How long before any change?

[Anlaoch]

Hi.

I'm just wondering how long it generally takes before people see some appreciable difference in their inbox, with regards to quantities of spam coming in. I've been forwarding spam to Spamcop for 3 or 4 days now and I'm getting as much of the stuff as ever.

What has the experience of longer-term users been? Is a reduction generally seen inside of a week, month, two months?

Thanks.

[StevenUnderwood]

Hi.

I'm just wondering how long it generally takes before people see some appreciable difference in their inbox, with regards to quantities of spam coming in.  I've been forwarding spam to Spamcop for 3 or 4 days now and I'm getting as much of the stuff as ever.

What has the experience of longer-term users been?  Is a reduction generally seen inside of a week, month, two months?

Thanks.

30809[/snapback]

Are you using the Blocklist to help filter your email? Reporting alone will do very little to reduce your spam totals as most machines sending spam these days are zombied end user machines on broadband connections.

[Jeff G.]

Gains from the use of blocklists and filters are offset by continual increases in spam production globally. I'd restate the above as "most machines delivering spam to your mailserver these days are zombied end user machines on broadband connections." The spammers are using the zombies as patsies.

[Miss Betsy]

Hi.

I'm just wondering how long it generally takes before people see some appreciable difference in their inbox, with regards to quantities of spam coming in.  I've been forwarding spam to Spamcop for 3 or 4 days now and I'm getting as much of the stuff as ever.

What has the experience of longer-term users been?  Is a reduction generally seen inside of a week, month, two months?

Thanks.

30809[/snapback]

There is no reduction of spam coming in. Most spam sent is sent from either IP addresses administered by people who prefer spammer money to reputation or by ISPs who refuse to educate or control ignorant users who get infected by trojans and become esssentially robotic spamming machines.

If you have a server, you can use blocklists. If you are an end user, you don't have much control because there are few commercial ISPs who will let you know about their methods of spam control or will simply 'tag' incoming email as spam.

If you want to reduce the amount of spam you receive, the best method is to change your email address to one that contains alphanumeric characters (not easily found by dictionary spammers), be careful where who you give it to, use a 'throwaway' address for entering your email address online (such as ordering products).

In the beginning of spam, reporting alerted administrators to the problem. It still does, in a way, alert responsible administrators to problems. But at this time reporting simply creates a way for admins to reject emails from irresponsible or incompetent ISPs so that their users are not bothered by spam.

Miss Betsy

[Anlaoch]

Are you using the Blocklist to help filter your email?  Reporting alone will do very little to reduce your spam totals as most machines sending spam these days are zombied end user machines on broadband connections.

30812[/snapback]

No, I haven't set it up to use a blocklist yet. I'm new to this, and I'm still trying to get my head around how this all works. This is something I'll have to look into.

Thanks.

[agsteele]

No, I haven't set it up to use a blocklist yet.  I'm new to this, and I'm still trying to get my head around how this all works.  This is something I'll have to look into.

30848[/snapback]

Whether you use the blocklist yourself or not is your choice. For those of us who do, may I thank you for taking time to report spam via SpamCop.

Using a flat-rate filtered account I find that virtually all my incoming spam is trapped before reaching my mailbox. The reports from users are one of the factors that make the system so effective.

If you don't have access to the setup functions for your mailserver then the falt-rate mail account is one cost-effective manner to implement the filtering side of things.

Whatever you decide to do, thanks for being part of the solution.

Andrew