Found this one in my Quarantine folder (“things that make it past my spam filters but come from people I’ve never corresponded with”). It claims to be a survey conducted for Yahoo! over a recent Customer Care case, and even includes a case number.

The tip-off? It was sent to the phony email address I publish on the home page of this site, which changes every month. So, not only have I never used this address to send email to anyone, but it’s addressed to last month’s address. Satmetrix appears to be legit, but a quick Google turned up several examples of them sending this exact same message to mailing lists (over at least a year and a half).

It looks like Yahoo! is forwarding viruses, spam, and other forged email to them as legitimate customer care cases, and they’re not detecting it, which significantly reduces the value of their service and likely puts them both in violation of various spam laws.

From yaho0201a@ccsurvey.com Fri Apr 16 07:41:16 2004
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Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 08:34:58 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <200404161534.i3GFYwha023260@konocti.ccsurvey.com>
Subject: Yahoo! wants your feedback for Support Case: 7506898, 
From: Satmetrix 
To: _____@dotclue.org
Reply-To: yaho0201a@ccsurvey.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


Dear Valued Yahoo! Customer,


At Yahoo!, your satisfaction is our measure of success.  So that we may better 
meet your needs and preferences, we invite you to give us your feedback about 
your recent experience with Yahoo! Customer Care in a brief online survey.


To access our survey, click on the URL below.


http://survey.ccsurvey.com/yaho0201a/survey1.pl?VrhgOQx6@p


Many thanks for your participation!  We greatly appreciate your feedback and 
thoughtful suggestions.


Sincerely,


Yahoo! Customer Care


Case number: 7506898
Property: 
Close date: 04/15/2004


***Important Notes***


This survey is being conducted by Satmetrix Systems on behalf of Yahoo!.  
Satmetrix Systems does not use this information for any other purpose. To 
review the Satmetrix information privacy statement, please see:


http://www.satmetrix.com/privacy.html


Yahoo!, as the party who controls the data collected in this survey, may use 
your responses together with existing data it has about you to ensure its 
products and services meet your needs. Yahoo! will treat data collected from 
you in accordance with Yahoo!'s privacy policy. To review this privacy policy, 
please see:


http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/


The data collected from you may be transferred to the USA to be processed on 
behalf of and under the instruction of Yahoo! by a third-party data processor 
based in the USA.


If you want to be excluded from future surveys and survey correspondence, 
please REPLY to this email with the word REMOVE in the subject line.