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Does anyone know if Google (Gmail) reads spam reports

Elind

Philosopher
Elind
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S.E. USA. Sometimes bible country
I'm curious to know if anyone has ever had contact with Gmail staff regarding spam reports. I don't get too much spam anymore but I try to trace and report it regularly, although not to any Nigerian ISP who will only sell your email to a spammer client.

However most "Nigerian" spammers use gmail addresses for their communication with the idiots who bite, and obviously the spam would be useless if those accounts were shut down, so I also report those to gmail.

But gmail never acknowledges receipt and if I check on reported email addresses sometime later I usually find that they are still active, meaning that gmail (Google) doesn't give a damn.

How can one put pressure to act responsibly on a monolithic organization like that?
 
The responsible thing to do would be to flag those email accounts but allow them to continue operating.

They're already playing one endless game of whack-a-mole with the email addresses used for sending the initial scam; would doing it again really change anything? Better to log it all as identification and evidence for whenever someone eventually does have the ability to arrest them outright.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
The responsible thing to do would be to flag those email accounts but allow them to continue operating.

They're already playing one endless game of whack-a-mole with the email addresses used for sending the initial scam; would doing it again really change anything? Better to log it all as identification and evidence for whenever someone eventually does have the ability to arrest them outright.
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Sorry but I disagree with your sense of responsibility. Prosecute a spammer in Nigeria? Seriously?

As to the sender, they don't send from gmail. They send from scumbag ISPs in Nigeria or other hacked PCs.

They use gmail for communication with suckers. If gmail promptly disabled those addresses when notified it would make the whole spam send useless, and I suspect gmail could be more sophisticated if they wanted to, like blocking new accounts by IP. Actually, they should block all of Nigeria and Benin for starters.
 
Elind said:
They use gmail for communication with suckers. If gmail promptly disabled those addresses when notified it would make the whole spam send useless, and I suspect gmail could be more sophisticated if they wanted to, like blocking new accounts by IP. Actually, they should block all of Nigeria and Benin for starters.
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Sounds rather hopeless. If Google paid serious attention to all reports, the spammers would start flooding them with bogus accounts giving bogus spam reports (if they haven't already). How is Google to know your account isn't one of those?
 
Elind said:
Prosecute a spammer in Nigeria? Seriously?
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Exactly. You can't shut these guys down easily, and blocking them clearly doesn't work on its own, so the best thing you can do is keep things in a position to decisively act when it becomes possible to do so.

If gmail promptly disabled those addresses when notified it would make the whole spam send useless
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...for about five minutes while the spammers switched email, to some other one that isn't already known to be a spammer. They don't switch those now because they don't have to. If they did, they would.

Have you tried engaging with some of the spammers? If I were google, I'd flag conversations with them with a "this email address has been associated with a scam" warning message.

Although now that I think about it, I don't even remember the last time real spam actually made it into my gmail inbox. Could they be serving you the spam because they think you like to fight it?
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Exactly. You can't shut these guys down easily, and blocking them clearly doesn't work on its own, so the best thing you can do is keep things in a position to decisively act when it becomes possible to do so.
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How does doing nothing when you could do something strengthen anything in a fictitious future?

...for about five minutes while the spammers switched email, to some other one that isn't already known to be a spammer. They don't switch those now because they don't have to. If they did, they would.
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You don't seem to understand that the spam is useless if the contact email provided is suspended promptly.


Have you tried engaging with some of the spammers? If I were google, I'd flag conversations with them with a "this email address has been associated with a scam" warning message.
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What's the point of that?

Although now that I think about it, I don't even remember the last time real spam actually made it into my gmail inbox. Could they be serving you the spam because they think you like to fight it?
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???
Who is serving? Anyway, I don't use gmail for regular email.
 
Elind said:
Mine isn't in an obvious spam that is provided in the report.
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But how is Google (or any ISP) to be sure? If they had a way to validate spam reports, they could use that on all email and there'd be no spam.
 
Pulvinar said:
But how is Google (or any ISP) to be sure? If they had a way to validate spam reports, they could use that on all email and there'd be no spam.
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Actually, they could use the same spam filters that your PC has, on all outgoing mail via their servers and if all ISPs did that there would be very little. However they don't because that costs them money and overhead.
 
I have two Gmail accounts and can't remember the last time I got spam in my inbox.
Even my Yahoo mail picks up 99.3467329% of spam (verified figures not available on request).

I think they do a pretty decent job.
 
Let the spammers use one set of email addresses. Then mark all of the emails from these addresses as spam. If google get a flood of notices saying that one email address is spam, then mark that address as spam. No need to shut those addresses down. Problem solved. If only it was that simple.

I too hardly get any spam. What I do get is put by google into junk. None of what is there now (all 4 emails from 16 November onwards) is from gmail.
 
rjh01 said:
Let the spammers use one set of email addresses. Then mark all of the emails from these addresses as spam. If google get a flood of notices saying that one email address is spam, then mark that address as spam. No need to shut those addresses down. Problem solved. If only it was that simple.

I too hardly get any spam. What I do get is put by google into junk. None of what is there now (all 4 emails from 16 November onwards) is from gmail.
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Thanks for the suggestion, but that is not relevant to the situation I pose.
 
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