THE PROBLEM:

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Maybe you've heard that spammers can send millions of emails and only need 1 or 2 responses to be profitable.
The same goes for you,
They only need you to respond to one, to reward them for the thousands they sent to you.

QUICK FIXES
Forward your spam to: SPAM@UCE.GOV
Report actual losses at  http://www.ftc.gov
Avoid Harvesting  http://www.junkbusters.com/harvesting.html
Learn to use the filter built into your email program.

TOOLS
SPAM@UCE.GOV  forward your spam to the FTC for their research.  .
SpamCop reporting service

MORE INFO:
 http://www.ftc.gov/spam
Anti-spam Recorses at PrivacyRights.org
FTC spam links page
Spam page at EFF  .
JunkBusters.com  - spam page
None-o-your.biz  links page
 

stolen from PC mag  8/17/2004 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1625241,00.asp            To avoid attacks using HTML code,        view your messages as plain text.                In Microsoft Outlook 2003, select Options from the Tools menu,                click on the E-Mail Options button, and check the box titled Read all                standard mail in plain text.                In Microsoft Outlook Express 6, select Tools | Options, click on the                Read tab, and check the box titled Read all messages as plain text.                Viewing the source code isn't any safer than                reading the message as plain text, but if the idea                intrigues you, here's how. In Outlook Express 6,                right-click on the message subject in the Inbox,                choose Properties, click on the Details tab, and                click on the Message Source button. In Outlook                2003, you can simply right-click in the message                body and choose View Source. The header data will be displayed                separately. To see it, right-click on the message subject in the Inbox and                choose Options.

 

Where spam comes from    -  stolen from BBC news  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2969783.stm For anyone plagued by junk e-mails, the question that often baffles most is how did the spammers get your address. US researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology set out to answer this question in the summer of 2002.  They found that e-mail addresses posted on websites or in newsgroups attract the most spam.  Spam is estimated to account for up to 40% of global e-mail traffic and is causing a massive headache for businesses, which are losing billions in productivity.  E-mails on the web To determine the source of spam, the researchers set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses and waiting six months to see what kind of mail the addresses were attracting.  For the purposes of the study, researchers posted e-mail addresses on websites and newsgroups.  They also provided e-mail addresses in response to services on popular websites such as auction site eBay and e-commerce favourite Amazon.  E-mail addresses were also sent to websites in response to jobs, auctions and discussion boards.  Finally researchers posted addresses in the Whois database of information about the owners of domain names.  Evasive techniques The researchers found that spammers used harvesting programs such as robots and spiders to record e-mail addresses listed on both personal and corporate websites.  One way of avoiding this mail-harvesting, said the team, is to replace characters in an e-mail address with human-readable equivalents - for example john@domain.com would become john at domain dot com.  Another successful evasion technique is to replace the characters in an e-mail address with the HTML equivalent.  None of the project's addresses written in human-readable formats or HTML received a single piece of spam.  Over the course of the six-month study, the researchers received over 10,000 e-mail messages to the 250 e-mail addresses they had created.  Only about 1,600 of these were legitimate e-mails.  Over 97% of the spam was sent to addresses that had been posted on public websites.  The number of messages received was linked to the popularity of the website. Organisations linked to major portals such as AOL and Yahoo received a lot more spam than those without links.  AOL is currently waging its own war on spammers, recently launching over a dozen lawsuits against individuals and companies it claims is sending unsolicited mail to its members.  Opting out The research also looked at whether websites respected consumer attempts to opt out of receiving commercial e-mail.  In all cases where researchers asked not to receive commercial e-mails, their wishes were respected.  Opting out of e-mail communications further down the line also resulted in the majority of websites complying with the request.  The study found that most web companies did not share or sell e-mail addresses to third parties.  Just 25 spam messages were received as a result of inappropriate sharing or selling of e-mail addresses, and most of these were from gambling and adult-content related websites.  Scatter gun approach At one point during the study, the system began receiving spam messages to addresses that had never been used for any purpose or submitted to anyone.  Such brute force attacks, in which spammers attempt to send e-mails to every possible combination of letters that could form an e-mail address, are relatively common.  The system received over 8,000 brute force e-mails before a block was installed.  These messages were not included in the final data.

 

SPAM RAGE stolen from:  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/031121/80/eemvv.html Saturday November 22, 2003   04:46 AM        Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad        By Adam Tanner        SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been        arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his        computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.        In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made "road rage" famous, Charles        Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on bail for making repeated threats to staff of a        Canadian company between May and July.        Booher threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the company, to "disable" an        employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate        the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.        He used return e-mail addresses including Satan@hell.org.        In a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday, Booher acknowledged that he had behaved badly        but said his computer had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of        pop-up advertising and e-mail.        "Here's what happened: I go to their Web site and start complaining to them, would you please,        please, please stop bothering me," he said. "It just sort of escalated ... and I sort of lost my cool at        that point."        The Sunnyvale, California man now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, with a        preliminary hearing scheduled for next month on charges of threatening to injure someone. He said        he did not own any guns or have access to anthrax.        Booher said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that        brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.        The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management,        which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis        Enhancement."        "This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this," Mackay said from Victoria,        British Columbia in Canada. "He seemed like a guy just crazy enough with nothing to lose that        might actually do something."        He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their        unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad        name to the penis enhancement business.        In other cases, Internet vigilantes have bombarded spammers with both unsolicited e-mail and        regular mail and phone calls, launched attacks on spammers' computers and posted spammers'        personal information on the Internet, according to reports.        Separately, lawmakers in Washington said the U.S. House of Representatives was poised to vote        for on a measure to outlaw most Internet spam. Lawmakers hope to pass a national anti-spam bill        before a much tougher California state law goes into effect on January 1.

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