Spamhunter's Resource

Information about unsolicited advertising email, also known as "spam". What it is, how to deal with it, and how to get additional help.

Detailed Introduction

Unsolicited Advertising Email

What Is spam?
RFC 1855
Acceptable Use Policy / Terms of Service
Email Abuse FAQ
Origin of "spam" as Term for Unwanted Advertising
What's The Problem?
Introduction
Spam: Not Funny Any More
Poll: 93% Agree "Spammers are parasites. Stop him. 93%"
The Cost of Spam
Spam Adds $2.00 to Monthly ISP Cost
Individual Custom Calculation
Corporate Custom Calculation
Looking Ahead
7,359 Ads Per Day
The Doomsday Scenario
The issue is Consent, not Content
Ruthless, Unethical Competition
Dirty Tricks target nonspamming competitors
Spam Problems In The News
AT&T Worldnet
All Email Delayed 48 Hours by Spam Run
Pacific Bell Internet
$500,000.00 Outage due to Spam
Followup Analysis
UUnet / Pipex
8 Mailservers crippled for one week by Spam

Spam Problem Studied

BBC Report
One spam costs $1.00 in lost productivity
EU Study
Spam Costs Users $9.4 Billion
"Junk" e-mail costs internet users euro 10 billion a year worldwide
Spam Statistics
CAUBE Australia Spam Survey
Provide.net's Daily Statistics
Spamcop's Weekly Stats (Updated Hourly)
Spamlinks (Collection of Statistics Links)
TESP Annual Spam Chart (Updated Weekly)
Spamcon's links to various statistical pages.

Spam Unwelcome

But Isn't Spam Legal?
AOL Files & Wins 3 Anti-Spam Lawsuits
Bibliotech vs. Benchmark Print Supply
More Benchmark / Vortex Data
CompuServe vs. CyberPromotions Consent Decree
John Marshall Law School
Spamcon Foundation Law Center
State-Level Law
Spamcon List of Anti-spam States
State Anti-spam Laws
What About Federal Legislation?
Federal Spamlaws
Senator Frank Murkowski, S.1618
What About Federal Agencies?
The Federal Trade Commission solicits copies of spam email at a dedicated email address.
The Securities and Exchange Commission solicited copies of stock-and-bond spam email at a dedicated email address.
The Telecommunications Research and Action Center (a private organization) is petitioning the Federal Trade Commission to declare spam "an unfair and deceptive trade practice as it causes harm to consumers."
The United States Postal Service has jurisdiction of chain letters if any part of the activity occurs using the US Mails. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has an online web complaint form for all types of mail fraud, including chain letters.
What About State Activity?
California
Why Not Just Send a Remove Notice?
Responding to UCE (Panix)
Spam Recycling Center

Dealing With Spam

Direct Response

Hiding From spam.
The Address Munging FAQ
Using web-based email accounts
Despammed Mail Filtration Service
Mailexpire
Sneakemail
Spamex
SpamMotel
How Did They Get My Address? FAQ
Spam Baiting
Actively Stopping spam.
Tutorial (WinPlanet)
Polite Complaints to ISPs.
How and Where to Complain
Sample Complaint Letter
Foreign Language Resources
Cybernothing's Archive (promiscuous relays)
MultiLingual Complaints
Can Internet Service Providers Help?
Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS)
Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS)
Purpose of Blocklists
What To Expect From Spammers
Sometimes They Apologize
Sometimes They Threaten
When to Call for Help
The Rules of Spam
After dealing with spam and spammers for years, the frequent posters to the Usenet Newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email have codified the common characteristics they have encountered.

Filtering Email

Personal Filters and Blocklists
Arachnoid's Discussion of spam and Filters
ISP Blocklist FAQs
Blackmail Filter
Brightmail
Lyris Mailshield
MAPS
ORB UK
The Spamhaus Project
SPEWS

Filtering the World Wide Web

Adjusting the local HOSTS file
Eliminate pop-under and pop-up advertising.

Internet Marketing Done Right

More Help

Anti-Spam Organizations
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Forum for Responsible and Ethical Email
Network Abuse Clearinghouse
Usenet Newsgroups
Selecting the Proper Abuse Newsgroup
news.admin.net-abuse.email FAQs:
Spamfighting Overview
The Evils of Spam
Terminology
Advice to a new spammer
Background Information
Margie's Glossary Page
Norman's Terminology Page
Spamlore
Tuxedo's Jargon Page
Frequently-Cited FAQs
RFC 821: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
RFC 822: Standard Format for Text Email
RFC 1855: Netiquette for email and Usenet
RFC 1925: 12 Rules of Networking
RFC 2396: Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax
RFC 2732: IPv6 Addresses in URL's
RFC 3098: How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroups
Links To Additional Web Sites
Rex Tinchers Anti-Spam Links
ISP FAQs
AOL

ISP Tutorials

MAPS
Securing Mail Host Against Third-Party Relay Operation
Sendmail
Anti-Spam Configuration
Links to Secure Various Mail Transport Agents (MTAs)
Putting the bam-bam on spam

Fighting Fire With Fire

Family of Web Sites

Project

Standardized Reporting Format

Developments towards a standardized spam report that is easy to learn, easy to read, is extensible, degrades gracefully, and is subject to automation.

Tracking and Reporting

The Whole Process

About.com's spam Series

You have got new mail. Wonderful! It is spam. Wonderful. What can I do now? What should I do now? You have several option, some more intelligent, some less.

