Today I was tasked with poking around various SMTP servers to see how they reacted to DSN requests (don’t ask why, because I can’t tell you, and the absurdity of the whole backstory is driving me nuts right now anyway).

Anyway, I noticed that alone of the free mail providers I fiddled with, only Microsoft threw out some warning text upon establishing the connection. I didn’t pay any initial attention to it, but when I did finally read it out of boredom while waiting for a command to be processed, I noticed it said:

cubelodyte$ telnet mx1.hotmail.com 25
Trying 65.54.244.8...
Connected to mx1.hotmail.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 bay0-mc1-f21.bay0.hotmail.com Sending unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail to Microsoft's computer network is prohibited. Other restrictions are found at http://privacy.msn.com/Anti-spam/. Violations will result in use of equipment located in California and other states. Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:42:23 -0700

So quake in fear, spammers! If you send your crap through Hotmail they’ll.. um… do, uh, something in California, and maybe elsewhere. You have been warned.