What happens when I click on "Report Spam?"

Factual Questions
1

Does the person who sent the email find out?
Will I never get email from that address again?
Will the sender get into any kind of trouble?

I’m asking because I get a lot of emails. Not as many as some, but I could easily get 100 totally unwanted emails in a day. Not necessarily spam, but lists I’d rather not be on. Sometimes when I’m deleting them I think it might be better to just hit “Report Spam” if that would mean I wouldn’t hear from them again. And it would be a lot quicker than opening the email, hitting reply, typing UNSUBSCRIBE, and hitting send.

But most of these are reasonable companies, or distant acquaintances who send endless links to horrible jokes and I’m not looking to make their lives miserable. Or get them pissed off at me.

2

Are you talking about Gmail?

I’d always assumed your report just adds to a tally. Multiple reports and that sender gets blocked. I assume if I have a personal grudge against you, and report your email as spam, the system won’t consider my lone report sufficient to activate a block.

That’s all just a WAG though.

3

If you have gmail, you can make these unwanted emails go directly to delete.

Go to settings, filters. You can select skip inbox, delete for any sender.

4

In gmail, I just use the Report Spam thing as I did for Hotmail before they revamped. It’s cool that in gmail the button sends the stuff direct to the junk mail folder, where I delete it quickly and easily.

I just reckoned it’s to help the program recognise spam patterns in future.