terrorist spammers 22 september, 2001 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

Is it possible to eliminate spam? Conventional wisdom says the answer is 'no', and perhaps conventional wisdom is correct. Perhaps spam is simply the price we pay for using the Internet. Yet, it was the recent events at the WTC that have changed my perspective on spam. Much like President Bush saying we will not stand for terrorism, some of us are saying we are not going to accept spam, either. In some similarity to Bush's statements, we can say anything we want, but it is the actions that will define these wars. I am happy to report that I personally believe America's war on terrorism should be and will be more successful than any war on spam. However, if you are sick of spam, this story should give you the tools necessary to eliminate at least 90 percent of it.

First, let me explain why I am so quick to compare spammers to the pieces of you-know-what responsible for the attack on our country:

I manage over twenty separate email addresses, all of which spill into my single inbox in Outlook through an Exchange Server. Nearly every email address I have had since my first one in 1994 continues to forward into my current accounts. I do this in case an old friend tries to email my old address, which happens with some frequency. In addition, because I have a number of articles out in Cyberspace that have my email address attached to them, I would hate for someone flaming an article six years old to not reach the intended recipient.

As you might guess, email addresses that are seven years old have a tendency to collect a lot of spam. In fact, I counted one days worth of spam about a month ago (a typical day), and my combined collection was 143 separate spam messages. Yes - that was a single day. How could I survive with that many bad messages? Well, when there are that many, it actually is pretty easy to delete them a group at a time. Instead of deleting one or two bad messages, I deleted dozens at a time to get to the few dozen good messages. It did present me with the constant dilemma that if I did not check my email every few hours, I knew I would have a lot of cleanup to do.

However, you do not need to be receiving hundreds of spams a day to appreciate how much nicer it would be to rarely ever receive them. They are a constant source of annoyance.

But on 14 September, 2001 I received three spam messages that disgusted me so much that I have decided to wage my own personal war on all spammers. One was from a home security company with a subject line "Are you living in terror?", including some lines in the email hinting at the events. Another was an email pretending to be taking collections for charitable organizations due to the WTC, and the link went to a pyramid marketing scheme. The third was a similar play on the former.

In the aftermath of that awful Tuesday we saw Americans come together. We have all bonded through this, and have a common vision and goal. Still, spammers have continued their common goal of taking advantage of any situation they can to steal money and bother people. They steal our money by using up our bandwidth and taking our time to remove their emails from our systems. Yes, it might just be a minor nuisance to some, but there is no reason why any of us should sit back and accept this nuisance any longer. Especially when they take advantage of tragic events to further their cause.

Since deciding to eliminate spam from my inbox, I have been quite surprised at how successful this war has gone. First, I believe that there is a myth out there that replying to the "unsubscribe" methods given in many spam emails will simply result in more spam. I have found this to not be true. In fact, with any company that is even slightly reputable, the methods given for removing their spam worked instantly.

Therefore, if you are interested in taking up arms against spam, during your first few days, and with any reputable business there-after, you should use the removal service they offer. These are usually located near the end of the email, and the best ones offer 'one click' and you are removed. Once again, I commend the companies that have made it so easy to unsubscribe.

One of the biggest difficulties I have found in stopping spam is knowing which email address the spam was delivered to. Unless you only have one email address, you are likely to run up against this difficulty yourself. The "To" line in most spam will not list your email address, and depending on your email situation, even looking at the source information will not yield the answer. Those reputable companies that have set up a one-click removal service that auto-detects which email address will be your best friend if you run into this problem. Those that require you to type in your email address will prove fruitless if you do not know which of your addresses are on their list.

In addition, many of the less-reputable spammers may have a 'remove me' link that will never work. Some businesses, such as www.removeyou.com, have created an industry in collecting email addresses to remove from spam lists. Do not believe it for a second. This company is just as phony as the spammers they represent.

