|
One this page I will attempt to explain how to fight spam and not be a victim
of it
The first step to not getting spammed is to not leave your email address a lot
of places. There are things called spiders that
crawl all over the web and collect anything that looks like an email address.
This is how most email addresses are collected for spam.
The Second step is to not reply to any address that a spam mail says to
reply-to to be remove. Most of these addresses are set up to VERIFY email
addresses and all replying to them will do is guarantee more spam. And anything that says its not spam because they will let you remove your selve or try to quote a senate bill defining spam is lying. Spam is spam if you didnt request it and they sent it to alot of people. There currently are NO bills under consideration in congress to change or limit spam.
The third step is to take action against the spammers by reporting it to their
ISP. This is the complicated part. Many spammers forge or lie about where they
are sending it from so you have to know how to read the headers of an email. I
will attempt to explain how to do that in a WIN95 based system.
-
The first thing you have to do is look at the headers. Most email programs have
an option to view them with the email's message body, the notable exception is
MS Outlook Express, but there is a way around that. In MSIE Out look Express
just right click on the email and view the properties. This will give you the
headers. When you can see the headers (in any program or service) simply
highlight them entirely and copy them (click and hold the left mouse button
down and move the mouse until all the headers are highlighted then let go of
the left mouse button and click the right mouse button and pick
copy from the menu ) Then tell your mail program you'd like to FOWARD the email
(not REPLY). In the fowarded message at the top of it simply right click and
PASTE the headers you just copied into it.
-
Now look at the headers. Here are 2 sample sets of headers:
Example 1
Received: from mail.argenet.com.ar [200.16.192.3] by nm195 via mtad (2.6)
with ESMTP id 320DcgL7L0022M19; Sun, 07 Mar 1999 11:58:12 GMT
Received: from mail.argenet.com.ar ([208.218.58.205])
by mail.argenet.com.ar (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id JAA12509;
Sun, 7 Mar 1999 09:06:15 -0300
From: trth99@aol.com
Message-Id:
<199903071206.JAA12509@mail.argenet.com.ar>
Date: Sun, 07 Mar 99 05:42:12 EST
To: grtns44@aol.com
Subject: Just Do It !! $7 Investment Nets Thousands !!
example 2
Received: from imo11.mx.aol.com [198.81.17.1] by mx04 via mtad (2.6)
with ESMTP id 591Dcgkgq0144M04; Sun, 07 Mar 1999 10:06:21 GMT
Received: from JCh7649460@aol.com
by imo11.mx.aol.com (IMOv19.3) id xCRa017016;
Sun, 7 Mar 1999 05:04:48 -0500 (EST)
From: JCh7649460@aol.com
Message-ID:
<1dd6a891.36e24f40@aol.com>
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 05:04:48 EST
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: Profit From The Internet Growth-Explosion 800 607-6006 Ex 2492
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 for Windows 95 sub 76
The second set actually came from aol.com the first did not.
-
Next we need to find out where the email REALLY came from
To find out if an mail came from where it says it did you need to use a program
called TRACERT . Every copy of WIN95 or higher has it. To access it :
As you can see by this example you can also trace the DOMAIN names too. A
domain name is anything like this : aol.com , geocities.com , usa.net , etc
When you do a TRACERT the last line (in this case line 20) is the server you
want to send your complain to. ignore every thing except the last part of it
and the .com or .net etc , so in this case you would be sending it to an
address at aol.com . The other parts of the server name in line 20 are the
identifiers for which physical server it went through.
-
Now we have to report it
Most ISPs have an email address to send spam to that is abuse@domain name , but
when in doubt send it to abuse@domain and postmaster@domain , and even
sometimes support@domain.
Often times by visiting the website for the ISP and looking for the terms of
Service you can find out if they have a special address for spam mail
complaints.
That’s it except also if the real address they sent it from doesn’t match the
address it claims to have come from then also
send a copy to abuse@domain for the address it came from . Many large ISPs'
will prosecute people who forge headers
to make them look bad. So for example one I sent the spam complaint to aol.com
even though they didn’t send it so they
could also get after the real ISP to cancel the senders account. Also any
domain that ends in a 2 letter domain like *.jp *.ca is a foreign address. Many
foreign ISP's do not care about spam as long as their country isnt the reciever
of the spam, but if the ISP is affiliated with a major US provider you may have
better results. Netcom which also operates in Canada has a good track record.
Spammers like to use foreign servers as it makes it appear as if they spam is
from outside the US and as such not subject to US trade laws.
The Federal Trade Commission and the IRS are also becoming quite active in the fight as many spam mails violate laws set by them. Any spam which tries to sell you something should be sent to:
uce@ftc.gov
Any spam mail that promotes a pryamid or multi level marketing plan should be sent to:
pyramid@ftc.gov
And all spam that sells something should also be sent to:
net-abuse@nocs.insp.irs.gov
Spammers hate to pay taxes too! (they already found a way out of paying postage)
|
