[notreallyauser]

Two or three ago I spun up a quick Windows VM in Azure for about 20 cents worth of testing.

Shortly afterwards I had a missed phone call and then a follow-up email from an Azure salesman inviting me to schedule time to discuss my interest in the platform. I declined and asked to be opted out of anything like that in future, and actually received a pretty unprofessional response to that.

So even if Ubuntu aren't allowed to do this kind of thing, MS certainly have themselves in the past.

[iotku]

Didn't appear to be on the advertising side of things (yet...), but I had a similar experience when renewing some free Azure credits (from Microsoft Dreamspark or whatever they're calling it now).

I kinda figured it was just verifying I was a human, but I've provisioned 10~ or so other VPSes and dedicated servers with a few different providers and never got a phonecall so it was unexpected.