Sometimes I receive mail from people with msn.com (or outlook.com or live.com) email addresses. Legit mail, even including patches for OpenBSD (crazy!). Unfortunately my IP address was blacklisted, so my direct replies would bounce back to me. The good news is that Microsoft has a support form you can use to resolve this issue. The bad news is it asks 30 (thirty!) questions (all required!) about my business and my mailing list.

“What OS are you using?” OpenBSD

“What mail transport software are you using?” smtpd

“Provide the URL of your web site.” ok... www.tedunangst.com

“Provide the URL of your Privacy Policy.” uh...

“In what manner(s) are recipients added to your mailing list(s)?” I type it in the To: box. Sometimes I click reply.

“Please copy/paste samples of a few of the messages you’re sending.” (An email containing a patch for src/lib/libfuse. Bet they haven’t seen that before.)

The good news is somebody at Microsoft has decided I “qualify for conditional mitigation” until such time as I have “established a good reputation” according to the form letter response. The bad news I don’t know if anybody read my answers to their inane questions and had a chuckle, or just clicked the green button and moved on to the next spammer trying to cheat the system.