My e-mail addresses and yours gradually get clogged up with spam. What can you do about it?
Note: spam means unsolicited e-mails advertising often bogus products and services. The origin of the use of 'spam' in this context is from a sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus where every dish in a cafe contains spam. Spam is actually a British brand of tinned meat and is short for 'spiced pork and ham'.
The first thing to know is do *not* click on the 'opt-out' that is often provided at the end of the spam e-mail. This only confirms to the spammer that you have a live e-mail address which will mean it is sold on and used even more.
A way of preventing, or at least reducing, spam, is to be careful where you publish your e-mail address. If you are putting it on a web page, or even sending a message to a newsgroup, programs that search the Internet for e-mail addresses will find your address and it will eventually be the target of spam. A trick to make it difficult to use is to put something in it that humans can remove, but computers will not realise they have to remove, for example an asterisk at the beginning or the words 'removethis' after the '@'. This may be difficult if you use e.g. Google Groups to send messages to newsgroups.
If you want to help battle against spam, it is worth forwarding the message you have received to the ISP (Internet Service Provider) that has given the spammer an account. Of course the whole provider may be the spammer, but that is unusual.
Much of the time spammers try to disguise who is sending the e-mail. Just clicking 'reply' will almost certainly do no good as the e-mail will have been set up with a false 'reply-to' address. The most reliable method of finding out where the e-mail came from is to look at the 'Received' line of the e-mail header. If your program doesn't display the full e-mail header, you can probably configure it to do so - e.g. in Hotmail you click 'Options' , then 'Mail Display Settings' then 'Full' under 'Message Headers'.
A typical 'Received' line will look like this:
Received: from xoommail.com ([81.73.15.8]) by mc7-f19.law1.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5600); Sun, 15 Jun 2003 15:57:00 -0700
A lot of this line can be faked, too, but one usually reliable part is the first set of four numbers separated by dots in square brackets - here 81.73.15.8 (this is called the Internet Protocol address or IP address).
You can look up who has responsibility for this at a site such as Sam Spade - put the IP address in the first box and click 'Do Stuff' (the form is included here to save time).
The chances are, however, that the answer it comes up with is either RIPE, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC (the example given translated to RIPE). These are the four organisations that hand out IP addresses around the world (for Europe and North Africa, Asia and Australia, North America and Southern Africa, and South America respectively) and will not be directly responsible. Use the forms below to search within their network for the culprit.
| RIPE | |
| APNIC | |
| ARIN | |
| LACNIC |
inetnum: 81.73.15.8 - 81.73.15.15 netname: TIWS-08157451 descr: S G B GEVI SRL remarks: Send report of network abuse/spam remarks: only to:neteconomy.rete@telecomitalia.it remarks: if you report abuse to any other address remarks: you will get no response. country: IT admin-c: NT1116-RIPE tech-c: NT1116-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PA mnt-by: TIWS-MNT changed: neteconomy.rete@telecomitalia.it 20020327 source: RIPE
route: 81.73.0.0/16 descr: INTERBUSINESS origin: AS3269 notify: network@cgi.interbusiness.it mnt-by: INTERB-MNT changed: net_ti@telecomitalia.it 20020122 source: RIPE
person: NetEconomy TI address: Via Val Cannuta, 250 address: 00100 Roma Italy phone: +39-06-36881 e-mail: neteconomy.rete@telecomitalia.it nic-hdl: NT1116-RIPE notify: ripe-staff@telecomitalia.it changed: neteconomy.rete@telecomitalia.it 20011214 source: RIPE
This is an Italian telecomms company. There should be a line that refers to 'abuse' (i.e. inappropriate use of e-mail etc.) It is now worth sending an e-mail to the address mentioned - in this case neteconomy.rete@telecomitialia.it
Be polite, as the ISP may be innocent and trying hard to prevent spam (although not hard enough, apparently). Include the full header and contents of the spam e-mail you received, and use the same subject line in your e-mail to the ISP.
For example:
"I have received the attached spam e-mail which appears to come from your service. Please could you investigate and ensure that it does not happen again.
Thank you
>From: "Andrea Carter" <andreacarterpo@ctimail3.com>
>To: *angusdmwalker@hotmail.com
>Subject: Download this!
>Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 22:59:28 +0000
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Received: from xoommail.com ([81.73.15.8]) by mc7-f19.law1.hotmail.com with
Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5600); Sun, 15 Jun 2003 15:57:00 -0700
etc.
Unfortunately for the example shown, the mail was returned as being sent to an unknown address. TelecomItalia needs to update its details! Ho hum.