Then there are the removal methods that require sending an email to some address to ask to be removed. These are my least favorite of the removal methods because nine times out of ten it will not work. Either the removal email address they give does not exist, or their ISP returns it because it is full, or perhaps they do get your message but ignore it anyway.

So, how does one get rid of spam from all of the various sources where their removal services will not work, or are not even an option? That is where you will need to be diligent in your war. Feel free to use my method, or take a variation all your own:

When you get a piece of spam that there is no removal service, or not a working removal service, or if they use an email response, simply do a "Reply to All". Then remove your email address in the reply if it is listed. Next double click on the original email in your inbox and copy the source header information into the reply. (In Outlook you will find the source information when reading the original message under "View", "Options" and "Internet Headers:". Simply copy all of that text CTRL-C and paste into the reply.)

After you have the header information in your reply, search through that header for clues as to the domain names involved in the spam. Domain name is everything after the "@" symbol. If you see the domain names "yahoo.com", "msn.com", "hotmail.com", "aol.com" or other big names, immediately add to the reply email list "abuse@domainname.com" (example: abuse@yahoo.com). These big names have large abuse departments that track down spammers on their service and eliminate their accounts. Keep in mind that just because the email address is listed does not mean that these domains are involved. However, giving them a copy of the email and the header will give them all the information they need to research it.

Next look for any other domain names. Also check the email message itself and look for domain names in the email. This includes the domain name reply-to email addresses, and also check for any web links in the message (point the pointer to the link and in the bottom left hand corner the address will show up - copy down the domain name.)

Take all of the domain names you find, and add them to the recipient list as such:
postmaster@domainname.com
webmaster@domainname.com
abuse@domainname.com
info@domainname.com
support@domainname.com
sales@domainname.com

Simply replace "domainname.com" with the domain names you found, and create these six email addresses for each one of them.

At the top part of your email you should type out something similar to this:

"Remove all email addresses with these domains, or face criminal penalties under RCW 19.190

mydomain.com
mydomain.org
mydomain.net
mydomain.ws

These domains and all associated e-mail addresses are located in the State of Washington, and sending mail to addresses at these domains is subject to the provisions of the Revised Code of Washington.

http://www.mcnichol.com/spam/rcw.htm

You are currently in violation of said law. You will not receive another warning before you are reported to the authorities. Your actions are illegal, and in direct violation of the law of the State of Washington. Offenders, such as yourself, have been and will be prosecuted. Do not continue to send spam to any of the above domain names or you will face criminal penalties."

There are similar laws like this Washington law throughout the country, including a Federal one. Feel free to site any law you like - or use the Washington one if you like. Change the "mydomain.xxx" to the domain names that you receive email on.

In addition, if you really want to get the spammers attention, you can do additional research into more email addresses to include in your reply by visiting any links they have in their email message. Go into their web site and find any email addresses you can. If there is an online form they use to gather additional information, view the source of that form (right mouse click, view source) and do a find (CTRL-F) for @ which may reveal a hidden email address that the form is to be delivered to. Be certain to include that email address at least once in any replies.

I have heard from some of my readers that despise spam even more than me, and they have a rolling spam email group list that they keep. Every spammer email address they collect they add to this group list in their email program, and every reply to a spammer they add their email addresses to this list, and in this way send the reply to every spammer that has sent them an email before. If your goal is for revenge, this is an interesting notion. (Although, I submit that most spammers do not keep the same email address for more than a week, so such a list will be worthless in a short time.)

If your goal is to get rid of spam, simply follow the approaches listed above, and you are likely to have some success. After only a week and a half my inbox receives only about fifteen spam messages a day. While it is still fifteen more than I would like, it is a small percentage of what I endured previously. Do keep in mind that I reply to every single piece of spam I receive in this method, and I believe the result will be that in a few weeks I will be down to only a couple a day. At least, that is my hope.

Best of luck. If you think of any anti-spam tactics that you would like shared, feel free to email them my way.