Yesterday, I had occasion to ask for help from the "abuse" departments at both Comcast and Yahoo. It was a minor matter: I had put a couple of items on the "Freecycle" list, and I suspected that the replies I received were from spambots - a common problem on Craigslist, sad to say, but up until now rare on Freecycle.
I asked both companies to verify that the emails I had received were from real users. I supplied headers and other "back office" info that is expected from a system administrator in these cases.
Both firms spat out an auto-reply, with stern warnings not to send any email back, and both supplied URL's which I was asked to visit, supposedly to their "abuse" websites. I clicked on the links, expecting to fill out an .asp form so as to save their employees the few seconds it would have taken for them to do it.
The "abuse" addresses turned out to be redirected to each ISP's generic "help" pages, which had no capability to actually file an abuse complaint.
It's obvious that Comcast and Yahoo have abandoned any attempt to deal with abuse reports at anything above a superficial level.
I just can't stop wondering why I'm surprised.
Bill