updated: March 4,2001
	Fight SPAM E-Mailing

Are the SPAM e-mails also coming to your mailbox ?

Join the "Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email:"

Fight against this SPAMing by reporting SPAMMERS ! ! !

Most e-Mail accounts on the Internet state in their Terms and Conditions (TOC ),
that their server is NOT used for mass-e-mailing.

I suggest to forward any received SPAM e-mail to the "Postmaster" and/or "Webmaster"
of the server, from which the SPAM e-mail was received (example: postmaster@yunk.com ).
Most popular e-mail servers offer a special address to report abuse of e-mail:

It does not help always, but it make the live of the SPAMMERs more difficult, if their
e-mail accounts are getting terminated !
(Mailing back to the SPAMMER itself , requesting to stop the sending of such mails to you, is in my experience
useless, it actually helps them because now the know that the e-mail address is actually existing and not a fake )

As example, please find below an answer from Yahoo, when I reported such an e-mail abuse:

Thank you for reporting this incident to Yahoo!. Mass distribution of unsolicited email messages (or "spamming")
violates the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS).

Although it does not appear that this message originated from the Yahoo! Mail system, there is a "@yahoo.com"
address within the message or message headers, and we believe that this account was being used in connection
with the unwanted email message. Consequently, we have taken appropriate action against this account as per
our TOS.

If, in the future, you receive an unwanted email message that appears to derive from a Yahoo! Mail account, please
include the following in your report of email abuse to assist us in a prompt and full evaluation of your report:

1) Original subject line. Please forward the email with a subject identical to the original subject.

2) Complete headers. Email programs often display abbreviated headers.
To learn how to display the full headers in a Yahoo! Mail account, please visit our Help Desk at:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/config/config-11.html

If you are using a different client to read your email, please consult your email program's help system for more
information on viewing full headers.

3) Complete message body. Please include the complete, unedited content of the email message in question.
Please do not change or edit the message in any way.

If reports of email abuse are missing any one of these three items, it may take longer for the Yahoo! Mail Abuse
Team to properly investigate and take appropriate action.

Thank you for working with us to keep Yahoo! a friendly email environment. In the future, if you receive an
unwanted email message that appears to derive from a Yahoo! Mail account, please forward the message
including original subject line, full Internet headers and full message body to us at:

abuse@yahoo.com

Regards,

Yahoo! Customer Care
http://www.yahoo.com/

When reporting such SPAM e-Mail, be aware that SPAM mail often tries to "cover its tracks":

Example:

Outlook Express allows to define your E-mail address and Reply-address, which does NOT have to correspond with the actual e-mail address, from which the SPAM message was send.

When getting a SPAM e-mail (I tried to make an example below):

find the Internet e-mail header, which is often NOT listed (like in Outlook Express,
but can be viewed in the message-window, NOT the preview window, by selecting from
the menu : File / Properties:

tab: Details Select with the cursor all text, then right-click to get the Context-menu and "Copy" the header-information, to add it them later via "Paste" to the message reporting the mail-abuse. But even mail-header can be modified to hide the sender of the message: - have a look from which server the message was received If you are in doubt because you see multiple servers in the header section, then report it to BOTH servers !

This is the e-mail header of the message reported, where Yahoo decided to act on:

Sender: richalln@yahoo.com
Received: from 63.212.134.167
(dialup-63.212.134.167.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [63.212.134.167])
by sphmgaab.compuserve.com (8.9.3/8.9.3/SUN-1.9) with SMTP id FAA09133;
Sun, 7 Jan 2001 05:02:07 -0500 (EST)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 05:02:07 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200101071002.FAA09133@sphmgaab.compuserve.com>
From: "Richelle" <rich8712@yahoo.com>
To: Receiver@compuserve.com
Subject: Earn money from home compiling MAILING LIST! Fun and Fast!
-IHUM
X-Reply-To: "Richelle" <rich8712@yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

even if you think that the e-mail address was forged: report it.
Example: a reply back from MSN Hotmail:

Hello ,
Thanks for your message to MSN Hotmail.
This is <name removed> and i am writing in response to your inquiry regarding unsolicited
email messages.
We have checked the account that you have reported and found out that it has been forged.
We have actively pursued legal action against many of these spammers who are forging addresses
using the Hotmail domain and would like to thank you for taking the time to forward the message
you received to our Abuse Team.
Should you receive any other unsolicited e-mail with the Hotmail domain name in either the
header information or the body of the message, please forward it to abuse@hotmail.com so that
we can investigate each instance.

We encourage you to visit the following links to learn more about spam, forged message headers, and how to complain about e-mail abuse:

The Anti-Spam HOWTO:
http://www.cauce.org
http://www.bluemarble.net/~scotty/forgery.html

Sincerely,
MSN Hotmail Customer Support