I have an email address that is absolutely hammered with spam every day. I receive hundreds of emails each day that are nothing but junk and for months now I have tried filtering them and deleting them and every other thing I could think of and still nothing worked.
Until now… I started to see a patern in the emails, some with “remove me” links and some quoting the CAN SPAM ACT of 2003 with a link to remove my email address. So what can it hurt to try those links, after all in Florida I can sue each spammer for damages if they don’t remove my email after being notified right?
Well, I spent the past two days clicking the “remove me” links, some several times and out of the hundreds of links that I followed I seemed to hit the same few sites to remove my email. Finally after two days of clicking the links the spam has started to slow down. Maybe the links are working!
But now I have a new problem. The same email address is being used by some spammers to send spam. I know this because of the number of bounced spam emails comming back to me that I didn’t send. How do you handle that? Well, I used SamSpade.org to trace the domains being advertized in the emails and over and over again I kept finding the owner of the domains to be the same company in Fayetteville, North Carolina!! So I sent them a short email telling them to stop using my email address.
Since that email, I have received no more bounced spam that included their domains, but I have started to receive bounced spam that only lists phone numbers for the fake deplomas. So my problem remains, but possibly not from the same spammers (or maybe they are just being sneaky). The new spam gives me another way to track the spammers (by phone number) so I have tracked the top 5 problem spammers to Montana and Colorado. My next step is to pick up the phone or send them certified letters. I’ll keep you posted.
I hate spammers, they waste my time every day. But at least I now have the law on my side which gives me a good tool to deal with them if it comes down to it.