You've got spam! Do the right thing. Turn them in. At this point, spammers are out of control. Is it free speech? Is it commerce? One thing for sure, it's annoying! You can become a spam chef. Umm-mmmm. Hot spam.
Prevention
Prevention is the best way to not get spam. Don't give out your email address. If you open the spam to report it, don't click on the links. They monitor where the click comes from and hit your account hard. Don't put your email address on the web where it can be gleaned. If you do, spell out the "at" and the "dot" as in 'name "at" yahoo "dot" com.' That way the email robots can't interpret it as an email address. You can set up a free email accounts with Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo that you can throw out later. Another way to make your email anonymous is to post on Craig's List and use the reply address to send email to your account. This works for a week or until your post gets flagged off.
Forged Headers
Zeroing in on a spammer usually isn't too difficult. You can track anyone down on the web, if you put enough time and money into it. The main information area of an email is it's header. You have to look around to go about finding it at the various email providers. They all have "full header" options. This tells you the Internet Service Provider's address where the spam originated, it's return email route, the time of delivery, the time sent, the initial sender and much more. Unfortunately, all of it can be forged or faked except the time of delivery and ISP's route address. So, a spammer can change the originating spam address, return address, time sent and whatever to hide where the spam originates. (Neat, huh?) You appear to get spam from your own email address. There are ways of finding the ISP and contacting them regarding your clever spam entity.
Reporting Spam
Gmail is very good about controlling their incoming spam. Yahoo can control it, if you upgrade to a premium account (Neat, huh?). You can buy software that filters out spam. That is "throwing good money after bad money." Then, there are a few anti-spam organizations the help in reporting spam. The two best ones around are SpamCop (http://www.spamcop.net/) and CastleCops (http://www.castlecops.com/). Once you sign up a free account with them, you can copy the header and spam-mail into their online form and report the spammer. They look up the Internet Service Provider that hosts the spammer and sends the ISP a letter regarding the spammer on ISP's server spamming all over the place. The idea being the ISP is responsible for their internet content and finds the spammer responsible for breaking the law. Well, a few countries, world wide, can't or don't want to understand this.
The Spammer
Spam is illegal. No one reports their spam, so it continues. I have a Hotmail account from the 80's that gets so much spam no one will ever be able to do anything about it. If more people reported a little bit of their spam here and there, it would change the outcome of spam and the people that send unsolicited email. I can't imagine what a spammer looks like. What? Hairy backed blob in their shorts sitting there hitting the enter button over and over. There is a good article about the Spam King on http://www.mahalo.com/Edward_Davidson.
Here is a list of email addresses to report spam email with their headers: report@dcm.mailprove.com, knujon@coldrain.net, submitspam@fortinet.com, spam@mailpolice.com, nanas@killfile.org, spam@sendusspam.com, junk@brightmail.com, spam@cybertopcops.com, spam@uce.gov
Here are links to help you understand your spam:
Tutorials on Reading Email Headers
http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/tips/spam-header.html
http://www.onimoto.com/cache/50.html
Network Tools
http://www.demon.net/external/
http://www.geektools.com/whois.php
Abuse Contact Database
http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml
Anti-Spam Portal
Website that lists all various spam laws by state:
http://www.spambrigade.com/spamlaws.html
So, get some spam, fry it up, and bon appetit.
- Where to report spam
- The email header
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