Where to report email abuse (fraud/spam)?

For general complaints

• Emailbusters.org - For reporting any type of email, reveals abusers to the public
• Ip-Address-Lookup-V4 - Report sender's email and IP
• FBI's Complaint Center - Internet Crime Complaint Center

For company specific complaints

• BBB - For reporting fraudulent business offers
• Bank of America - Email for forwarding scam email related to BoA
• Ebay - For reporting ebay fraud and phishing (forward messages to that address)
• Gmail - For reporting scam/spam messages coming from gmail accounts
• Hotmail - Forward the scam/spam messages to hotmail abuse team
• Paypal - For reporting email which pretend to be coming from Paypal
• Yahoo - Select "Yahoo! Account" and "Abuse and Spam" (customer support number is 1-408-349-1572)

Frequently asked questions

There are currently sophisticated mechanisms in place which automatically detect and destroy spam. They disable the servers which send the spam emails and also destroy sites which are mentioned inside the emails themselves. Use http://ip-address-lookup-v4.com to report the spammer's IP (get it by checking the email headers) and you will see if if the IP has already been blacklisted.

If you wish you can also take proactive steps and report the spam directly to the hosting company of the spammer. Simply open up the headers, check the IP and to an ip lookup on it and search for the email which says "abuse". Then send a message to that email explaining that you're getting spam from a web-site they host. Here is an article written by a "Hostgator" which explains the steps.

Never - Typically the abuse departments do not reply to emails. They receive them analyze them and either tuck them away for reference or start an investigation. They receive such a high-volume that it's not practicaly to answer every single email they receive.

You need to contact your police department. They have tools to track down and prosecute the email sender.