[I usually reserve "Paging Customer Service" posts for poor customer service, but sometimes somebody exceeds my expectations and merits mention. This one is a happy post!]

Spam is one of the scourges of email as we currently know it. I use a spam filter, SpamAssassin, which prevents 1500-2000 spams per day from entering my mail system. However, sometimes things sneak by and end up in one of my mailboxes. This happens to me just a few times each week, and I could ignore it easily enough when I see it happen.

Even though spam is usually untraceable to its original source, there's often enough of a trail left behind to complain to somebody, but there are two problems with complaints: either they seem to end up in a black hole, or there are cultural or language barriers.

In the past week, I've gotten three "Nigerian 419 scam" emails, claiming to have some vast amount of money for me if I pay, in advance, for the services needed to deliver that money to me. Actually, I didn't receive these, my church did. And the spammer pretended to be devoutly religious and suffering either a terminal illness or a loved one's terminal illness, with a large inheritance available to charitable causes. Clearly we're talking about depraved individuals. These three particular scam emails came via Yahoo!'s free email service.

Knowing that Yahoo! was the conduit for the emails, I wrote them to complain. They promptly assigned each complaint a case number, and within two days apiece they researched the email accounts to conclude that they were being abused, and then they told me they took appropriate action against the account holders! There was no black hole, and despite the fact that one of my complaints went to Asia, it overcame the language barrier.

Yahoo!'s handling of email abusers is exemplary in my experience, and I appreciate their prompt attention to my complaints. Thanks Yahoo!