[HCRA] SPAM

Sat, 26 Apr 2003 12:22:55 -0400

Greetings!

The May QST (you ARE all ARRL members, right?) has an informative
article on SPAM: "You've Got . . . Spam!" on page 42. It's worth a look.
I'm not sure which "ARRL Reflector" Peter's referring to--perhaps the
ARRL E-Mail Forwarding Service (<call sign>@arrl.net addresses), but the
League does not sell anyone's e-mail address. If your <call
sign>@arrl.net e-mail address is out there on a news group or a personal
Web site or other vulnerable location, the fact of life is that it may
be harvested by spambots. 

Also, if you have a program that includes an auto-reply feature (such as
the "Out of Office Assistant" in Microsoft Outlook), keep in mind that
the program then will reply to ALL e-mail the first time it's received
from a particular sender. This unintended consequence of an otherwise
helpful feature tells the spammers that your e-mail address is "live"
and could even suggest that you're interested in what they've got to
offer--thus prompting even more SPAM. (This happens at work all the
time.)

A problem with some filtering software and services is that these also
can block e-mail that you actually WANT to receive. We've even had
complaints from our ARRL members that The ARRL Letter has been blocked
by SPAM-filtering software they or their ISP has installed. 

I've found Earthlink to be pretty clean of SPAM, and most of the SPAM to
my personal account is forwarded from another small, regional ISP on
which I have an account and a Web site. On the other hand, I would
estimate that two-thirds of my e-mail at ARRL HQ is SPAM, because my
work e-mail address is all over the Internet and on our Web site. 

There is beta-version software available (SpamNet1.0Beta7e.exe) that
takes items that appear to be SPAM and stick them into a separate folder
for later perusal (just in case something you want slips by). I
understand it works pretty well, although I have not tried it, and I
couldn't tell you where to download a copy.

73, Rick N1RL

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Peter Beauregard
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2003 3:35 PM
To: HCRA
Subject: [HCRA] SPAM

______________________________________________
-------Hampden County Radio Association------- -----------e-mail list
(reflector)------------- ______________________________________________
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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

------Hampden County Radio Association-------
An ARRL Special Services Club for over 50 years
------------http://www.hcra.org------------
________________________________________________________

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Address any comments to:
-Jim, KK1W  -  [email protected]
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