Reporting Spam

July 12, 2005 1:47 PM

How to report unwanted e-mail to sender's ISP? I've asked not to be sent any more emails but sender continues--just to annoy me. Besides reporting to the FTC, how can I report it, should I report it to the senders ISP?
posted by NorthCoastCafe to computers & internet (9 answers total)

Does this person know you personally?

If your ISP is able to, you can ask them to put a block on the address and simply have it returned to him as if your mailbox didn't exist. If not, probably the next-easiest solution is a block list on your client.
posted by odinsdream at 1:54 PM on July 12, 2005

Every email domain or ISP is supposed to have an abuse@ or postmaster@ address. If the person doesn't own their domain, then send it there... (i.e. [e-mail] or [e-mail]) and it should get taken care of. Otherwise, find out who their ISP is by doing a reverse DNS lookup, and send it to abuse@ or postmaster@ that domain. Caveat: Not every ISP or web host will monitor those addresses, but decent sysadmins will.
posted by SpecialK at 2:08 PM on July 12, 2005

are you on windows? on anything else, you can easily block these emails automatically, so you never see them. on windows this may be possible too, depending on the mail tool.

now what you asked for, but it's useful at times. i delete a bunch of people automatically.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:19 PM on July 12, 2005

(assuming there's a consistent from address, which i think is the case here)
posted by andrew cooke at 2:34 PM on July 12, 2005

Well, the more you push the more likely you'll end up on the spammers DOS list. Yes, they do that.

But if you must, I would call the ISPs upstream provider if the ISP is being an ass about it. Let the provider know what their customers are doing. You'll probably still end up with your box DOSed by the spammer as "punishment" if you're successful.
posted by shepd at 2:35 PM on July 12, 2005

that seems overly pessimistic. i've complained about things many times and lived to tell the tale (otoh, i have decent hosting and filtering and have nothing much to lose if things go down every now and then). anyway, this seems to be a specific, known person, not some "mr big" spam-lord.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:51 PM on July 12, 2005

Set up a rule (how depends on your email app) that bounces the message back unread. You never see it, they get it back if they provide a real return address.
posted by realcountrymusic at 3:01 PM on July 12, 2005

You say the sender continues just to annoy you. Do you know who the sender is, or are you just getting spam?

Generally, it is a bad idea to ask to be removed from a mailing list. It just shows that someone is actually checking e-mail. Asking for a removal is a confirmation that a human actually checks that address, and you will be added to more spam lists.

If this e-mail is coming from the same place every time, set up a filter, e-mail [e-mail], and forget about it. If you are getting unsolicited e-mail from various addresses, welcome to the club. I've had over 50,000 this year.

I miss the old days of the internet, where people would find the spammers and shut down their machines. Not that I (or anyone I know) would ever do that, but the message definitely got through to the spammers. Amazing how much business an e-commerce site loses when they are shut down for a few hours...
posted by bh at 6:12 PM on July 12, 2005

Generally, it is a bad idea to ask to be removed from a mailing list. It just shows that someone is actually checking e-mail. Asking for a removal is a confirmation that a human actually checks that address, and you will be added to more spam lists.

This isn't particularly good advice. If the sender is a reputable company, the unsubscribe link will generally unsubscribe you, and do nothing else.

If the sender is spamming hardcore teenage porn (and you're not a client of hardcore-teenage-porn.com) then your advice likely holds.
posted by mosch at 12:06 AM on July 14, 2005