Ready to Report a Spammer? (Read this FIRST...)

Thanks, Bob, for addressing this highly escalating problem of spam email. I use the Thunderbird email client, which has been doing an admirable job of filtering out the junk mail that I am currently receiving.

But this still necessitates reviewing my spam folder for possible errors. What is clearly happening here are more sophisticated attempts at impersonating trusted sources, like ISP's Social Security, Medicare, and the like - to phish for personal information.

Are these government agencies and ISP's aware of such activity, and doing anything to combat it? If not, then "why not"? Certainly, the FBI should be addressing any phishing of government agencies!

I have also noticed a sudden surge in multiple spam attempts, sent out in batches of 10 or more - possibly intended to crash through spam filters.This has all become extremely annoying, and must be overloading the email and internet infrastructure that we all have become so dependent on. Thanks, again for reporting on this, and keep us up to date on any progress in snuffing out this growing menace!

I, too, use Thunderbird. One thing that email program users should be aware of is that your email provider is likely using some sort of spam filter on incoming mail. Our email provider is Optimum, which does do spam filtering. The incoming messages that their spam filter catches get put into the online Junk folder. The problem is that those messages are not downloaded by Thunderbird because they're not in the online Inbox folder; they're in the online Junk folder. That means that I have to log into Optimum webmail on a regular basis to see if there are any legitimate messages that were marked as spam by Optimum and sent to the online Junk folder—and that happens about every 7 to 10 days. There used to be an option to turn off the Optimum spam filter (which I had done), but that option was removed several years ago.

I generally use Hotmail on Firefox. After trying to block various domains vs their senders and still finding emails from them in my junk mail I realized Hotmail is actually very good at sending them to junk mail. I only report phishing now when someone is obviously after me to do something foolish. I do check and clear my junk mail daily to make sure that no valid mail accidentally gets included.

This is an ever increasing problem! In my case, I have several email accounts for different functions. There is one "dummy" account that I use as a "lightning rod" to deflect spam to that account and away from my authentic accounts. It works! The "dummy" account serves for the online ordering and a few miscellaneous communications. The spam seems to "accumulate" into that account's inbox; therefore, every few years, I delete the "dummy" account and replace it with another "dummy" account. That works nicely!

With that, I seem to receive a low amount of spam in my email accounts; however, it is the text messages on my phone that are the greater source of spam. There are crooks that present me with fake job offers, fines, some other scams, and other ridiculous nonsense. Basically, for spam text messages, I will just select delete and report junk.

Thank you, Bob, for another article about important issues!

Some months ago I ran across this email address to report phishing email activity.

reportphishing@apwg.org

I would attempt to limit what I forwarded to truly hard core phishing emails, but sadly, I suspect the spammers were somehow monitoring traffic to that website and my junk mail more than doubled. Obviously, I've quite forwarding emials and as Bob has basically suggested, just delete and move on. As others have said, spam emails apparently can't be eliminated.

I report the paypal spam to Paypal. They always send me a thank you message. Hopefully they do something with the info.

Steven: I, too, have an email account from the Internet/cable provider Optimum but my Thunderbird client has a "Junk" folder for that account just like the junk folders (sometimes called "spam" or "bulk") that it has for my other email addresses. I don't use that Optimum address for almost anything except emails to and from Optimum itself, so maybe it's unlikely I would get much spam there anyway. But on the rare occasions when I find emails in that folder (which are promo offers from Optimum itself, ironically) I have checked the same folder online (via webmail) and noticed that the contents match.

My email handling is configured as IMAP, so if yours is "POP" instead, maybe that accounts for the different experience you are having. If you haven't already, try deleting the Optimum email account from Thunderbird and then add it back in (choosing IMAP protocol) to see if it now establishes a functional Junk folder for you. The process doesn't take too much time to automatically load back in all the emails you previously had in that account's various folders. The only other explanation I can imagine lies with the version of Thunderbird you are using. Though mine is probably not the only version that properly puts suspected spam in the client's own Optimum Junk folder, I will mention that the information for mine (at "Help > About") says it's "140.2.0esr (64-bit) Thunderbird Windows MSIX package thunderbird-MSIX".

Here in the UK we have a government email reporting system.
Forward the email to Report@phishing.gov.uk

It does what it says on the tin but doesn’t stop the emails, it never could but it makes me feel better for doing something

To Kevin:

CRAP.

I had typed out an extensive reply to you, but forgot to input my name and email address before clicking on "Post Comment." My entire comment then vanished into the ether.

ARRGHH!

Anyway—short version—yes, I do use POP3 for my Optimum email, which is, I'm sure, the reason for our different experiences. Over the years, I have considered changing from POP3 to IMAP, but I never before had a compelling reason to do so. And if I did change, I would still have to go on to their clumsy, slow and cumbersome webmail system regularly to whitelist whatever legit emails Optimum throws into my online Junk folder—or I could just move them to my Inbox in Thunderbird, but then subsequent emails from those senders would still get shunted into the online Junk folder.

I believe the only permanent fix would be for Optimum to bring back the option for each user to opt out of online spam filtering.

To Kevin:

I also access my gmail account using IMAP through Thunderbird and I do not have similar problems to Optimum. Then again, I receive FAR more messages in Optimum than I do in gmail. I do not remember even once having to rescue a legit gmail message from gmail's Junk folder.