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Ask HN: Any good SPAM email reporting services?

6 points by sebastien_b ↗ HN
I often get spam at my work email - no floods (just a few a week) because I've been very careful with my address, just the annoying, persistent spammers that I never signed up for (either directly or via related 'services'). I suspect most either just do dictionary guesses of email addresses, or (more likely) simply try addresses based on scraped LinkedIn data. Given how careful I've been with my address, and that it's my work address, I kinda take these spams as a personal invasion of my inbox (not to mention that it violates local laws).

I've used SpamCop[1] in the past, though I have my doubts of it having any real benefit; and lately I've found that some reports are being sent to a 'nulled' address that ends up being used only for their internal statistics (so those reports go effectively nowhere)

Are there any other (good) alternative services to SpamCop? The idea is for upstream services that provide emailing/hosting to be made aware of abusers of their systems/service/TOS.

P.S. Yes, I could "unsubscribe" from their spam, but I have 2 issues with that:

1. It confirms to them the email is real, which I don't want to do, and...

2. I never subscribed to their spam in the first place, so I don't see why I should now be bothered with having to unsubscribe. Plus if they were able to add my address to their spam list without me providing it, they should just as easily be able to remove it without it being provided - hence me using SpamCop instead.

[1] https://www.spamcop.net

Edit: a bit more context as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30108710

9 comments

[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] thread
gregjor
Intractable problem, like houseflies. Not worth wasting time. Delete and get on with your day. Taking mass spam emails personally seems unhealthy.
aurizon
gregjor = correct. ignore after training your email it is spam, usually by placing it in the spam folder. Never unsubscribe = you are live one we can sell = flood possible. We all get this crap and the only way to stop it is to add a cost to it. I had an idea I called feemail years ago, where the sender had to pay 10 cents to email me. I would refund my friends and desired emails, so they had zero cost. It is still viable, but a small payment partner is needed to allow 10 cents fees/refunds etc, and what would they charge. Be a good idea for gmail to do it as they are wall to wall and could manage the micropayments.
sebastien_b
I had thought something similar (of making it cost to send) as a possible solution - not necessarily a fee, more like an email reply of "solve this captcha for the email to be processed at the destination". I know there have been similar attempts in the past that haven't taken off.
aurizon
Yes, the fee admin cost is the killer. The volume is so huge, even a fractional penny mounts up
gregjor
I’ve had the same gmail address since GMail was in beta. That address is on my web site and who knows how many other sites — I use it everywhere. GMail is very good at filtering spam. When something I don’t want gets through I mark it as spam and never see it again. I don’t spend more than a couple of minutes a month managing this. My spam folder is full but I don’t have to look at it. Pretty much all modern email clients can do this, GMail seems particularly good at it.

I never interpret spam as an invasion or take it personally because I know it gets sent by bots from harvested lists. I give it the same attention I give to advertising flyers that land in my physical mailbox, even less attention because it’s one button click.

You can add yourself to various “do not solicit” lists that may do some good.

sebastien_b
That would be something I would do as well, however since this is a work email, it's managed by a third-party, outside my direct control; we do have a way to report (forwarding) spam email, but I think that is also limited.

As I mentioned, I only get a few a week, and they usually fall into 1 of two categories:

- newsletter/promotional events type emails; they're not typical phishing/spam emails (like specific keywords, bad grammar, weird URLs, etc.), and so they look 'legitimate' and the headers usually indicate they have a 'low' spam score, so that's why they make it through. One such persistent spammer is "HRTrainOnline", for which SC reports go nowhere right now.

- recruiter emails; again, they don't get flagged as typical spam. Usually for these I stop getting emails from repeat offenders after ignoring them long enough, or after enough SC reports[1].

Because these don't score as 'spam' so much (but they are spam, since they're unsolicited/unwanted repeat emails), they keep getting by whatever filter our reports are feeding.

As to the reason I use SC for reporting them: I want the upstream service(s) (ie. emailing services, etc.) to be made aware they have users that aren't following the law/best practices/their TOS, and take action against them.

[1] there's one persistent Facebook recruiter that just kept emailing despite being ignored and reported through SC for months; finally on yet another email (following one promising they were "emailing one last time") I lashed out making it clear I had no intention of ever considering working at FB, WTH they even got the idea I would want to, and that they must be a really poor recruiter for resorting to pestering people to get responses.

gregjor
Set up filters on the sender or subject line.

Since it’s happening on work time you’re getting paid for your wasted time dealing with spam. Seems like a very minor problem.