Fighting the never ending tide of spam mail can turn into a very
frustrating experience if you don't know the real tricks of the
trade. After all, there's a whole lot more to it than simply responding
to a (usually bogus) From: address with a peevish complaint!
Here's a fairly extensive overview of resources that will aid
you in effectively combatting unsolicited email, showing you the
possibilities (and, alas, the limits!) of your endeavor.
General resources
The Spamhaus Project features a database tracks known Spam Gangs,
Spam Support Services and the providers who keep organized spamming
alive by knowingly hosting stealth spamming services on their
networks. An extensive set of databases allows for tracking of
established spam outfits, including statistics, etc. http://www.spamhaus.org/
Look up this list of established spambots: http://mosa.unity.ncsu.edu/brabec/antispam.html
Resources for header reading are listed at the Forum for Responsible
and Ethical E-mail (some broken links, though): http://www.spamfree.org/resources/header_reading.html
Some spambot harrassment programs are listed here: http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/harassment.html
Spam.abuse.net calls for spam boycots and offers lots of information
an spam prevention legislation, and more. http://spam.abuse.net/
Read their useful guide titled "How To Complain To The Spammer's
Provider" at: http://spam.abuse.net/howtocomplain.html
Mail forwarding services
Protect your mail box with disposable email addresses by signing
up with Sneakemail: this service forwards everything to your regular
box without disclosing your real address. If you find your Sneakemail
address is being abused, you can simply delete it. Plus, it will
help you track down businesses that flog your address to third
party marketers. Neat. http://sneakemail.com/
Free email forwarding claiming to sport the net's best anti-spam
filters can be found at Despammed.com. Basically, it works as
a remote spam filter. (That's why they term themselves a "mail
filtration service".) http://www.despammed.com/
Spamex takes a similar approach, offering disposable email addresses
as a measure to counter spam. It doesn't bother with sophisticated
spam filters, though - the minute your Spamex address receives
spam, simply nuke it and get a new one. You can also fit their
log in box link into your web browser's links bar for facilitated
access. Their slogan is noteworthy, too: "Because Sending
You Email is a Privilege Not a Right!" http://www.spamex.com/
One of the best known anti-spam forwarders is Spammotel (what
a name!) which also offers a pretty sophisticated, award winning
plug-in for your email client, allowing you to keep track of whom
you have given which email address of yours. This, of course,
makes it dead easy to test web sites' privacy policy. Moreover,
it makes for a great tool to help you organize the e-mail you
actually do want to receive. (Windows only.) http://www.spammotel.com/
Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC offers a commercial spam protection
forwarding service at: https://stop.mail-abuse.org/
Spam filters
Webmasters running their own mail server may be interested in
The MAPS Relay Spam Stopper, a queryable DNS-based database of
spam-relaying mail servers. You can configure your server to utilize
their list if you want to refuse mail from these types of servers.
http://work-rss.mail-abuse.org/rss/
The same site offers the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL). This
is a system for creating intentional network outages ("blackholes")
for the purpose of limiting the transport of known-to-be-unwanted
mass e-mail. The RBL is a subscription-only system, working in
such a manner that no one is denied connectivity to a non-RBLSM-subscriber.
http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/
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Spam Filtering Software
Mail Washer a POP3 email filter: http://www.mailwasher.net/
McAfee Spam Killer, Block emails using both lists and preset filters
Filters MSN/Hotmail, POP3 and MAPI email: http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/msk/default.asp
GarbageMan, a spam filter for AOL: http://www.waveop.com/garbageman/
Spam Inspector/formerly Postal Inspector: http://www.giantcompany.com/
Mail Shield - Formerly SpamDetective is an utility that assists
you with your email. It periodically checks one or multiple email
accounts (POP3, IMAP4, MAPI and hotmail) they offer a personal
version as well as a workgroup & server versions: http://www.lyris.com/products/mailshield/
InBox Protector - a Microsoft Outlook Express add-on.
http://www.gbs-design.com/InboxProtector/
GuardMail will check for e-mail messages on your mail server and
notify you when new mail has arrived. It can filter out spam mail,
detect messages from friends and messages from people you place
on a blacklist. You only download the emails you want! GuardMail
has over 1000 filters you can implement to fight against spam
email. It can also keep your internet connection 'alive' in circumstances
where your internet service provider disconnects you after a period
of inactivity: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/csoft/
SolidBlue Spam Interceptor An email filtering toolkit for the
home and office. Comes with 3 filters in the Lite version, a Trash
bin to ensure messages are never lost and Proxy functionality.
