How to Avoid Spam (Part 9 of 10) - Hunt down and kill all spammers (metaphorically)

Hunt down and kill all spammers (metaphorically)
So, you've got spam, what now? Optimally, you could report spam email to their ISP or the web cops, and they would be stopped. And killed. Metaphorically. Of course, many providers don't care about complaints, and the majority of spam is sent from zombie computers that have been hijacked. If it's from a legitimate company, you can follow their removal policy, I've had mostly good luck with that, I'm not including unwanted emails from legitimate companies in the list of spammers who MUST DIE (metaphorically).

You can send a copy of the spam email to your ISP's abuse contact, usually the email address is abuse@yourispname.com or postmaster@yourispname.com. Make sure to include a copy of the spam, along with the full email header. At the top of the message, let them know that you're complaining spam email. You can complain to the sender's ISP, if you can find out where it really came from. Run-of-the-mill spam won't usually get much run from these guys, though, unless the emails are blatently illegal, abusive, harassing, threatening, etc..

A large number of spam emails are already illegal, of course, amounting to confidence tricks or illegal selling of prescription drugs. You can report spam messages to the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC):

Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email.

Let the FTC know if a "remove me" request is not honored. If you want to complain about a removal link that doesn't work or not being able to unsubcribe from a list, you can fill out the FTC's online complaint form at www.ftc.gov. Your complaint will be added to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel database and made available to hundreds of law enforcement and consumer protection agencies.

Whenever you complain about spam, it's important to include the full email header. The information in the header makes it possible for consumer protection agencies to follow up on your complaint.

Or you can report Make Money Fast schemes to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) at net-abuse@nocs.insp.irs.gov. Mail sent to this address will be forwarded to the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for appropriate action (I could not confirm this on the IRS website, so proceed at your own risk). The University of Oregon maintains this site that lists other governmental agencies' addresses for reporting spam.

One of the problems is that the spammer is difficult to track down, and when you do, he or his servers may be outside of the US, making prosecution impossible. Because the Internet is a free resource, there are bound to be people who abuse that resource. Regulation can't help because there aren't any regulations on the Internet; who's jurisdiction would it be, after all? So all we can hope for is to catch the incompetent spammers, and try to avoid the rest. Photo courtesy of Native Forest

See tomorrow's posting for Part 10 of How to Avoid Spam.

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