Do you report SPAM/Spoofing e-mails?

[srobert]

What do you do when you receive SPAM or Spoofing e-mails?

[Scarlet Fever]

hit the delete button

[Sherman Homan]

Report it to whom? Spammers constantly change domain names and IP addresses. They are hard to track down by design. Just use your email Junk filter and don't ever, ever click on the link that says "To remove your name, blah blah blah." That will prove to the spammer that your address is legit, as opposed to the millions of randomly generated addresses they send to. If you respond, you will be deluged.

[srobert]

Report it to whom? … don't ever, ever click on the link that says "To remove your name, blah blah blah." … If you respond, you will be deluged.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean responding to the spammer.

I have a script that automatically transforms all emails in my junk folder to raw source and then batch forwards them to the .Mac spam report address. More in those lines.

I'm just wondering if it makes a difference, no matter how small. It takes me little effort to report spam this way so I don't mind doing it if it helps my email service (.mac in this case) filter spam more effectively.

As for reporting spoofing emails, it takes more effort. You have to 1) go to the spoofed company's website (ebay, amazon, paypal, etc…), 2) find the spoof report form on their website, 3) fill the form and send it. I was wondering if it was worth it.

[nbs2]

I'll report spam that comes into my inbox if I'm at work since I keep gmail open. It does a good job of filtering out the spoofing emails directly to the junk mail, so it's been long enough that I can't remember of I've reported a spoof.

At home - the few things that get past Mail's filter just get junked. Anybody else notice that the spammers have shifted from the images to PDFs for their spammies?

[mkrishnan]

I junk mail and ignore spam... On MR, I report it though. :D

Your script does sound like a nice idea... although I receive e-mail from seven different e-mail providers, so I'm not sure how practical it would be for me to implement.

The other thing is that I use my junk mail box liberally... I send all the advertisements there, but some of them, I look at (e.g. when Guess or Bluefly or sometimes Apple sends me a message -- I send them to junk, but I read them; I delete the ones that want to make my penis bigger automatically. ;) )

[srobert]

else notice that the spammers have shifted from the images to PDFs for their spammies?

It always interesting seeing what they come up with. ^_^ These people are very resourceful people. Too bad they can't pick a more ethical carreer.

[atszyman]

As for reporting spoofing emails, it takes more effort. You have to 1) go to the spoofed company's website (ebay, amazon, paypal, etc…), 2) find the spoof report form on their website, 3) fill the form and send it. I was wondering if it was worth it.

Not necessarily so much effort. For PayPal and eBay you can simply forward the email to spoof@paypal.com or spoof@eBay.com in a few clicks. I don't know what they do with it but I usually send those out. If I get other spoof/phishing emails I often will go through the effort to find where to send it so I can report future abuses across the myriad of email accounts I have from ISP, gmail, schools, work, etc... often I get the same spoof sent to multiple accounts since my username is the same in most places...

[Sherman Homan]

Ah, good! It won't hurt to report it to the dot mac crew. But they are at the same disadvantage as the rest of us. Only when a spammer posts from the same IP range or domain name for a long time do blackholes work. Otherwise, fire up that Junk filter. It is very annoying, I just received a legitimate email that was marked Junk because it came through a European domain.

[srobert]

Your script does sound like a nice idea... although I receive e-mail from seven different e-mail providers, so I'm not sure how practical it would be for me to implement.

I see. That would be beyond my abysmal scripting skills. The script would have to find out where to forward each report depending on who routed you the e-mail. Maybe it's possible to create such a script but I wouldn't know.

The other thing is that I use my junk mail box liberally... I send all the advertisements there, but some of them, I look at (e.g. when Guess or Bluefly or sometimes Apple sends me a message -- I send them to junk, but I read them; I delete the ones that want to make my penis bigger automatically. ;) )

I have a different mailbox called "Advertising" for ligitimate advertisement e-mails. It uses a rule that gathers emails to it when the "from" field correspond to one of my legitiate advertiser. This way, I don't risk reporting Apple spam to Apple ^_^

[mkrishnan]

I see. That would be beyond my abysmal scripting skills. The script would have to find out where to forward each report depending on who routed you the e-mail. Maybe it's possible to create such a script but I wouldn't know.

I guess I could just forward them all to the inbox of that annoying woman down the hall. :eek: ;) :D

[iSaint]

I've emailed Amazon before, then forwarded them the SPAM email I received with their name on it.

My ISP filters lots of SPAM for me. I go to their web site to log in and check the SPAM. I get 30-50 per week. Unbelievable...

[gavd]

Not necessarily so much effort. For PayPal and eBay you can simply forward the email to spoof@paypal.com or spoof@eBay.com in a few clicks. I don't know what they do with it but I usually send those out.

I've reported a few to eBay and PayPal as well. They replied confirming it was a spoof email and some info on how to spot them, what to do etc. I didn't find it that useful as I pretty much knew what it was telling me, but I thought it was pretty good that they responded with it.

[devilot]

I forward spoofed emails for PayPal and eBay. For spam I just delete. :o

[srobert]

By the way. I use a slightly modified version of this script (http://alignedleft.com/reportspam/) to report my .mac-mail.app spam.