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The best filters still let spam through. So what do you do? Most people just delete it, but there is a way to complain to ISPs about spam. It only works a small percentage of the time but I've had spammers shut down or blocked by notifying their ISPs.
Determine if it's spam
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If you asked for it, it's not spam.
Spam is unsolicited bulk email. If you opted in to receive special messages from somewhere like Amazon.com, then you can't complain about Amazon sending you email.
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Friends don't send spam -- usually.
If your friend forwards an email and asks you to send it to 10 other people that's annoying but it's not spam. Basically, if you know the person, it's best to just confront them, not complain to their ISP.
Unsubscribe if you can
If you signed up for a newsletter, that's not spam either. However, unscrupulous spammers sometimes masquerade as newsletters with "unsubscribe" information.
Don't unsubscribe unless you know it's legitimate
If the newsletter looks like it's legitimate, try unsubscribing. But beware that if it's not a legitimate newsletter unsubscribing can sometimes serve to confirm that your email works and cause you to receive even more
spam.
Make your complaint
To complain about spam, you'll need all the header information and know who to complain to.
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Get header information
In your email program, make sure you're viewing the full header. Read our article on email headers to find out how to do this.
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Determine the offender's ISP
You'll need to identify what ISP the email legitimately came from. If you read our article about email headers you'll know that headers can be faked and the real information buried under bad info.
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Find the spam complaint address
Go to the ISP's website and find the email address to complain about spam. It's usually listed under something like spam, abuse, or admin.
The easy way
If you don't feel up to the detective work, go to SpamCop.net. They offer a free service that will automatically detect the legitimate headers and send a form complaint letter to the proper authorities.
You'll still need to have all the header information, but you just paste it into a form and SpamCop does the rest.
Should I bother?
Leo says no. I say why not? With SpamCop most of the leg work is done for you, so if you have a few minutes why not throw a few darts? The one out of a hundred that gets caught will make you feel good. If we all sent complaints about one tenth of our spam we might just block all the spammers off legitimate ISPs and make it much easier to filter the rest. |