Registration provides access to a unique Authentication Service
- that ensures emails are not sent by automated systems: http://www.solidblue.biz/main.php?section=welcome
Reporting spam
This spam complaint primer spells it all out as it is and offers
a sample complaint covering every important aspect of reporting
spam to get spammers' accounts and web sites terminated. http://combat.uxn.com/tracing.html
The all-time classic to report spam to is the not-for-profit
Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC. http://mail-abuse.org/
The Network Abuse Clearinghouse is a complaint service that will
forward your spam complaints to the culprits flooding your mail
box. http://www.abuse.net/
The MMF Hall of Humiliation takes the approach of ridicule to
combat spammers. Lots of parodies and spoofs of obnoxious unsolicited
commercial emails, and more. Still, it has a very serious background,
informing in detail about fraud indictments and offering rudimentary
legal analysis of spam scams. http://ga.to/mmf/
This site offers monthly case studies of reporting spam and lists
successes. You'll see that while it's quite an uphill battle,
it can be done. http://www.obliquity.com/computer/spambait/
Reporting Tools
Some abuse reporting tools are listed here: http://www.abuse.net/tools.html
As for anything on the net, there's a fitting mailing list available
for people interested in software tools that detect and process
unsolicited bulk e-mail: http://www.abuse.net/spamtools.html
Proactive Strategies
UXN Spam Combat offers a nice one-page form aggregating all the
tools you need to solve the spam problem, ranging from NSlookup
and Trace Routing to Pings, decoding of obfuscated web URLs, etc.
Very useful. http://combat.uxn.com/
Uni-encoding the email addresses displayed on your web site is
still a very efficient method of thwaring email address harvesters
or extractor bots: http://fantomaster.com/famshield0.html
This page offers you tools to "poison" the spambots
with by feeding them tons of invalid email addresses. While this
admittedly places some strain on bandwidth and system resources,
it's also pretty easy to crash a spammer's system this way - ah,
sweet revenge! http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip2.html
Many spammers are now offering their pathetic wares not via the
internet but offline, preferably using toll free numbers. This
article outlines a strategy on where and how to hit them hard
- in their pockets! http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip3.html
Probably the most effective method of prevention is blocking
spammers and their harvester bots from your web site altogether.
This tip expounds the strategy to pursue. < http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip4.html
>
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) is
an international organization promoting anti-spam legislation.
http://www.cauce.org/
They also publish "True Tales of Spam" here, where you
may see your own story featured some day if you wish tp submit
it: < http://www.cauce.org/tales/index.shtml >
Fighting spam with procmail under Unix is discussed in detail
here: http://www.itworld.com/App/354/lw-03-geek_1/
The Mega Zine SpamScript software generates tons of bogus email
addresses on the fly to feed (and crash!) spambot systems with.
http://www.mega-zine.com/spamscript.html
For people who can't run CGI on their systems, here's a remotely
hosted version of the spam script: http://www.softham.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/spam_bots.htm
Tips on how to lure in spambots to special, "poisoned"
sections of your site while keeping away innocent visitors can
be found here: http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/lure.html
Articles
Steven Champeon, Save Your Site from Spambots. Techniques to Prevent
Address Scraping http://webtechniques.com/archives/2001/08/champeon/
Spambot Fighting site: http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/
Humor
As a comic aside, spam haikus (some more, some less witty) are
featured by the chockfull here: http://www.mmfhoh.org/mmf/haiku.html
Finally, yours truly's "Spam Sonnet" is offered as
an educative example of what spam can inflict on the sensitive
artistic mind ... http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip5.html
This text may freely be republished or distributed provided the
following resource box is included intact either at the beginning
or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link)
is sent to the author at the address specified below:
Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com
Ltd. (UK) and fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), http://fantomaster.com/
a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength
cloaking and search engine positioning services. He has been a
web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews,
a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available
at: http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html
You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2001 by fantomaster.com
All rights reserved.
Downloaded at: < http://fantomaster.com/ >
Additional Info on Spamming
If you are concerned about spamming we have some excellent information
resources geared toward the web master or site owner.
Laws & Regulations Against Spam
Email Marketing Ethics
and Spam Reporting
How do spammers get people's email
addresses?
Spam Fighter's Toolkit
Top 10 Ways To Legitimately Ask For
Your
Visitor's Contact Info
How to Protect Web Site Email Addresses
From Harvesters and Spammers
How and Where to Report Spam Abuse
Fight Guest Book and Public Forum
Spam!
Ethical Marketing Tips
& Info
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