How Should You Report Spam Mail For Quick Action?
We are all affected by the scourge of spam mail. Many of us receive thousands of emails which are fortunately filtered out by our email services or email software. The main issue that everyone has with spam is that it prevents us from noticing genuine mail, which may get lost in the noise of continuous junk. Spam delays or prevents us from getting to our legitimate or important mails. There are various agencies around the world, in many countries dedicated to fighting spam mail and protecting the interests of email users across service providers. There are various agencies which you can complain to about spam. This article explains how you can complain about spam mail and get some effective remedy.
SpamCop
SpamCop.net is a spam reporting service which complains about spam on your behalf, to the service provider of your spammer. When you report a spam mail to spamcop, it forwards your complaint to the correct authority in charge of the IP Address or network of the origin of the spam mail. It picks out the Abuse Complaint details of the network provider and sends a pre-drafted email filled in with the details applicable to your complaint. The best part about spamcop is the enforce ability of the complaint. SpamCop provides spam activity information and statistics to various anti-spam filter services which use these details to block mail even before they reach a mail server. If you are blacklisted due to a spamcop complaint, your IP Address will no longer be able to send out emails to people who are using those blacklists and filters. If that happens, mails from your server will be delayed or will bounce. If your are providing an email service, your service will be disrupted till the spam doesnt stop.
The Abuse Email Address of the IP Address Owner
The email address of the network owner maybe a bit hard to find out, but it should surely yield some results. Most Network Operation Centers, Data Centers and Hosting Providers take abuse complaints very seriously. Action on abuse complaints includes disconnection of services or even temporary suspension of the offender’s service. The abuse contact is supposed to be a one-point communication address by which anyone aggrieved by the behaviour of a certain subscriber or network can report the issues to that person. You can find out the abuse email address of a domain name by visiting abuse.net or simply sending a mail to the default abuse address i.e. abuse@domain_name.com or postmaster@domain_name.com where domain_name is the actual domain name which appears to be sending out spam.
Government Spam Reporting Systems
Various countries around the world have passed anti-spam laws to help tackle the scourge of spam mail. Federal Trade Commission in the USA, Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) Reporting Center in the Canada host an email spam reporting service, which in turn forwards your complaint to the appropriate network operator. The limitation of these bodies is that they may not be able to do much for email or hosting services which are located beyond its territorial jurisdiction.
Mail Client or Webmail Plugin
Nowadays there are many tools available to email users for reporting spam or sending complaints about email service abuse. Webmail services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail have a “Report Spam” button or a “This look like spam” which not only places a complaint but also filters out similar messages in future, by educating the spam control system. Mail client’s like Outlook also have various add-ins to report and delete spam. Some Anti-virus and Firewall software offer integrated email scanning which automatically reports suspicious bulk emails to a central command system.