User:202.72.138.185

Why am I getting spam?

Because the rewards are so high for the people who send them. "You can't fool all of the people all of the time.." etc.

There have been notable attempts to reduce this return rate of affiliate spam, but they've generally been hamstrung when they get too close to being workable.

blue frog is one such attempt, that died under a controversial Denial of Service attack.

Basically, in attempt to notify their users about the dos attack, they pointed the domain at their blog at sixapart's servers, which made the dos attack shift to sixapart. After that crashed, they realised what was going on and pointed the dns at 127.0.0.1? which i think refers to local host. this meant that the bots would attack themselves.

Another controversial spam avoiding program is spamitback.com, which uses some dodgy tactics that spammers themselves have used.

What can I do about it?

You can visit siteadvisor.com A website run by a commercial company, that rates websites based on their business practices - There's a lot of useful information posted by users that have been dealing with various types of spam-gangs.


Research the spam laws in your state. If you are in the same country as the spammer, you have a greater chance of causing them trouble, but only if they can be identified, and only if your countries laws have a clear definition of what spam is. The can spam act has been widely criticized.

Catchall Email addresses

I have a catch-all email address that receives several spam email as default email addresses - these are the result of a spammer sending out emails with my domain as a return email address - this happens more often when they detect a catchall email, and results in massive amounts of backscatter. I beleive that it's very important to deal with this as it tarnishes your reputation, and makes you appear to be an accomplice to the spam.

- You can submit bounced spam to spamcop
- you can submit the original spam to 
- you can visit the spammer's site and try to find a way of communicating that you don't like their using your name
- you can change your sender id policy to exclude all other domains - this will result in a lot more of the spammer's email not reaching it's intended recipient.

Bascially, using your domain as a return address consitutes an email denial of service attack against your servers - when they are too busy processing spam to recover from all of the spam received.

How can I tell if it's spam

(For Australian users)

To comply with Australia's spam laws, a commercial electronic message must meet the following conditions. Any message sent to you that doesn't meet all three of these conditions is defined as spam: * Consent– it must be sent with your consent. You may give express consent, or consent may be inferred from your conduct and 'existing business or other relationships' * Identify– it must contain accurate information about the person or organization that authorized the sending of the message * Unsubscribe– it must contain a functional 'unsubscribe' facility to allow you to opt out from receiving messages from that source in the future A spam message is not necessarily sent out in 'bulk' to numerous addresses – under Australian law, a single electronic message can also be considered spam. Exemptions Electronic messages from certain sources are exempted from the legislation. These include messages from: * government bodies * registered political parties * charities * religious organizations * educational institutions (sent to attending and former students and their households). To be exempted, the message must relate to goods or services and the sender must be the supplier of those goods or services. Purely factual messages with no commercial content are also exempted, but the sender must still include accurate identifying information.

ACMA - Consumer information


What not to do

Don't curse, flame or post abusive language about the spammer -

If you want to post abusive rants about spammers, Do it on your personal website/blog but be prepared to:

A) Back up your claims. B) Be accused of lying. C) Be lied to constantly. D) Not achieve anything.

Simply state that you appear to have received an email from the domain on that domain's about us page.

Don't add the domains linked to in the spam to the "related domains" page unless you are 100% sure they are related.

It could be that the domain was using forged headers, and simply faked being from the domain you believed to be from, If the domain is a large, respected company, that company's lawyers will be able to deal with the problem. Look for any links to deal with email abuse etc, and tell them links contained in the email, and ask them if they'd like a copy of the email sent to them

Related Domains

Domains can be related by many means.

Links on the front page/terms of service pages can sometimes be useful indicators and by host physical location/Ip address is also useful information.

WordMashSpam

if you have received a spam that resulted in even more mailings when you clicked unsubscribe, From domain names that were simple common word mash ups such as

basketballroast shieldlazer.com weldingthread.com

send email to )

I am not a source of spam, but you still shouldn't take my word for it.

To send email anonymously, you can sign up for an email at gmail.com or yahoo.com, and send the email with all codes that might identify your address removed.

I can't stop you from getting email, but i'm trying to build a list of the domains that seem to be under the control of one spam-gang. (They appear less dangerous than some spam gangs, though)

202.72.138.185 02:08, 24 May 2007 (PDT)