edit Spam is a serious problem: 4 of 5 mails are now junk, and the problem is growing

We do agree with your frustration regarding websites that phish and spam emails, however, unconstructive edits to AboutUs don't help the reader experience here. Unconstructive edits can include: changing a header, title, name and abusive language.

edit Ideas

How do we at AboutUs deal with information about sites that spam?

One way is to:

• If you have a concern about a particular site, feel free to use the review section, or the discussion/talk page.

Another thought is:

• For quality purposes, spam-entries should be weeded out of any dictionary. Spam is not just 'a matter of opinion.' Spam may be verified easily. Try SpamCop.net or SiteAdvisor.com or Abuse.net or PhishTank.com. Just to mention a few...

More ideas:

Currently Alexa.com is listed under External Links.

If SiteAdvisor.com also had a direct link (example: www.siteadvisor.com/sites/dubious-site.com/summary/) then it would only take one click to see if a site was rated Red or Green, and read other users comments...

This is an interesting idea! Is SiteAdvisor.com the place to find out about spaming domains? --MarkDilley

There are many sites dealing with spam/scam-issues, but to my knowledge SiteAdvisor.com is the simplest and easiest to use: you don't need to read a manual, consult a FAQ, not even register. In other words, it's a 'one click' solution. The basic version is also a free plugin for Explorer and Firefox, so many will be familiar with it already.

Siteadvisor basically labels a site RED (Avoid), Yellow (Proceed with caution) or Green (OK!) - and you can read other peoples experiences with a particular site. Plus, there are more details if you have the time/energy to read more.

By the way, SiteAdvisor warns against spam, adware, malware and phishing, so it's quite allround (PhishTank only deals with phishing).

PS: I'm still a bit unsure about the AboutUs spam-policy: Are spam-sites to be avoided completely, erased on sight? Or included, with a warning? Or what..?

Phantazm

Hi, we, you and I are still trying to figure out what to bring to the AboutUs community about this issue. For the time being, I like the SiteAdvisor.com solution of adding an external link to that site. I have done it a couple of times now in this format: SiteAdvisor.com [1]. But this is only a intermediate solution. Best, MarkDilley

Simon Koldyk has created the: {{PossibleSpamSite}} template (with double ended curly brackets)- for an example see: SunflowerSunOilseed.com Thanks Simon- Kasey