I'm working with a young person who is getting LOTS of email spam. There seems to be something that has attached itself to her hotmail account that attracts pornographic (and other) spam. She never intentionally requested anything of that nature. We have unsubscribed all the "preference" indicators (subscriptions) we can find. We have also blocked all the sites and domains we can. For weeks we've just ignored (deleted) it. But it keeps coming - by the dozens. Is there any way to find out where the PRIMARY source of this stuff is and get it stopped?

You and your friend did the "right" thing up to where you said that you

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We have unsubscribed all the "preference" indicators (subscriptions) we can find

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That was where you went wrong! by doing this you have alerted them(The "Spammers") that you exist , therefore you get targetted even harder ,
Hotmail is a bad service for recieving Spam ,have a look around the email page (preferences/ options) for anything about abusive email then you can "forward" it on for review?
if you think it has gone too far then see if you can open another email account for your friend at somewhere like Yahoo.com ,Lycos.com ,Excite.com for their private mail and leave the Hotmail account alone. I don't know if you can close it?(and reopen another? with a different screen name)I do not use Hotmail ,Someone else on this site will put you right on that question
This is a very useful email address for you starting right away "Forward" every one of those emails to here there will be an appropiate named button the address is? abuse@hotmail.com
Don't forget "Delete" in future do not reply!!
when it starts easing up a little. then delete 1 or 2 addresses from your block/ignore list.you won't be completely Spam free in future it will take several weeks to notice a reduction,You can use another email address to handle the private stuff?

RULE 1: When you receive new, unwanted email, never click the "unsubscribe" link. It only confirms to the sender that an active email account has been found, and the spam then becomes continuous.

Spam filters and filtering services are available. See Spam Buster for a typical example, and the Online Manual. Also see PC Magazine's target="_blank"reviews of anti-spam tools.

bedstor, We've tried the abuse@hotmail.com. It's only for reporting spammers FROM hotmail accounts. For weeks we forwarded all the spam we could to hotmail, yahoo, and several others. That took so much time! It seemed to end up in a black hole and it didn't reduce the amount, so we gave up. You're right, we shouldn't have used the "unsubscribe" link. We used it only on what appeared to be "legitimate" senders - never on the porn stuff. We've been just deleting for months now and it still hasn't dropped off. Thanks for the advice, though. We may have to just kill this account and try another one.

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Tom, I just tried the SpamBuster. It looked great - until it said it doesn't support hotmail accounts. I'll take a look at the other programs in PC Mag. Thanks!

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Any additional ideas are welcome!

So you are in between "A Rock and a Hard place" like us.(a Paradox?)
I access the Internet via Aol. and every day I spend at least 10-15 minutes clearing Rubbish out of my Mailbox before checking the Genuine email content.Most of the useless stuff is deleted the obvious bad stuff Goes to the Cosmail 1 or Cosmail 2 mailboxes or both As with Hotmail if I get anything with a Aol screen name then it goes to Cosuk (this is what you have got)
Most of the Spam in My Mail box came as a result of My nephew viewing the "Pretty Lady" sites and the Spam came back to my Mastername (He and his sister also have Hotmail Email accounts and they are like you and your friends Account absolutely "chock full of Spam"
There is one thing you could try besides the Email controls,your Isp may have some form of "Parental controls" like AOL this can be set to exclude emails and people from Harassing you?
Here is the Aol Parental Controls front page You may be able to access the Help sections? (Aol may have its faults but the Help sections are very Good)

I found that changing my email address didn't do a bit of good, it took about 3 weeks and they found me again.