TIPS ABOUT REDUCING SPAM, ABOUT SPAM BOTS AND VIEWING THE INTERNET HEADER

SPAMMING

Spam is 99.99% NEVER where you think it's from. If you get spam from a "J0hnny·b1ogggs@·yahoo.c0m" then you can bet (99.99%) it's not from John! Spammers are very cunning. They will forge anything and everything, whenever and wherever possible, so please don't send "John" an email outlining your discontent because his address has probably been "harvested" and used to spread spam together with many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of other email addresses because the spammers want their spam to arrive in your inbox safely without being intercepted and it's a quick and easy way to hide the origin of an email at first glance. The same spam email can be distributed with hundreds of different, yet completely innocent "senders".

Spammers don't usually want you to contact them directly (Scammers do, so be wary). Spammers would rather you contact a website somewhere.

For example:

A spam email from "best-wild-flowers-to-collect-and-dry@yahoo.etc." Do you really think it comes from them? Absolutely, NO WAY! You sometimes get spam email addressed from yourself so why exactly is that? - it's another spammers' trick to circumvent spam filtering!

SPAMBOTS AND VIRUSES

Know that there are "spambots" out there that crawl the web and collect or "harvest" any email address from any website or mail server to which they can gain access. Viruses may secretly access your computer's email address book and distribute the contents whilst you are on-line unless you have taken preventative measures and installed software and properly configured your system to prevent that from happening.

For example: "spambots" may eventually crawl this page and detect the email addresses I have used in my examples above and thus try and "harvest" them, but in this instance, they are unlikely to succeed without human intervention because the addresses are utter garbage (and they don't exist).

Sure, you can buy and install some great anti-spam programs, but how many times do you feel the need to go back and check each reported spam email to make absolutely sure they are not genuine emails? Find an ISP (Internet Service Provider) with a passion for fighting spam. They will often offer a programme that eliminates spam at their end (when it arrives at their email server) before it gets forwarded to your inbox.

And ask that ISP if they offer the facility to create a spam blocking list for your email account which you can edit? Depending on your level of technical knowledge, you need to be able to block IP addresses as well as domain names because spammers very rarely make their domain name known or simply forge it. You might be tempted to try and block, for example, www.the-m0st-fanatstic-kitchens-you-wi11-ever-want-to-·find.c0m but that is NOT where the spam comes from, so the spammers will still get through to your inbox with another bogus alias! Think about it, why would a kitchen company send you spam?

CAUTION!
A word of caution about blocking IP addresses - you have to be totally (101%) convinced that you have correctly identified a particular IP address as behaving badly because you would not wish to block your own ISP or the IP address of an innocent mail server doing it's job. This would result in you not getting the mail that you should be getting and if you make that mistake often enough and keep adding innocent IP addresses to your blocking list, then nothing at all will get through - meaning, no email whatsoever!

Good ISP's will subscribe to companies that identify the origins of spam and use that information proactively. They will set their own anti-spam filters to prevent the majority of spam reaching its destination (you). Identifying and filtering all spam before it gets to you can be a tricky task. ISP's don't want to inadvertently block (your) legitimate emails, so much care is taken when they do implement measures to control spam.

The spammer's true origin is there for sure but it is concealed in the e-mail's Internet Headers and often, forged IP addresses are added to confuse the issue even further. You just need to be technical enough to interpret the Internet Headers to identify it, it's not too difficult once you get the hang of it but you need to be dedicated and spend time acquiring the "knowledge".

Think of a normal letter posted to me from say, Newcastle and every time it changed hands it was date stamped and signed by the person handling it. It is that information that is contained in an email Internet Header.

VIEWING THE INTERNET HEADER

For example, in Outlook, with the message closed (not opened) right-click on the message and select [OPTIONS]. To copy it, right-click within the text and then select [SELECT ALL] then right click again and select [COPY] - it's now on your clipboard and you can paste it where you like. Don't forget that it will never be obvious who sent the spam.

It can pass through several servers across the World who will "stamp" it before it reaches your ISP but spam is NEVER (99.9999%) from the person on the "From:" line so sending a spam report only to that ISP may be ineffective because the message did not originate from their network. In certain circumstances, there are a ISP's who would like to know about your spam message regardless of where the spam originated as shown in the example below. Lastly, don't forget that your own ISP will have handled the mail so expect to find their IP number and name in the header.

Numbers in square brackets for example [123.456.78.90] are worth checking - for example, if it is preceded with Received: from [123.456.78.90] then start with that number. Numbers or names on their own, or anything in round brackets ( ) without integral square brackets [ ] could be a red herring! For example, this is valid ([123.456.78.90]) but this 123.456.78.90 or this (123.456.78.90) or this (helo=loadofcobblers.net) could be forged and therefore unreliable to determine the true origin of the email and therefore the corresponding network provider to send your spam report to. All internet headers are slightly different depending on who sent them and from where. Try looking at a genuine email internet header and comparing it with a spam internet header and you may notice subtle differences.

If you have read somewhere that there is little point in sending a spam report to your own ISP if the message did not originate from them because they only investigate spam from their own subscribers... that is true, simply because they don't have access to a suspected spammer's account details at another ISP, but they still want to know about spam received by their customers (you) and which network is sending it out, so you should still report it even if they are unable to investigate it personally, especially if somebody is trying to trick you (a scam) or you get a particularly vile spam or phishing email.

Some ISP's will want to know if you receive a spam with their company mentioned anywhere in the text or body of the email even though it does not originate from them. For example, here is a reply to a spam report sent to Yahoo:

"Although it does not appear that this message originated from the Yahoo! Mail system, there is a "@yahoo.co.uk" address within the message or message headers and we believe that this account is being used in connection with the unwanted email message. Consequently, we have taken appropriate action against this account as per the Yahoo! Terms of Service (TOS)."