How to Report Spam

Spam is as annoying as it is dangerous and costly. Significantly more spam is sent than any other type of email. In fact, according to the Email Metrics Report, in 2011 the amount of spam constitued about 88% of the total number of emails sent. These statistics may shock you because I’m certain that the percentage of spam reaching your inbox is significantly less. At least I would hope so. This can be attributed to the powerful spam filters that are in common usage. In fact many internet service providers will even filter your emails before they even get to your inbox. Of course the obvious problem with this is that some spam will doubtless get through and some legitimate emails will be blocked. It’s a tradeoff, but not necessarily a required one.

It’s possible to drastically reduce the amount of spam you get without putting in much work at all. In fact, you can even have the spam filters help you with this task. It’s possible to configure your email client to automatically forward anything marked as spam to the services discussed below. Thus you’ll be doing your part to stop spam without having to deal with it any more than you already do. Some of the simplest and most effective methods of dealing with spam are presented below. You will experience best results if you submit your spam to as many services as possible.

Index

1. Why These Methods Work
2. How To Avoid Spam
3. Report All Spam To Knujon
4. Report All Spam To US Federal Trade Commission
5. Report Most Spam To SpamCop
6. Report Specific Types Of Spam To These Services
7. What To Do If You Have Problems Reporting Spam

1. Why These Methods Work

There is one main motivation behind why anyone would want to spend time just to send you spam. It’s really quite simple. They want money and they’re out to get it in one way or another. In the most straightforward way they may try to trick you into giving them your information so that they can steal your money outright. Along the same lines they could try to get you to infect your computer with malware so that they can steal your money. To protect yourself from this please read my article on How to Stay Safe While Online. Of course they can also just be paid to promote a site. In this way just getting you to go there is a victory for them.

Because of this one of the most effective ways to stop spammers is to target whatever it is they are promoting and anyone who is shielding them. It’s also helpful to target the email address that they use, but this is not as effective in the long run. Doing both of these things helps to make sending spam less profitable. Therefore, since spam is really about making money, if it's no longer profitable then it will eventually stop. Thus reporting your spam to the correct services can help to reduce your own spam and even help get the spammers shut down for good.

2. How To Avoid Spam

Whether you’re currently receiving a lot of spam, or very little, it’s important to know how best to avoid spam. Even if you’re already receiving a lot then this can prevent it from getting worse. For this please read my article about How to Avoid Spam.

3. Report All Spam To Knujon

Knujon is my number one pick for where you should report your spam. They are working with ICANN to shut down the spammers for good. They target the sites that are paying the spammers to send you the spam. There are other services that do this as well. What makes Knujon different is that they track whether the Registrar’s responsible for the site actually take it down. They also gather statistics about how often these Registrars allow sites like this to be created and how long until they take action against these sites. In fact it’s corrupt Registrars that have allowed spam to become such a booming business. Thus I believe that Knujon's approach has the largest chance of shutting down the spammers for good. This approach is also very effective at reducing your immediate volume of spam as well. It’s a win-win.

You can forward any spam you receive to Knujon at knujon@coldrain.net. Also, although it isn’t required, you can create a free account with Knujon. Doing this will speed up the processing of your spam and thus lead to faster action against the spammers.

4. Report All Spam To US Federal Trade Commission

Another very effective service to submit your spam to is the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You submit your spam to spam@uce.gov. By reporting it here you are ensuring that the spammers email addresses and any implicated sites will be monitored for investigation. In the long run this will be very effective in shutting down the spammers. The FTC also has the ability to actually prosecute some groups directly, while the other services mentioned are generally forced to negotiate with the registrar, or the ISP. They may also be able to take action but it would take much longer.

By sending your spam here you’re potentially helping to speed up any legal action against these spammers and the framework that supports them. If you send your spam to both Knujon and the FTC you will be doing your best to attack the disease, and not just the symptoms.

5. Report Most Spam To SpamCop

Yet another service that you can report your spam to is SpamCop. In order to use this service you do need to register. Any spam reported here will result in a complaint automatically being generated and sent to both the Internet Service Provider (ISP), from which the spam originated, and any websites that were promoted. Thus it attacks the problem of spam from multiple directions. After registering on the site you will be provided with an email address to which you can forward your spam. Reporting here will generally provide the fastest results.

If after you start using SpamCop you notice that the amount of spam you are receiving has increased significantly then SpamCop may be to blame. Sometimes the ISP’s will actually forward the complaint, sent by SpamCop, to the spammer. Although SpamCop obscures as much identifying information as possible before sending it out it’s still sometimes possible to identify your email address.

Despite this potential problem I would still advise that you use this service. Only stop using it if you do in fact encounter a problem. This is relatively rare. Most ISP’s will not forward these complaints and thus in most cases SpamCop is nothing but helpful.

6. Report Specific Types Of Spam To These Services

If you feel that spam is attempting to acquire passwords, credit card information, or other sensitive information you should also forward it to phishing-report@us-cert.gov. This is a division of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and will provide you the fastest results against this type of spam. This type of spam will generally attempt to capture your information by baiting you with some fictional reward. The most well known form of this is the Nigerian Scam.

There are also many other places to report spam. For a more comprehensive list please see this page.

7. What To Do If You Have Problems Reporting Spam

With these services you may find that, ironically, you are unable to forward any spam because the forwarded message is rejected by your ISP. To make things even more surreal the probable reason for it being rejected is because it’s spam. As amusing as this may be it can also be very annoying.  The simplest way I’ve found to get around this problem is to forward these emails through another service. For example, you can create a Gmail account and forward your emails through it.

If you decide not to do this then you can manually upload the emails to both Knujon and SpamCop. Knujon allows you to compress your spam messages in a zip file and upload them here. You can even upload multiple messages at a time by putting them in the same zip file. SpamCop has a form on their website into which you can paste the contents of a spam message. Just make sure that when you copy it you also copy the headers. This information is required in order to correctly identify the location from which the spam originated. For more information on how to do this please see this page.