I’ve been using MSN Hotmail for years. One of the features in the Junk Mail Folder is that, when deleting Junk Mail, I have the option of Reporting it as Junk Mail. So I’ve been doing that for years…
Not that it seems to have made a dent in the amount of Junk Mail that regularly collects in my Junk Mail Folder. (I still have to scan through that folder instead of ignoring it, as sometimes I get legitimate messages sent from friends using alternate accounts, work, home, etc. that aren’t on my ‘safe’ list.)
I still get my monthly, weekly, and daily ads for ‘Free $50 Applebees Gift Card’ or ‘Free $100 Home Depot Gift Card’, or ‘Free XBox’, or whatever other junk they want to give me free if I jump though a million hoops. Not to mention the Viagra and other things they want to sell me.
So what do they do with the (presumably if everyone else is reporting them too) trillions of junk messages that get reported to them?
Does it really make any difference if I Report it? Or is it just a placebo to make me feel like I’m doing something and nothing happens other than deleting them anyway?
In theory if MSN gets reports of a particular piece of junk mail from some largish number of people MSN would then take some action against that e-mail (whether they would block it internally or contact the ISP of the offender and ask them to stop their customer I do not know).
That said if you pay attention to your junk mail the junk mail senders are way ahead of this game. Note that their sending address will change. They will also randomize what is in the subject line (many spam filters look for certain things that spam e-mail tend to share so the spammers throw random real words in there thus fooling the anti-spam software). I have seen some that even randomize a block of text before and after the main message of the spam.
So, the servers at MSN may see the same e-mail reported as spam a jillion times and do something to block it but tomorrow the sender will have changed the stuff that identified the previous e-mail as spam to something else which will then get through. Repeat ad-nauseum.
Bottom line is it is more a placebo. Supposedly some new e-mail systems are being developed that will make it much harder for spammers to do their thing but if history is any indication a way will be found through those as well. I’d say some more stringent legislation against spammers is in order but even that won’t stop it as they would just move accounts off-shore to somewhere that is happy for their business.
I meant to add the best way I have found against spam is to create a dummy account on MSN or Yahoo or some other free e-mail service. Any time I sign-up for something on the web or buy anything on the web I use my Yahoo account. Friends and family all get my ISP account. This way I only check my Yahoo account once in awhile to clear it out and know when I download e-mail from my ISP it will only be from people I know and want to hear from. So far this has worked great…I can’t remember the last time a spam made it into my ISP address. My Yahoo account is lousy with them but I just bulk delete most everything. Anyone who knows me knows not to send to that address.