Ask HN: Why aren't we fighting email spam more effectively?
I own a few businesses and receive daily emails from (a) hiring agencies, (b) investment firms, and (c) companies selling “user data” (e.g., Docker users, Apple users, etc.).
None of these emails are CAN-SPAM compliant (in the USA). I started looking into whether it’s even possible to report these violations, but it seems like ICANN doesn’t really care. They only enforce abuse forms/emails with domain registrars when spam includes phishing or other specific violations.
Have we just given up on fighting spam? Is it because we allow cold sales outreach to continue unchecked?
I dunno what you're using, but GMail is doing great for me.
The vast majority of the truly crappy spam just gets dropped on the floor. Practically none of it gets into my actual inbox.
My spam folder gets about 1 message per day. About half of it is well and truly spam. The other half is more-or-less legitimate mass email, and I unsubscribe to them when I notice them.
The emails you're describing sound like cold calls from companies that really ought to know better. You should report them as spam, and your provider should start weeding them out. Following the CAN-SPAM rules would be smart for them, because that's less likely to get them tagged as spammers and just plain filtered out.
Maybe you need a different provider. As far as I'm concerned, Google has solved the spam problem, at least to a tolerable level. I'm sure others have as well.
One of the businesses uses Google Workspaces, just with the business you get way more spam.
I use https://acidtool.com/ to report unwanted email directly to the email providers.
I'm not surprised ICANN isn't going to generally care about US law enforcement on email content. If they are CAN-SPAM violations, you'd have better luck reporting violations to the FTC (this is their legal mandate to deal with)
https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
I think spam is just a nuisance, not a big problem. What is a big problem when hosting providers or your email server are blocking or marking as spam legitimate business communication.
It has happened several times to me that I have not seen a customer's email because it was marked as spam and likewise customers have not seen my email as it was sorted in their spam folder. This is a breakdown of communication that is far worse than spam.
A classic use case that is more likely to be flagged as spam is when a customer submits a request via a web form or on social media and you try to follow up by email. From the receiving email server point of view this is a cold email and in danger of being flagged as spam.
This is an increasing problem and I too think that larger providers try to get control over mail infrastructure.
GMail isn't really a solution for professional correspondence in my opinion. I am surprised so many are oblivious to that. Other private mail providers didn't keep up with SPIF, DMAC rules/configuration and large providers like Microsoft and Google might blacklist them outright.
Leaving mail infrastructure for shitty tech companies is a larger problem than some spam in my opinion as there are powerful solutions available already.
4 mails: for the phone, for registrations on sites, for correspondence with clients, and personal correspondence. and forgot about spam forever. spam will go where the registrations are
this.
Mark them as spam and it will affect their deliverability rates
I highly doubt any agency will enforce violations since there would be thousands of companies in violation
There is an old Chinese saying that cutting off someone's money is like killing their parents. Spam can bring benefits to the sender. This is the main reason why spam cannot be eliminated.