[KYHAM] ARRL is not a source of SPAM

[David A. Smith]

Dear KY Ham,

There are a lot of false rumors concerning the ARRL Member E-Mail forwarding
service.  In a Bulletin from this fine service dated November 1, 2003 the
Kentucky ARRL Section Traffic Manager stated that he was dropping The free
ARRL service because of Spam.

As an ARRL life member and ham of decades of public service within the
Michigan Section and Great Lakes Division, I use the mail forwarding service
with pride. The following can be found at
http://www.arrl.org/announce/spam.html and clearly states the policy ARRL
follows and why we get Spam.

73 de W8YZ
W8YZ@arrl.net <mailto:W8YZ@arrl.net>


Frequently Asked Questions About SPAM and ARRL.NET Email Accounts

What is SPAM?

SPAM is also known as "Unsolicited Commercial Email." It is email sent to
you without your permission that offers to sell you something, asks for
donations or tries to involve you in get-rich-quick schemes.
Usually, SPAM is bulk-mailed to hundreds or thousands of email users.

Does ARRL provide my arrl.net address to SPAMmers?

No. ARRL does not publish or provide email addresses to any third party.
How did the SPAM sender get my email address?
They use "spambots," software programs that search Web pages, newsgroups and
mailing lists automatically extracting email addresses. If your arrl.net
address appears anywhere on the Internet, you will almost certainly get
SPAM.

I'm sure my address isn't listed anywhere on the Internet, so the SPAMmers
must have broken into your server!

No, they didn't. There are many arrl.net users whose arrl.net addresses have
been in the system since its beginning who have never had any SPAM sent to
their arrl.net address. Check for your address on the Internet search
engines, such as Google (http://www.google.com/). Enter your full arrl.net
address in
their search boxes and see what you get. Try several different search
engines. Try Google's newsgroup search (http://groups.google.com/). If they
can find your address, the SPAMmers can, too.
Also, since it costs them essentially nothing to send the SPAM messages,
some SPAMmers just generate addresses at random. If only a few get delivered
anywhere, the SPAMmers figure they're still coming out  ahead.

Why did I receive a SPAM message that wasn't even addressed to me?

The "To" line of a message actually has nothing to do with where the message
gets delivered. That's why
a message with your arrl.net address in the "To" line can get delivered to
your home mailbox.
Unfortunately, SPAMmers take advantage of that feature of Internet email to
put deceptive addresses in
the "To" field. The actual delivery address is transferred between Internet
mail systems in an "envelope,"
and it is the envelope address that specifies where the message gets
delivered, not the "To" line of the
message. (It's as though you sent someone a letter via the Post Office with
one name and address on the
envelope and a different one on the letter. Looking at the letter wouldn't
tell anyone what the envelope
said.)

Some Internet mail servers add the actual recipient address (from the
"envelope") to the header lines of the message when they relay it. Most
mail-reading programs don't normally display those header lines
but do have some means of doing so. Check the help file for your mail
program to find out how to display all headers.

Why are people telling me I'm sending SPAM from my arrl.net address? I'm
not!

Just like the "To" line, the "From" line need not contain the actual address
of the sending party. So, in order to make people want to open the SPAM
messages they receive, the SPAMmers use made-up "From" addresses, or
addresses from their mailing lists. If the SPAMmer uses your address in the
"From"
field, it looks to the person receiving the message as though it came from
you. (Again, there's a postal analogy: Someone could send a letter
purporting to be from you and with your return address on it. Until the
recipent contacts you, they have no way of knowing the letter is not from
you.)

Is there nothing ARRL can do to stop the SPAM?

There is nothing that will be 100% effective at stopping SPAM while allowing
all legitimate messages to come through. We continue to investigate possible
approaches to improving the situation.

Can I do anything?

Here are a few Web sites you can check that list means of fighting SPAM:

http://www.cauce.org/about/resources.shtml

http://spam.abuse.net/userhelp/

http://spamcop.net/

http://www.mailwasher.net/



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