FAQs - SPAM Email

A spammer is using my address, what do I do?
	If you find that a spammer is forging your e-mail address, please send an email to abuse@cyberlynk.net with all the header information of the email in question. For a tutorial on how to find the header please see the tutorial section of our website.

How can I keep the junk mail out of my inbox?

Most of the newer e-mail clients have filtering capabilities. Since most SPAM comes with your e-mail address in the bcc: field, you can filter the bulk of the UCE by filtering out any mail that does not have your e-mail address contained in the To: or cc: fields. If you are subscribed to any mailing lists, this filter will probably "catch" those e-mails also. Most mailing lists make use of the bcc: field to conceal the list members from the unscrupulous. If you can find a "keyword" that is common to all mail from that mailing list, you can exclude those messages from the filter. We recommend that you send the filtered messages to a separate folder for review, at least until you get the filters functioning correctly. A sample filter would look like this (from Outlook Express 5.0): Apply this rule after the message arrives Where the Subject line does not contain 'Keyword' and Where the To line does not contain "address1' or address2' or 'address3' and Where the CC line does not contain "address1' or address2' or 'address3' Move it to the Questionable folder

How do I see the complete headers in my e-mail program?
	CyberLynk has created instructions for some of the most common e-mail clients. Please go to the tutorial section of our website.

I have determined the source of the SPAM, now what?

Forward the offending message or e-mail to the abuse department of the originating ISP. You must include the full headers in order for the abuse department to be able to act on your complaint. Refer to CyberLynk’s tutorial section to find more information on how to view the header information. Most ISPs have adopted the convention of using abuse@ for their abuse departments. Should this bounce, all ISPs are required to have a postmaster@ address.

So, what do I do about SPAM?
	The best way to stop the flow of SPAM is to fight back. There are many excellent sites that can give you the background information that you will need to read the message headers and find the source of the SPAM.

This e-mail isn't even addressed to me. How did I get it?

Spammers commonly put their address list in the BCC: field, which will not show up in the headers. Many servers and mail clients will bounce messages with empty To: fields. The spammer may put a dummy address into the To: field, or the To: field may be filled by the first name on a particular SPAM run. If a spammer has a huge list of addresses for a SPAM run, that list may be parsed into groups of less than 100 in order to get it by the server SPAM filters. The first e-mail address on the list will go in the To: field, the rest of the addresses will be put in the Bcc: field. If your e-mail address is further down the list, it will end up in the Bcc: section. The e-mail will then appear to have been sent to someone else.

This SPAM says to reply to a remove address. Won't that take care of the problem?

NEVER, EVER reply to a remove address. If the people sending you the SPAM were ethical individuals, they would not be invading your inbox with their junk. Replying to a remove address does one thing: confirms your e-mail address as legitimate so the spammers can sell your address to all their friends. But this SPAM references legislation that requires them to honor remove requests. A lot of Spammers reference bills such as so-called Murkowski Bill in order to make them appear legitimate. Congress has not, to date, passed any laws regarding SPAM. Certain states such as Washington, California and Virginia have passed anti-SPAM regulations, but these tend to invoke penalties for spamming. It is highly doubtful that a spammer would reference any of these.

We have a poster in our newsgroup that is very disruptive and obnoxious, can I report him to abuse?
	Probably not, in most cases, trolling a newsgroup does not constitute a violation of an ISPs terms of service. If the poster is making overt threats, continually posting off-topic information or flooding the newsgroup you may have a case for abuse. If not, the best course of action is for the newsgroup at large to ignore the sender.

What is SPAM?

SPAM refers to the same thing over and over again. It originally applied to massively cross-posted Usenet articles, but has been expanded to include most forms of net abuse. It is commonly used to refer to Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, (UCE), Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE), or Usenet abuse such as commercial posts in a newsgroup where ads are not welcome, off-topic posts or cross-posting to more than five newsgroups.

When I run a WHOIS on the offending ISP, it gives me a list of other contact names. Should I forward the SPAM to them too?
	No. The contacts shown on InterNIC are not for use by SPAM fighters. ISPs have abuse addresses for a reason. It does your case no good to SPAM the offending ISP by forwarding the SPAM to every known contact address. There are rare occasions of server security issues, DoS attacks, etc. that might merit communication with an ISP or server administrator.

Why doesn't my ISP do something about this?

ISPs have little control over SPAM which does not originate from their servers. Imagine trying to set up the criteria to block e-mail SPAM while making sure that no legitimate messages get filtered out. As annoying as SPAM is, not getting legitimate mail because of the spammers activities would be worse. You can do your own filtering by setting up the message rules in your e-mail program, or through the use of third party software such as SPAMkiller, SPAM Buster, SPAM Eater, etc. CyberLynk also offers SPAM Filtering as a service.

Why don't I just send a bunch of copies of the mail back to the spammer?

Sending mass quantities of mail to an address is known as mailbombing. It is a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. Besides being completely unethical, it will result in immediate cancellation of your account from 99% of the ISPs. Keep in mind that most From: and Reply To: addresses are forged anyway. The odds of the spammer actually being the victim of this attack are minimal. Resorting to unethical and "terroristic" tactics damages the anti-SPAM movement as a whole. You will find no support for this kind of behavior among dedicated SPAM-fighters.

Why is all this stuff appearing in my mailbox?

There are many ways to get on the spammer's mailing lists. Some are as simple as choosing an unfortunate e-mail address, some are not so simple. A few of the most common ways a spammer can get your e-mail address are: Usenet Posting Many Spammers use "bots" to cruise the Newsgroups on Usenet and collect e-mail addresses. Post to Usenet often and you can almost be guaranteed of getting on a SPAM mailing list. Web Pages Again, Spammers use web-crawlers to search out e-mail addresses located on web pages. Mailing Lists Many people sign up for mailing lists on subjects that they are interested in. Unscrupulous people will also sign up on mailing lists in order to obtain e-mail addresses. Coincidental If an e-mail address is used by someone on one ISP, it is fairly certain than someone else has used that address at some point. This is particularly true for common words and names. Spammers will use the front part of the e-mail address and change the ISP name to all the other major IPSs. So, and address of Jsmith@here.com will get added to the SPAM mailing lists as Jsmith@there.com and Jsmith@nothere.com, etc. If you are receiving a lot of SPAM on a particular address try going to dejanews (http://www.deja.com) Select Power Search. In the author field enter: name@* then click Find at the top. Leave all the other fields blank. It should pull the posts in the dejanews archive that match the user name with a wild card for the ISP. If you turn up a lot of posts, you have a common e-mail address and are probably receiving collateral SPAM. SPAM Software Recently, is seems that Spammers have taken advantage of some hacker/cracker code that was originally developed to generate passwords lists for breaking into systems. The code randomly generates lists of possible e-mail addresses using various combinations of numbers and letters. The spammer then attaches known ISPs to them to create mailing lists. This helps explain unused and unusual e-mail addresses suddenly receiving SPAM.