Sometimes when people receive the email that you send, they will report it as spam.
If we've advised you that we have received a spam complaint regarding an email message that you sent, or if you've received such a complaint directly, please read on.
What message is the subject of the complaint?
Complaints about spam should include enough information to identify the message in question (referred to below as the "spam email", for the sake of simplicity).
The complaint may include (e.g. as an attachment) the complete spam email, including the full headers and the body of the spam email.
- Or, it may include the full headers, but not the body.
Anything less than that generally makes identifying the spam email rather difficult (or worse).
Sometimes the spam email is modified before being added to the spam complaint message (e.g. the full email address of the recipient is replaced by "x" or "redacted" or something else). Ideally, if this has happened then the spam complaint should make it clear what modifications have been performed, so we know which parts of the spam email are real and which parts have been modified by the reporter.
Who complained?
In the simplest case, the recipient of the spam email replies directly to you (e.g. "I have received this from you, please stop sending them"), in which case you can presumably easily identify them (e.g. using the "From" header).
If the spam complaint includes the full headers of the spam email, you may have to dig through the headers to find the identity of the recipient. For example something like
Received: from mail.yourcompany.com ([195.60.x.x])
by mail.example.com with smtp
id abcdef-ghi
for bob@example.com; Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:54:18 +0000
would indicate that you ("mail.yourcompany.com") sent the message to <bob@example.com>.
What do I need to do?
Are you accidentally spewing out spam?
If the spam email seems to be nothing to do with you, and looks just like plain old everyday spam (advertising miracle cures, get rich quick schemes, etc), it could be that one of your Windows PCs has become infected, and has started spewing out spam, and it is one of those spam messages which is the source of the complaint.
In this case, you should check your PCs for malware.
If you have a mail server, and you also have a router with a firewall, you may also want to consider blocking outgoing TCP port 25 (smtp) for all machines except your mail server.
Do you need to "unsubscribe" the recipient?
If the spam email is part of a regular "newsletter" type email that you send out to a distribution list, you should probably treat the spam complaint as an "unsubscribe" request, and promptly remove the recipient from the distribution list. You may wish to let the recipient know that they have been unsubscribed because of the spam complaint.
To protect yourself from being used to send unwanted mail, you should ensure that you only add addresses to your mailing lists after first verifying the address. See ConfirmedOptIn for details on how to do this safely.
False reports
Some people will report your email as spam even when it isn't:
- Maybe you sent them an email which they just didn't want (e.g. a "funny" email, or a chain letter, etc)
Maybe you sent them a perfectly good email that they did want and they did read, but they then reported it as spam anyway.
- This could well be because they reported it by accident, or perhaps because they've got into the habit of clicking their "this is spam" button instead of the "delete" button
For unwanted (but not spam) mail, you should probably consider not sending such email to that recipient any more.
For false reports about perfectly good email, it's probably just best to ignore the spam complaint.