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Problem Fixes

SPAM

Do's

Be careful where you leave your information, spammers pick up e-mail addresses from a variety of places:

• Your web site (we can give you things to reduce this problem).

• News groups

• Chat rooms

• You responded to some spam, either to request to be removed from the list or to visit their web site from a link they provided in the spam.

• You willingly give them your information to get something.

• It gets stolen from your web browser. Don't use the same browser for web and email. If you use Outlook Express for your email reader, don't use the Internet Explorer for web sites. Get another browser like Netscape for web surfing. In your web surfing browser, change your email address.

• Many on-line forms require you to uncheck the send me stuff box (opt-in vs. opt-out).

Many on-line forms ask you for ridiculous depth of personal information before they will send you something (for FREE). Remember, your information has value, and this is the price you are paying for this (free) stuff. Some of these operations are legitimate and just want to send you information from their company. Some of these operations are evil and are going to sell your information, you may or may nor receive anything other than SPAM, junk mail, phone calls, etc.

Note: When you receive SPAM, you will probably notice the FROM: information is confusing. It may claim to be from a legitimate looking source. It may claim to be from YOU to YOU. The part of the e-mail message that is labeled FROM: is just information that the sender fills in. It is not verified by anyone, and it not required to deliver the mail. They can fill in anything they want in the FROM: area. There are ways to trace the path of e-mail but they are not simple. If you have a persistent spammers, contact your Internet Service Provider for help.

Don'ts

Don't respond to SPAM

Never reward them by buying anything from spammers. If nobody rewarded them, they would stop.

Never visit their web site. They frequently provide a link to their web site. You might think they will not know who you are if you just visit their web site. Wrong! If you look at the actual link code, it sometimes contains not only the web site address but also adds your email address, which the web site can collect.

Be very cautious about "click here to be remove from our list", or send your email address to be removed from our list.

• They may have been getting your name through some rented list. If you answer the e-mail, you just gave them your REAL e-mail address. Now they can send you all the SPAM they want and they don't have to rent the list anymore.
  

• If the mail is not addressed to your real e-mail address (such as Undisclosed Recipients), and you answer the e-mail, you just gave them your REAL e-mail address.
  

• There are programs that try to guess valid e-mail addresses. They send mail to a lot of different possible addresses, and wait for a response. If you respond, you confirmed that address as valid.
  

• It is usually best to never reply to "get your name removed", this confirms your address and gets you more SPAM. There is an exception to this rule. Legitimate companies will normally remove you from lists if you ask them. If you do not recognize the company, or you never contacted them in the past, then you will probably hurt yourself be asking to be removed from their lists. 

Your e-mail address is a commodity. It has value. Spammers sell your e-mail address.

In general, don't do what they ask you to do.

Get the header information.

The REAL information about who sent the SPAM is hidden in the mail header. Without the header information, there is little chance of caching your spammer. The header information is normally not shown when you read email, you have to ask for the header information. Different email programs use different methods to show the headers. If you are going to complain about the spammer, you will need to capture the header information and send that with the offending email when you report the spammer. 

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE

To read (and copy) the header using Microsoft Exchange, do the following:
Open the message in Exchange to view it. Choose 'File,' then 'Properties,' then 'Internet.' The header will be visible and will be highlighted. Simply right click and copy it. Then paste on the front of the message and forward it to your abuse department.


INTERNET EXPLORER

Choose "Properties" under "File". Click on the "Details" tab. This will show the full header.
Now right click and choose "Select All". Right click again and choose "Copy". Start a new message, right click again, and choose "Paste". This will paste the entire header into this new (and temporary) message. Copy the header from the new message and paste it back onto the original. The paste command doesn't work directly on the original message.


NETSCAPE MESSENGER

To read the email header in Netscape Messenger (the email reader supplied with Netscape communicator) press Ctrl-U. A new window will open with the full message including the complete header. To copy this to a email message press Ctrl-A to highlight the entire message then Ctrl-C to copy it. Open the email message you want to send. Using the mouse, place the cursor in the body of the message, select edit / paste as quoted, from the menu bar.


NETSCAPE

A simple way to view the headers of news SPAM in Netscape. Simply click View-> document source when you're looking at the offending item. The full headers are then visible.


EUDORA PRO

When reading an email message, look at the toolbar just above the message itself. There should be a button that reads
BLAH
BLAH
BLAH
in black and white. Click on this and the full headers will appear. Then select all, copy and paste into a new message to send to the offender's ISP, or click on the forward button and the full headers will automatically be placed in the new email message.



For other mail reader programs, look here:
http://members.tripod.com/~cyberstalked/header.htm

For helpful links about SPAM try these:

Anti Spam Links