Reporting spam is a good way to fight the problem. You need to know who to report to and what to report. The first rule of thumb is NOT to complain directly to the spammer. As stated above, any reply to the spammer simply tells them your email address is valid. That makes your email address more valuable as a commodity to the spammer. They don’t care how huffy or puffy you get in your email. The proper parties to contact are the people through which the spammer operates. The idea is to cut off their ability to deliver spam or to create some sort of backlash against the spammer. You can do this by either contacting the ISP which is hosting the email servers which were used to send the spam or by contacting the ISP who hosts the company which was being advertised in the spam. The idea here is that the spammer obviously doesn’t care whether you like the spam or not. The website being advertised by the spammer is either his own (which of course won’t get you anywhere) or is owned by a company which may have no qualms with spam because they are making money. However, almost all ISPs will care immensely if anyone is using their systems to send spam. As stated previously, spam costs the ISP industry a whole lot of money. If an ISP becomes aware that they are empowering a user to send spam, they will almost always shut down the account.
[hidepost=1]
Most reputable web hosts or ISPs will have an anti-spam policy. Before reporting a spammer, it is good to see if the company you are about to report to does indeed have such a policy. Even if they do not, you can still report the spammer.
Finding the proper companies to report to takes a little bit of detective work. As mentioned, most spammers will spoof the return address in their emails. So, in many cases reporting a spam to the company whose email address is in the return address field is not likely to get you very far. Or worse, if the spammer spoofed their return address to someone who is completely innocent, you may inadvertently bring down action on a totally innocent party. So, don’t blindly just report to the return address’s ISP. Do your homework.
Another case you need to look for are people using legitimate mass-marketing companies to send their spam. The companies that send the emails are “legitimate” in that they require compliance to the CAN-SPAM act and reportedly do what they can to minimize spam. The problem here is twofold, though. The mailing lists these companies use are generally purchased. They say all of the emails on the list are opt-in, however there is really no way of knowing that from outside. Secondly, if people report the spam or request to unsubscribe, many times the company will simply forward those addresses to the spammer as “removal requests”. They are not removing the email addresses themselves. Instead, they are actually helping the spammer by sending them a list of valid email addresses!
So, the next question remains. How do you determine who to report the spam message to? Well, read on…
[/hidepost]
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
