Here's what I think is going on at Google, and why it is still important to report spam from google servers to Spamcop even if you are reporting directly, and despite that no person is seeing the SC report.
I've been frustrated for a while that the SC reports are dev-nulling, and I too have wondered why am I reporting?
Consider the enormous masses of email going through GMail and Google cloud servers these days. Seems almost everybody on earth has at least one GMail account, plus one for every Android phone. Even as big as Google is it is just impossible to deal with spam reports at the single-message level. That would just be overwhelming. To attempt to handle this incomprehensible volume, Google is obviously employing AI.
In cases where I actually have received a response from the Google abuse desk, I have laughed at the wording and lack of addressing my specific issue, thinking that the google reps sould like a robot. Well, of course, that's because the responses are in fact coming from a robot.
What Google appears to be doing instead of handling individual spam reports is using algorithms to monitor the BLs in real-time, including the Spamcop BL, and probably taking action to investigate potential spammers when certain of their IPs starting "bubbling up" on multiple BLs. By continuing to report your Google spam to SC, you help draw attention to their most abused accounts.
The AI also monitors emails coming from their servers (reported or not) for messages that "look like" spam, and flags suspicious activity.
By no means am I suggesting that this is working. It isn't. But by not reporting dev-nulled spam, we are just helping the spammers lurk undetected in the background.
Just IMO,
-Captain Obvious
(SC contributor since 2006)
