HACKER Q&A
📣 sebastien_b

Any good SPAM email reporting services?


I often get spam at my work email - no floods (just a few a week) because I've been very careful with my address, just the annoying, persistent spammers that I never signed up for (either directly or via related 'services'). I suspect most either just do dictionary guesses of email addresses, or (more likely) simply try addresses based on scraped LinkedIn data. Given how careful I've been with my address, and that it's my work address, I kinda take these spams as a personal invasion of my inbox (not to mention that it violates local laws).

I've used SpamCop[1] in the past, though I have my doubts of it having any real benefit; and lately I've found that some reports are being sent to a 'nulled' address that ends up being used only for their internal statistics (so those reports go effectively nowhere)

Are there any other (good) alternative services to SpamCop? The idea is for upstream services that provide emailing/hosting to be made aware of abusers of their systems/service/TOS.

P.S. Yes, I could "unsubscribe" from their spam, but I have 2 issues with that:

1. It confirms to them the email is real, which I don't want to do, and...

2. I never subscribed to their spam in the first place, so I don't see why I should now be bothered with having to unsubscribe. Plus if they were able to add my address to their spam list without me providing it, they should just as easily be able to remove it without it being provided - hence me using SpamCop instead.

[1] https://www.spamcop.net

Edit: a bit more context as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30108710

  👤 gregjor Accepted Answer ✓
I’ve had the same gmail address since GMail was in beta. That address is on my web site and who knows how many other sites — I use it everywhere. GMail is very good at filtering spam. When something I don’t want gets through I mark it as spam and never see it again. I don’t spend more than a couple of minutes a month managing this. My spam folder is full but I don’t have to look at it. Pretty much all modern email clients can do this, GMail seems particularly good at it.

I never interpret spam as an invasion or take it personally because I know it gets sent by bots from harvested lists. I give it the same attention I give to advertising flyers that land in my physical mailbox, even less attention because it’s one button click.

You can add yourself to various “do not solicit” lists that may do some good.

👤 aurizon
gregjor = correct. ignore after training your email it is spam, usually by placing it in the spam folder. Never unsubscribe = you are live one we can sell = flood possible. We all get this crap and the only way to stop it is to add a cost to it. I had an idea I called feemail years ago, where the sender had to pay 10 cents to email me. I would refund my friends and desired emails, so they had zero cost. It is still viable, but a small payment partner is needed to allow 10 cents fees/refunds etc, and what would they charge. Be a good idea for gmail to do it as they are wall to wall and could manage the micropayments.
👤 gregjor
Intractable problem, like houseflies. Not worth wasting time. Delete and get on with your day. Taking mass spam emails personally seems unhealthy.