Responding To Spam Might Not Get You More Spam
from the well,-that's-useless dept
In one of the more useless studies done by the FTC they’ve determined that, possibly contrary to popular wisdom, responding to spam might not mean you’ll end up with more spam. Of course, I’ve heard enough anecdotal stories not to believe this. Also, they never say that responding to spam will ever actually mean you’ll get less spam (or even removed from a single list) – so you probably still shouldn’t respond. In most cases, not surprisingly, the “unsubscribe” address is simply not a valid email address.
Comments on “Responding To Spam Might Not Get You More Spam”
Responding to Spam
I have my email filtered so that all mail not to: or cc: to my address gets thrown directly to the trash. Any spam mail that is addressed to me, I will respond to with an unsubscribe request. So far this seems to work best. I don’t touch the mail that isn’t addressed to me, as those tend to be the less ethical bulk (mass-bcc) mailers.
2 emails dead
I lost 2 email addresses so far because of spam. It started by a small amount of spam due to registering for accounts with message boards etc (its impossible to never give out an email address). I used the unsubscribe feature and wham, up to 50 new emails a day on my 2 hotmail accounts. And that was with using their junkmail protection features. Now the accounts only accept mail from people in the address book and certain domains. What a waste. Maybe I just had bad luck and lots of spammers will honestly remove you from their lists… ya right 🙁
the best $3/month I spend....
is on an address at Spamcop. Have had one for a long time, stops tons of spam and continues to get better. Their new pricing model is great — $3/month regardless of the amount of mail you get. End sales pitch.