SpamCop is not effective for me

[David Spector]

I get an average of only one to two spam emails a day, because I am careful with how I use my email addresses. They fall into the categories of women wanting to have sex and companies wanting to create Web sites and apps for me. It is clear that there are just two sources of all this spam email, but of course each has registered or stolen many email accounts so a different account is used for each spam email.

I've been reporting each spam email to SpamCop for just over two weeks. There has been no reduction in any of this spam email from the beginning until now.

The reason is obvious: although SpamCop does a good job of analyzing raw emails and obtaining entities to be recipients of complaints, these entities clearly either don't care or don't have the forensic ability to discover who the real spammers are.

Not only that, but test emails that I send to each account reveal that NOT ONE of the actual email accounts sending the spam has been closed/deleted. So big email companies like Gmail are ignoring SpamCop reports, never mind applying forensics.

I imagine that when SpamCop was first set up, it was effective. But spammers are smart, and persistent.

My conclusion is that, currently, SpamCop reporting is a waste of user time and Internet bandwidth.

I look forward to any replies that show that my conclusion is incorrect.

David Spector
Webmaster

[RobiBue]

20 hours ago, David Spector said:

I get an average of only one to two spam emails a day, because I am careful with how I use my email addresses. They fall into the categories of women wanting to have sex and companies wanting to create Web sites and apps for me. It is clear that there are just two sources of all this spam email, but of course each has registered or stolen many email accounts so a different account is used for each spam email.

I've been reporting each spam email to SpamCop for just over two weeks. There has been no reduction in any of this spam email from the beginning until now.

The reason is obvious: although SpamCop does a good job of analyzing raw emails and obtaining entities to be recipients of complaints, these entities clearly either don't care or don't have the forensic ability to discover who the real spammers are.

Not only that, but test emails that I send to each account reveal that NOT ONE of the actual email accounts sending the spam has been closed/deleted. So big email companies like Gmail are ignoring SpamCop reports, never mind applying forensics.

I imagine that when SpamCop was first set up, it was effective. But spammers are smart, and persistent.

My conclusion is that, currently, SpamCop reporting is a waste of user time and Internet bandwidth.

I have a spam history dating back to mid-early 2018, although I've been reporting spam much longer than that (if memory serves well, since early 2000 -- I think I registered with SC in or around 2004 and in the SC forum around 2018)

I used to not get reports sent to myself as I didn't deem it necessary.

I've had several times in the past where I received ~100 spam a day and reported them all (with a scri_pt to make it easy on myself) and usually it didn't take long for that spam slew to stop. Currently my weekly spam is around 6 spam received/reported in 4 different days. Last month ( 30 days ) I had 26 spam messages, that makes it under 1 spam/day and I'm happy with that...

WRT "spammers are smart", there are Rules of spam where Russell's corollary says

Never underestimate the stupidity of spammers.

yes, they are persistent and annoying, and still they get arrested and face time in prison/jail.

I keep reporting, doing my part

Robi

[petzl]

12 hours ago, RobiBue said:

yes, they are persistent and annoying, and still they get arrested and face time in prison/jail.

I keep reporting, doing my part

Robi

Yes , the only way to counter spam is to dob the criminals in.
Had a couple end up facing court. 

[gnarlymarley]

I have been using SpamCop since the logo and background were yellow instead of blue.  One thing I noticed, is there was a period of time where spammers would end up figuring out my address and do "revenge spamming" to me.  One day I got about 400 and got worried I was going to hit the 500/day limit.  Since I was persistent, I won out and now I only get about one spam seven spams a week.