, make the following entry in the /etc/tcp.smtp file, and recompile it.

207.46.:allow,RBLSMTPD="Microsoft: Access denied." (Or whatever text you want in there).

There are other domains. You may want to add:

207.68.128-207.:allow,RBLSMTPD=(Text as above).
65.52-55.:
213.199.144-159.:

For those using postfix, simply add these to your client_check and sender_check lists, and recompile with postmap.

microsoft.com 554 Go away, Bill. (or whatever you want to say).
msft.net 554 (whatever you want to say)
msn.com (if desired)

Hotmail spam filtering

[Quantum Skyline]

Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.

Microsoft does an ok job at Hotmail, but there is one thing that it misses - itself.

My mail is set to exclusive on Hotmail, meaning if you are not on my safe list, your mail gets dumped into my Junk Mail folder. Seven day old messages get erased from Junk Mail permanently. This applies to all emailers, except Microsoft, whose 75KB Hotmail ads trying to promote paying for more services show up in my Inbox, not Junk Mail. I have to manually delete these.

Two things I want changed at Hotmail:
1. Microsoft better learn how to filter itself. Properly.
2. Junk Mail should not contribute to my space usage on Hotmail. If I get a lot of spam, Hotmail sends me a message saying to erase it, flooding it further. God forbid I fet another ad. When you have 2MB of space, and Junk Mail counts towards it, 50KB hurts. It wouldn't hurt to make the initial page after logging in say in big red letters "Erase some mail, dammit!"

Quantum Skyline

Bill 1618, Title III is NOT A REAL LAW

[umofomia]

It passed the Senate but never passed the House of Representatives... It's cited by spammers in order to trick you that the spam is legitimate and that you can't do anything about it. See link here.

Scott Hazlegrove some background

[NigelJohnstone]

Scott Hazlegrove is the Microsoft lobbyist they are talking about.

Here is Scott Hazlegrove, "environmental policy director with the Association of Washington Business" arguing against stepped penalties for river poluters, instead he wants a nice flat fee (which would favour the bigger poluters over the little ones).

http://www.crcwater.org/fish/npfish35.html

Here he is as a Surefoot customer:

"I am writing to express my thanks and appreciation for the first decently fitting ski boots I have ever worn.", "I wouldn't think of buying a pair of boots anywhere else."

http://www.surefoot.com/surefoot_-_customer_letter s.html

Here he is at his lobbying firm (this page has disappeared from the site, but google still has it):

The google cache link