Our advice is that you do not report a scammer’s email address!
Seems counter-intuitive, right? You’ve received a scam email in your inbox. Or worse, perhaps you’ve been scammed out of some of your hard-earned money! Of course you’re angry. You want to strike back, so you decide that you can stop the scammer by shutting down the scammer’s email address. Reporting scam emails to the email provider usually does result in a closed email address, but it doesn’t actually yield your intended result.
While closing down a scammer’s email address may seem like a way to hurt them, in reality it is counterproductive and will actually do more harm than good.
Losing an email address is a very minor inconvenience to a scammer. They can create a new one in a minute or two, and in fact, most scammers keep dozens of ready-made accounts in reserve at any given time. They expect to lose accounts, since they’re using them for fraud. They simply move on to another address and keep going.
But this insignificant inconvenience to the scammer can end up preventing other victims from being saved.
Why is that so? Because many victims learn the truth about potential scams through internet searches. If someone has doubts, or is looking for confirmation, they will often turn to Google or other search engines and soon find themselves directed to Scamwarners.com or other anti fraud sites where victims, or potential victims, post their stories.
ScamWarners.com is a site dedicated to scam victim warning, with a forum full of reports of scams. On those topics, there are many posts by newly registered members expressing gratitude for the information, and then adding more or updated information the scammer is using. That information, in turn, shows up in searches. It’s a beautiful chain reaction of strangers helping strangers. Every new post has a great a pay-it-forward potential.
The key to these would-be victims learning the truth is by searching for the scammer’s email address.
The longer a scammer keeps using the same email addresses, the greater the chance that victims have reported the address to sites like ScamWarners.com. Shutting down a scammer’s email address will mean nothing to him, but it will prevent victims from being able to find information through an Internet search.
So, think twice before reporting a scammer’s account. Instead, go to an anti fraud site and list the scam mails that you receive, with the scammer’s fake name and email address so that other people can find them. By doing so you may very well save someone from being victimized.