[HCRA] SPAM

[Peter Beauregard]

Hi Gang,

Great lunch at brown bagger's today.  I enjoyed the conversation and 
good food.  I look forward to the summer when I can join more often.


During the discussion, I detected that many people have been having 
problems with unsolicited SPAM.  I got an interesting reply from an 
email I sent to abuse@earthlink.net which I would like to share with the 
group.  The solution to ridding your email account of unsolicited SPAM 
is not easy as I have been reading in the site that I was encouraged to 
visit but persistence will probably reduce it greatly.  For those of you 
at wits' end because of the frequency of SPAM into your email account, 
the time investment may be worth it.  The major SPAM that I am trying to 
combat are the ones from the ARRL reflector that offer to put millions 
into my bank account as the result of trying to save some poor deceased 
relative's estate or advertisements for some pills that I don't need or 
would never take because my body is still functioning relatively well at 
my age and everything is the correct size for me presently.  If you have 
been on the web long enough, you are probably plagued with this kind of 
SPAM as well.  At any rate, for some on the list, it should make an 
interesting read.  


The most interesting information that I have found so far is at the site 
http://spamcop.net as noted below.  Many explanations about the details 
of the various types of SPAM and their origin.


Good luck in your SPAM fighting experiences!


Begin partial message from abuse@earthlink.net

SNIP

It would appear from an automated check of your message that
the mail you are reporting did not originate from EarthLink
or our associated networks.  Junk e-mailers will often
attempt to hide their true identities behind false e-mail
addresses and other types of forgeries.  In general, the
numeric IP address within the reported mail's headers are a
much better indication of the mail's true origins.
 
This report is being returned to you because there appear to
be no numeric IP addresses in the headers of the reported
mail that match IP addresses within our network.  This means
that the mail likely did not originate with us, and
therefore we cannot enforce our policies on the junk
e-mailer.

Advertising a website hosted on the EarthLink network(s) via
junk e-mail is also a violation of our policies, but our
pre-processing system sometimes has difficulty in
recognizing such reports.  If you are reporting such a
website, please read the remainder of this message for
resubmission instructions.

Due to the variety of reporting formats we receive,
it is possible that our automated preprocessing has
misidentified your report. We strongly encourage the use
of SpamCop <http://spamcop.net/>, a spam reporting service
which uses a standardized format that allows us to quickly
identify your report, and will also help insure that your
complaint reaches the appropriate party.

It is unfortunately easy to forge a domain name in a return
address.  If you are reporting a junk e-mail based solely on
the return address, please take a moment to review the
following links:

To learn how to report spam so action is taken:
<http://spam.abuse.net/userhelp/howtocomplain.shtml>

To learn how to locate e-mail headers in your e-mail client:
<http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/extended.htm>

To learn how to interpret e-mail headers:  
<http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/>

To investigate the owners of a numeric IP address:
<http://www.arin.net/>

To investigate the owners of a domain name:
<http://www.internic.net/>

Other useful lookup tools:
<http://samspade.org/>

[ Arin.net, internic.net, samspade.org and abuse.net are not
directly affiliated with Earthlink, they are external
resources with which we believe provide useful information
to people reporting spam and abuse. ]

SNIP

End partial message from abuse@earthlink.net