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Worth the Effort?


nei1_j

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Dear Ma'ams and Sirs,

Like most of y'all here on the Forum, I spend some time and effort reporting spam. Preferably, "fresh spam."

Life is complicated / time is short. Perhaps vice versa. And it's been a long time since I've read anything about spam in the press. Goodness knows, Spamcop doesn't provide any information regarding how the struggle is going.

Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone knows whether spending all the time and effort is worth it? Or are we just exercising our keyboards?

Thanks,

-neil-

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Hi nei1_j,

Well, you've been around for a long time and your stamina to keep on reporting throughout is wonderous to see - thanks for that and you don't need to be told "do no more than that with which you are comfortable if you want to last the distance."

You may have noted others having the occasional crisis of confidence over the years and the variable spam-fighting experiences they've had and conclusions they've drawn**. The good news is - spam by some measures seems to be on the decline (using a Cisco/IronPort source):

http://www.senderbase.org/home/detail_spam...een=&order=

It takes a multi-facetted approach to whack all those moles and, (IMO) indeed, there is a place for SpamCop and SpamCop reporters in all of that because SC fills a unique slot, providing an early warning to mail services and picking up the stuff that evades spam traps (refer http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...p;f=6&id=45) - and we can be reasonably confident there would be a resurgence of spam should effort along ANY axis of current endeavour substantially reduce.

The elephant in the room is the bandwidth wasted in spam delivery attempts - wouldn't be surprised if spam being sent, as opposed to that being delivered, might be still trending upwards (the IronPort table linked above indicates that is fairly constant - and STILL of far greater volume than real mail - but that is just an estimate).

SpamCop feedback? Well, the stats pages are meant to cover that:

http://www.spamcop.net/spamstats.shtml

The indication, to me, is of continuing substantial activity and that can viewed in the context of archived results:

http://wayback.archive.org/web/20040701000...spamstats.shtml

**Might be worth noting some of the other "crisis of confidence" topics while we're at it - things change (but maybe some don't):

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=12156

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9660

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1802

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=899

Anyway, I'm sure others will want to have their say and you will have some further comments as well.

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Therefore, I would like to ask if anyone knows whether spending all the time and effort is worth it? Or are we just exercising our keyboards?

Thanks,

-neil-

There is no doubt reporting spam does fix security problems that are causing you to be spammed and for me reduces attacks to mainly from Brazil where they don't ever stop.

Gmail don't report but are very effective in keeping spam out of your inbox

It is also heartening to see spammers facing jail terms when caught but not enough

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