The so-called big boys of the free email world, namely Google, Yahoo and Hotmail apparently have zero tolerance towards users who abuse their mail accounts and use it to send SPAM or UCE (unsolicited commercial email) to other email users, yet when you receive SPAM or UCE from one of their accounts, it seems to be an eternal maze to find where to report the abuse! And this onerous search undoubtedly leads to people giving up on reporting the Spammer. Here is a list of links which can be used to report such spam incidents so that their accounts can be permanently disabled by these providers.
- Gmail: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=abuse
- Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/ymail/spam.html
- Hotmail: Non- Hotmail customers should address an email to report_spam@hotmail.com, report_spam@msn.com or report_spam@live.com (Depending on the originating mail domain: hotmail or msn or live). Attach a copy of the spam email to this email and send it.
- Facebook: phish@spamreport.facebook.com
Of course, the best way to report SPAM/UCE is to report the offender to a RBL (Realtime Blackhole List, a list of IP addresses whose owners refuse to stop the proliferation of spam. The RBL usually lists server IP addresses from ISPswhose customers are responsible for the spam and from ISPs whose servers are hijacked for spam relay) Which, if the offender is not dealt with, impacts on the providers ability to deliver mail. The easiest to report to is SPAMCOP – http://www.spamcop.net/
At InstaHost we operate an actual zero tolerance policy. To support our clients we manage an SPF record. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records help reduce the chance of your domain being spoofed in spam messages, and can help increase the deliverability of e-mail to external providers such as Gmail and Outlook. Our clients also have complete control over Junk mail settings from their own Control Panel, giving you the ability to manually blacklist an address or whole domains, or if you want to “blacklist” a whole domain but allow emails to be received from a specific sending email address – so that even mails classed as ‘junk’ will arrive – then you can ‘whitelist’ this address within Junk Mail Filters within any of our packages. This security is FREE on all our Hosting Packages, click here to find out more!
