"SPAM" also known as "Bulk E-Mail" and "UCE" (Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail), is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for get-rich-quick schemes, "revolutionary" products, or other scams to take your money. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender. Spam mail is theft of service. We are the ones paying for our connection, our disk space, and the time it takes to read or delete these messages. Spam mail not only consumes massive amounts of disk space but also bogs down mail servers and eats up a network's bandwidth, slowing down everyone's service.
E-mail addresses can be pulled from newsgroup posts, web pages, irc clients, web browsers and from other Internet software. It's also possible that your address was added to a list from a form that you filled out someplace on the World Wide Web.
The best way to prevent getting spam or getting added to mailing lists is to keep your e-mail address private. Trusting your e-mail address to close friends and family will usually not result in spam. Placing your e-mail address in "Address Areas" of Internet programs, online submission forms or anywhere in a public forum such as one or more newsgroups however, is practically a guarantee that your address will be placed on a list somewhere.
Some people create a second email account (Avalon customers get up to 4) which they use as a public address. This will keep all of the junk mail in one account and leave your private email address spam free. Another option is to set up a public address from one of the free e-mail services on the Internet such as Hotmail, Bigfoot, Yahoo, Iname, or Usa (just to name a few) for public posts.
The first step to take is to find out where the spam came from. You are looking for the server that let the spammer send out the junk mail. To find this information, we need to view the email's header information. This is a trace of the different servers the email went through to get to your ISP's mail server and then into your inbox. Normally, an email's header information is hidden because it contains information that is for computer to computer routing. The only information you usually see is the subject, date, and the "From" or "Return" address. Spammers are generally clever enough to forge the "From" address either to a fake address or an innocent victim, so a simple reply will not work.
Below is a list of popular different email clients and how to view header information in each one.
The header allows the message to be traced from its origin to destination. Each computer that the message passes through will attach identifying information in a "Recieved"
line, such as where the mail came from, the machines name, date, and time the mail passed through it. There can be one "Received" line or there can be many, the newest one is
always placed on top. Since newer
headers are placed on top, the first 'Received' line will usually show the message origin. Take a look at the sample header below:
Once you look at the header and get the address of the server that the email originated from, you can mail a complaint to the
server to let them know that one of their users is spamming. Please remember that most Networks including Avalon Networks, Inc. have a strict no spamming policy and the
spammer is at fault, not the Network Administrator.
Most networks reserve the Abuse and Postmaster addresses for e-mail problems. Each network will usually list their complaint address someplace on their Web site.
If you are not sure, send your complaint to Postmaster.
Every network has its own policies regarding spam and how to treat spammers. Some networks have set a magic number, say 20, and if anyone sends out 20 or more of the same
message they may be considered a spammer. Other groups consider spam to be any electronic junk mail, bulk email or junk newsgroup postings including any unsolicited email
and most email advertising for some product or service sent to a mailing list or newsgroup. Other networks don't bother to track numbers of emails but consider a user to be
a spammer any time the network receives a complaint about unwanted email.
Avalon Networks, Inc. will not tolerate spam. We strive to protect our users the best that we can from unwanted email. We want to provide the best service possible which
means we can not allow spammers to eat up our bandwidth with spam mail. If you have any questions about what is acceptable please contact us. We will not hesitate to terminate any account found to be sending out unwanted spam mail.
Copyright © 1998, Avalon Networks