Naive (?) question about spam reporting

[Guest]

I've read from MVPs in this forum that it is futile to report spammers to
their ISPs because - paraphrasing - they are slippery characters who can
change their identity. Why is this, though? Can't the ISP eliminate your
account, regardless of what identity you are using, if the e-mail data is
provided to it? Or is this a matter that the ISP (as well as the FCC) simply
does not want to bother?

Thanks
John

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

I could send you an email from (e-mail address removed). It is easy to
impersonate someone else via email. Quite frankly, spam filters are a
better approach than asking your ISP to block a certain spammer.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
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http://pschmid.net
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[Pat Willener]

There are two parts in reporting spam; a) the IP address from where the
spam originates - which is in 99.9% not the spammer's own IP address,
but a compromised computer somewhere on the Internet. A responsible ISP
will cut off that computer from the Internet until it is cleaned up.
Unfortunately it is especially large ISPs who simply don't bother.

b) The hosting company of the spam website. Some ISPs won't tolerate
spam sites on their network, others state on their own website that all
complaints will be forwarded unread to their "customer".

Reporting is still worth it, and it can be largely automated. SpamCop
(spamcop.net) is a tool that helps reporting, and SpamGrabber
(olspamcop.org) offers a tool to forward spam from Outlook to SpamCop.