Dear Yahoo, START READING! ABUSE! REPORTS!

Remember this?, it referenced a domain that was a part of an HM Revenue & Customs phishing scam. As the domain was hosted by yahoo (the domain in question is failing to resolve as of a few minutes ago), I decided to fire them an abuse report. Alas however, their first response was laughable as it showed they'd clearly not read the abuse report;

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

I understand your frustration in receiving unsolicited email. While we
investigate all reported violations against the Yahoo! Terms of Service
(TOS), in this particular case the message you received was not sent
through the Yahoo! Mail system.

Yahoo! has no control over activities outside its service, and therefore
we cannot take action. You may try contacting the sender's email
provider, by identifying the sender's domain and contacting the
administrator of that domain. The sender's provider should be in a
better position to take appropriate action against the sender's account.

The email message itself does contain some information relating to the
sender's identity. Yahoo! includes the originating Internet Protocol
(IP) address in the full Internet headers of all messages sent through
Yahoo! Mail, so that we will have information regarding the origin of
messages sent through our system. The originating IP address should be
located in the very last "Received" line of the full Internet headers
and corresponds to the sender's Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Please see the following URL for more assistance:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/abuse-17.htm

Once you have identified the IP address, you can conduct an IP lookup to
determine which ISP provides this person with Internet access. One such
lookup tool you may want to try is:

http://www.arin.net/whois/

You can then attempt to contact that ISP to report any abuse activities
occurring within their service.

In addition, please visit the following website for useful tools to
combat spam:

http://antispam.yahoo.com/

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail.

Regards,

Cristene

Yahoo! Customer Care

62714199

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/

What's actually more annoying than this, is that I received an automated response prior to receiving these, to let me know they'd received the report.

Frustrated with their response, I decided to reply with clarification that yes, I was aware that the e-mail had not originated from Yahoo, and that the domain in question (y'know, the damn thing I sent to their abuse dept!) WAS HOSTED BY YAHOO!. Given the netblock information for this particular IP space, only gives one Abuse e-mail address to send stuff too, it wasn't a case of my sending the abuse report to the wrong address.

Expecting to have someone actually bother to read my response, and then read the original damn report and respond to THAT, I was absolutely disgusted to have then received this, which came in a couple minutes ago;

Hello Steven,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

We understand your frustration in receiving unsolicited email. While we
investigate all reported violations against the Yahoo! Terms of Service
(TOS), in this particular case the message you received was not sent by
a Yahoo! Mail user.

Yahoo! has no control over activities outside its service, and therefore
we cannot take action. You may try contacting the sender's email
provider, by identifying the sender's domain and contacting the
administrator of that domain. The sender's provider should be in a
better position to take appropriate action against the sender's account.

The email message itself does contain some information relating to the
sender's identity. Yahoo! includes the originating Internet Protocol
(IP) address in the full Internet headers of all messages sent through
Yahoo! Mail, so that we will have information regarding the origin of
messages sent through our system. The originating IP address should be
located in the very last "Received" line of the full Internet headers
and corresponds to the sender's Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Please see the following URL for more assistance:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-05.html

Once you have identified the IP address, you can conduct an IP lookup to
determine which ISP provides this person with Internet access. One such
lookup tool you may want to try is:

http://www.arin.net/whois/

You can then attempt to contact that ISP to report any abuse activities
occurring within their service.

If you are receiving multiple messages of this kind, you may utilize the
the "Blocked Addresses" feature of Yahoo! Mail in this instance. This
feature consists of a list of addresses that cannot send mail to your
account. Incoming mail from these addresses will be automatically
disposed of, without bouncing back to the sender. When you remove an
address from your Blocked Addresses list, you will once again be able to
receive mail from that address.

You can have up to 100 addresses on the Blocked Addresses list. To
manually add an address to the list of blocked addresses, simply follow
these steps:

1. Click "Mail Options", on the top right-hand navigation bar of your
Yahoo! Mail page.

2. Click "Block Addresses".

3. The list of addresses you are currently blocking will be displayed in
the Blocked Addresses window.

4. Enter the new address in the "Enter email address to block" field,
then click "Add Block".

5. That's it! The address will be added to your Blocked Addresses list,
and you will no longer receive messages from that address.

In addition, please visit the following website for useful tools to
combat spam:

http://antispam.yahoo.com/

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail.

Regards,

Addley

Yahoo! Customer Care

62714199

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/

Oh hell no - they didn't just reply to me with the same damn thing as last time did they? Yeppers - they did.

So I'd like to offer Yahoo some advice;

1. STOP using automated responses
2. STOP using form letters
3. READ THE DAMN REPORTS!!!!

Had they done #3, there would've been no need for #1 or #2.

References:

XFiles HMRC Phishing Campaign
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2009/07/xfiles-hmrc-phishing-campaign.html