I have a number of domain names that have email addresses which receive incoming email. For many of these email addresses, I forward the incoming email to one account where I can read news submissions and other information that is sent for publication on my website.
One of these email accounts receives a lot of junk email from annoying “the sky is falling” organizations that waste my time and irritate me. Because I receive them on another email account, my “unsubscribe” emails went unheeded. It seemed that when I would filter those email accounts, they would use different senders from within the same organization. This had gone on for around a year – maybe more.
I found that the US Government has a spam email hotline where you can report spammers. The email address is “spam@uce.gov.” Yesterday, I received emails from two different and unrelated organizations, and instead of deleting them, I forwarded it to spam@uce.gov and carbon copied the senders. I wrote, “I’ve tried to get my email address removed from this spam list many times to no avail, so I am reporting it to the US Government’s spam hotline.”
Lo and behold, this morning I received emails from both organizations informing me that my email address (the one that was on their records) had been removed from their mailing lists. I don’t know if the spam hotline did anything or if the threat of the US government is what did it, but whatever it was, I am no longer on those mailing lists. If you get spammed by people who are unrelenting, just copy them on your report to Spam@uce.gov.
This is great. Thanks, Elliot.
Thanks for the tip Elliot!
I get so sick and tired of the emails that say I have won an international lottery…or so and so died with an estate of $50 million and my help is needed to transfer the funds.
I wish there was a way to get rid of all those spam emails.
Why don’t you try monetizing the email traffic by opting them into a list. This is a business method one day I will get to sharing with the world. I discussed with Esa (Estibot) and the ROE (not ROI) can be killer….
Thanks; something I’ll be using from here on out (although I am looking forward to buying some nice super-premium .coms with all the Nigerian consulate money due into my acct by month’s end). 😉
Omg! Thank you so much, I am contacting all this spam, and getting replies they will remove my email 🙂
If you look at the header information of email, you can determine who they are using to send the email. In some cases, with ESP’s (email service providers), it will give an abuse address to report to right there. If it doesn’t, you can email abuse@domain to get removed.
Under US federal legislation – the FTC’s Can Spam Act, all mailers are supposed to include removal information and a mailing address. If it does not or they don’t adhere to it, there can be fines.