Reporting as Spam = Increased Spam?

[cissp]

For quite some time, since using my Spamcop account, I have been averaging approximately 15-20 spam emails a day. Although I forward emails from Spamcop to my ISP POP3 account, most of the actual spam is being caught within Held Mail, so I rarely see spam get through to my ISP POP3 account. Therefore, Spamcop is doing what it's supposed to do, very well. Recently, though, I decided to try to find a way to decrease the number of spam messages, by selecting some of them and using the report option. Perhaps only receiving 15-20 spam messages a day is not much, but it is something I have to stay on top of, by reviewing them to ensure there are no legitimate emails being held. Additionally, I recently starting using Anonymizer Nyms, so that any time I need to provide my email address, it is with a unique Nym. That way, if I ever start receiving spam from that account, I'll know where it originated from and I can delete the Nym so that mail from that source will be undeliverable.

Aside from using the Nyms, is reporting Held Mail a good thing or a bad thing? Specifically, does it increase the chance of getting more spam?

Thanks!

[Farelf]

For quite some time, since using my Spamcop account, I have been averaging approximately 15-20 spam emails a day. Although I forward emails from Spamcop to my ISP POP3 account, most of the actual spam is being caught within Held Mail, so I rarely see spam get through to my ISP POP3 account. Therefore, Spamcop is doing what it's supposed to do, very well. Recently, though, I decided to try to find a way to decrease the number of spam messages, by selecting some of them and using the report option. Perhaps only receiving 15-20 spam messages a day is not much, but it is something I have to stay on top of, by reviewing them to ensure there are no legitimate emails being held. Additionally, I recently starting using Anonymizer Nyms, so that any time I need to provide my email address, it is with a unique Nym. That way, if I ever start receiving spam from that account, I'll know where it originated from and I can delete the Nym so that mail from that source will be undeliverable.

Aside from using the Nyms, is reporting Held Mail a good thing or a bad thing? Specifically, does it increase the chance of getting more spam?

Reporting spam, even that from ISP addresses already listed, supports the SC block list. Reporting is unlikely to reduce your personal spam load. The listing criteria require numerous reports (or spamtrap hits) to get an address on the list. There are all sorts of "ifs" and "buts" and "maybes" but the general consensus would be that reporting the spam you receive isn't going to decrease (or increase) your spam experience noticeably (though other factors might do either coincidentally). Some people would disagree with some or any of those statements.

Having said that - thank goodness there are members who do report. If the blocklist relied entirely on spamtraps it would not be as effective as it now is. By all means contribute to the effort if you are able.

Your use of nyms may give you an additional level of protection from retribution or having your address added to spammer lists but really that does not seem to be a great risk anyway. Note also that reporters have the option of munging their addresses, also of withholding selected reports. I report all spam received at my work address direct to the originating server's abuse address (not through SC) and have yet to see any increase in spam volume as a result. In fact it went down dramatically a couple of weeks ago, just the same as it did for many "anonymous" SC reporters, including myself in my home account persona.

The sure-fire way to get your address spammed is to publish it somewhere on a webpage. Reporting doesn't seem to do it. But no one can give you a guarantee on that point.

There has been much "discussion" in these pages on the relationship between spam and reporting it. Have a look through those previous posts. The more spam emails we submit, the more we get!, Spammers retaliating those who submit., Is it really doing any good?, We keep reporting and reporting, but..., Seems like more spam now are just a few that come to mind. Somewhere in there - maybe not in any of those, but somewhere in here - is a reporter who was convinced that we were nuts, that the amount of spam surely does increase. But he amassed the data and actually crunched the numbers and concluded there was no correlation after all (though he didn't publish his methodology).

Anyway, good to hear from you again Chuck.

[petzl]

Aside from using the Nyms, is reporting Held Mail a good thing or a bad thing? Specifically, does it increase the chance of getting more spam?

Once spammers have your email address it gets sold to other spammers. This is repeated again and again (So-called millions CDs are commonly advertised in/with spam)

Fact is attacking spammers back is your best and only defence. SpamCop makes this easy.

To increase the effectiveness of your attack try out Complainterator (download link for latest edition at bottom of page.) This takes down spammers website. Just do this when you have time, it can get time consuming but selective attacks will help take down a spammer. Taking down just one spammer removes thousands even billions of spam attacks

Some incompetent ISP's do pass on abuse reports to spammers, meaning that spammers can work out who's reporting them.

Most spammers would not like this and are more likely to remove your email address as they know they are getting reported and blacklisted (not that many if any spammers are smart).

The SpamCop SCBL stops spammers (in seconds) while they are sending spam (spam runs last for hours, if not days) not after spam is sent. All spam reported by SpamCop, has SpamCop send a alert to the owner/ISP of the IP that there is a security problem allowing competent ones to correct. Spammers that use incompetent ISP's that do nothing means their spam is just being blocked and going to a Bit-Bin. This is why in your spam folder you see many duplicate/multiple spams sent from different IP's belonging to incompetent ISP's. Some spammers actually check which Zombie IP's are blocked before sending spam, this is where our SCBL activates, quickly blocking them and alerting the ISP the spam is coming from

You are best (unless it is business reasons) to just use the only email address you will ever need (which is your SpamCop email address) as many spammers are getting your email address from your ISP. Never automatically accept an email account from your ISP. Hotmail or Gmail are superior. SpamCop email accounts vastly better again