War on SPAM!

SPAM (Self Propelled Advertising Material) is per def. e-mail or usenet advertisement posted, or mailed without the approval of the receipients, usually to a large number of people or usenet groups at the same time. They can contain anything from adds for harmless products such as books and software, but may also contain adds for pornographic material, illegal products, or illegal pyramid-schemes.

This is annoying, takes up a lot of bandwidth, and is in some cases even illegal. So why do we have to put up with it?! The answer is - we don't! Here are a few "dos and don'ts", and some links to resources that can help you further.

Help fight spam on the Internet NOW!

What to do and what not to do

• Don't just ignore them - fight back!
• Replying to a spam e-mail rarely works right away. Professional spammers will never use their own address in the reply-to field. You will have to view the entire e-mail header to get the domain from which the email was sent.
• Write a message to the spammers administrator, usually "[email protected]" or something similar. Include excerpts from the message, along with the complete e-mail header.
• Make yourself a spam-filter. See the links below to find out how.
• Report illegal spams, such as pyramid-schemes etc., to the proper authorities. See the links below for some of those.

Useful links

• The Anti-Spam homepage
• Fight Spam on the Internet
• CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Email)
• Master list of known spammers
• Master list of domains known to host spammers