C|net Series: Take Back The Net

It's easy to understand why spam is so pervasive. Even simple servers can easily seek out and gather e-mail addresses of Web site visitors, newsgroup participants, and other innocent users (a process known as harvesting).

JCR Design article

What you should do (and not do) when you have been victimized by a junk emailer.

Junkbuster's Tips

Prevention first: see our tips on how to stay off junk email lists, because getting your address removed is far more difficult.

Margie's Gentle Introduction

There's a right way to fight net abuse and a wrong way to fight net abuse. This site is about the right way, with professionalism and ethics.

MSDN article

Unauthorized email floods are one of the biggest headaches faced by system administrators of Internet-connected networks. There are some effective strategies for reducing its drain on your resources.

Worldnet Users Reference Desk

Junk e-mail (aka spam) is one of the biggest problems on the Internet. Almost everybody hates it. It fills up your mailbox, overloads your ISP impacting e-mail performance and more often than not, is nothing more than get rich quick schemes or pornographic advertisements.

Headers

Important
Header reading is one of the most important skills in handling spam email. This section is intended to get you off to a good start, but for difficult headers it is best to ask the assistance of the administrators in the Usenet newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email.
Display Full Headers
SpamCop's Definitive Guide for almost all email software.
XO.COMs guide for:
Pegasus E-mail | Eudora E-mail Client | Netscape E-Mail (v3.X) | Netscape Message (v4.X) | Microsoft Internet Mail | Microsoft Outlook Express
Email Software: The Bat! and Outlook Express
Simple and Expanded Headers
Comprehensive Listing of email programs.
Reading Full Headers
How Computers Send Email (sample dialog)
Deciphering "Received:" lines in the Header
Parts of a Header
Comprehensive
The Spam Patrol
Detecting Header Forgery
UXNs Commented Header Analysis
Decoding Obfuscated Headers
Swishweb Tools

Tracking Details

Introduction to spam tracking

Notification

Writing a Polite Complaint Email
Which ISPs Get The Complaint?
Shall I Complain To The Spammer?
Determining The Appropriate Complaint Address
Abuse.net
Government Complaint Addresses
Federal Trade Commission uce@ftc.gov.
John Oliver's List
International ISP and Government Contact List

Internet / Web Based Tools

Automated Reporting
Spam Cop
Blocklist Inquiry
MAPS
Open RBL
Osirusoft
DNS & NS Lookups (Domain Name Servers)
Jim Price's List
Multiple Tools
DNS Report
GeekTools Ping, Traceroute, Whois
Sam Spade Ping, Traceroute, Whois
Annotated List (great tutorial)
UXN Ping, Traceroute, Whois
Safe Browser
Sam Spade
Annotated List (great tutorial)
Web Sniffer
International
Worldwide WHOIS
URL Decoders
Net Demon
Sam Spade
Annotated List (great tutorial)
Using The Available Tools
Using Traceroute and Whois

Computer Tools

Linux, Unix Command Line Utilities

Spamulor
Java program works with your email package to reject incoming spam.

MacIntosh Software

DNS Professional
Ping, Traceroute, DNS Query

Microsoft Command Line Utilities

Microsoft Windows Software

Email Tracker Pro
Requires MS Java VM build 5.00.3167 or later
Net Demon
Whois, Ping, Traceroute, 35 More functions
Netlab:
finger, whois, time (including PC clock synchronization), quote, ping, trace, DNS, and scanner
Network Tools
Megaping: DNS lookup name, DNS list hosts, Finger, Host Monitor, IP scanner
Query: Host To IP, IP To Host, Whois, Finger, EQ - Retrieve recent Earthquake information using Finger. HTML - View full header information and the page data from a Web server. FTP - Query FTP server. Shows root directories and files. Get Time - Obtain precise time value from a remote Time server. Sync My Clock, Port Scan, Ping, Trace, IPCfg -Windows IP Configuration utillity. NetStat - Obtain information about current connections. Query Application Modems gives information about installed modems, lets you send AT commands, and can detect incoming calls.
Cyberkit: Ping, TraceRoute, WhoIs, Finger, Quote of the Day, Name Server LookUp, Time Synchronizer, NetScanner, DBScanner, Check for New Mail and Keep Alive
Spike: block scanning, daytime, authentic DNS, finger, head (what s that server running), ping, traceroute,whois. Can parse almost any URL at any port.
TJ Ping: ping, lookup, traceroute
Sam Spade for Windows
Spamkiller
Spamulor
Java program works with your email package to reject incoming spam.
TESP Abuse Reporter
Whois for Windows

Email Software

The Bat! (Windows)
Multiple accounts and users, template/boilerplate messages, message filtering.
EMC (Windows)
Allows you to check email while still on the server, single-click shows owner of domain, identifies virus-infected messages.
Pegasus (Windows, MS-DOS, MacIntosh)
Spell checker, auto reply, rich set of preference settings, multiple accounts.

The Lumber Cartel (tinlc)
San Diego Chapter

Anti-Chickenboner Pre-Emptive Strike

Not shown above is the official Lumber Cartel (tinlc) Model 590 Super M Detected Excessive Transmission Activity Communications Handler (D.E.T.A.C.H). It is not performing off-site operations not near an alleged spam source without the local field crew of William Kronert, Jeff Mackey, George Crissman, John Oliver (not seated), and Bill Carton. Photo not by Sondra, her Royal Highness, keeper of the Golden Mallet, and Coordinator of Various Goings-On.


Internet Data MiningPage design and contents copyright © 2002 by George Crissman, strads@tmisnet.com, all rights reserved worldwide.