Version 0.9.
Last modified 8 February, 1998,
comments welcome.
This document is also available as a plain text file.
1.1: Introduction
1.2: Email versus Usenet spamming
1.3: What is Spam?
1.4: That's not spam!
1.5: A note on "flaming" and other "abuse".
2.1: Ok, I understand that, but what can I do about it?
2.2: Some things not to do.
2.2a: What about "Universal" Remove Lists?
2.3: What about messing with my email address?
2.3a: A better solution than munging your address.
2.4: So what should I do?
3.1: Make Money Fast! - chain letters.
3.1a: Other Frauds and Scams
3.2: Email Spam / Junk Email.
3.2a: I got junk email that wasn't even addressed to me...
3.2b: Someone told me that sending junk email is illegal.
3.2c: How do junk emailers get my address, anyway?
3.3: Spam on Usenet.
4.1: Usenet groups for reporting spam.
4.2: Reporting Spam to Usenet.
5.1: When to send a "REMOVE" request.
6.1: Further info.
"Spam", either via email or on Usenet, seems to be a growing problem, and one that hits more and more people, new users and old hands alike. Unfortunately, the new user may not be sure about what to do when spammed: some actions are useless or even counterproductive, while others require a bit of knowledge to put into practice.
This FAQ attempts to give general suggestions on what you can do about spam, including how and to whom to complain, and where you can report spam and learn more, as well as some recommendations on what not to do.
For the most part, the general guidelines we'll give here are common between email and Usenet spamming.
Know your terms! Spam is essentially the same thing posted many times.
On Usenet, spam is the same (or substantially the same) article posted multiple times (to many groups, to one group many times, or to many groups many times). Email spam is the same message broadcast to multiple recipients who did not request it.
For more details, see
The Net Abuse FAQ, at
The Current Spam thresholds and guidelines FAQ, at
and/or The Email Abuse FAQ, at
Yes, there are a lot of annoying, off-topic and stupid postings out there. But that doesn't make it spam. Really. Spam is almost always off-topic, at least in some of the groups to which it is posted, but just being off-topic does not make a post spam.
The defining characteristic of spam is volume, and volume only. The content is irrelevant.
"Flames" and other verbally abusive posts and emails are not spam. Nonetheless, in sufficiently egregious cases, you may wish to complain about them. If you wish to do so, you can use the suggestions below to complain to the administrators of the site from which the abuse comes. Some providers prohibit random flames and abuse, and may discipline the person bothering you.
Note that this is not universal, and the administrators may tell you to get stuffed. If this happens, there is little you can do but ignore the messages. Do not report such things to the news.admin.net-abuse.* newsgroups, which are intended to deal with abuse of the net (things that are damaging to the net itself) rather than abuse on the net (such as "abusive" language that just happens to occur on the net).
Note further that, while harrassment or threats may be illegal, they are not abuse of the net. If you are being harrassed or receiving threats via the net, then you should take it up with the administrators at your provider, and perhaps even with the police. The readers of the net-abuse groups may be able to provide assistance in tracking down from where such messages are coming (if, for example, they are forged), but are not charged with enforcing civil or criminal law.
The easiest thing is simply to ignore it. That's what most people do, and there's nothing at all wrong with doing so.
Doing anything more will require at least a bit of thought and effort, in part because so much spam is forged or has its true source hidden in some way, and in part because even reporting the spam to despammers can be counterproductive if not done in carefully.
So, if you're not interested in expending the effort, feel free simply to ignore the spam. Don't worry, it almost certainly will be dealt with in time.
You can even automate (to varying degrees, depending on your software) the process of ignoring it: use your newsreader's killfile and/or learn to filter your mail (see A better solution than munging your address).
Another option is to join the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, or at least check out some of the information they provide.
In addition to providing a lot of useful information, CAUCE is also involved in backing some of the legal solutions to junk email (see Someone told me that sending junk email is illegal).
So don't. Apart from that, mailbombing can be considered to be a denial of service attack. In some cases, you could end up with criminal charges against you. In most cases, you will be violating the policies of your own site, and could end up losing your own account.
On usenet, the only place one should repost spam is in one of the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups (see Reporting Spam to Usenet below).
The reason for this is that, in far too many cases, sending a REMOVE request is ineffective: even if the junk emailer actually does remove your name from their current list, when they rebuild their list the next time, you will be added right back in again. In addition, there is some evidence that some junk emailers use REMOVE requests as addresses to be added to their mailing list.
So don't waste your time.
The latest thing these days is that junk email will arrive with instructions on how to not just have your name removed from future mailings by the current joker, but also to have your name added to a "universal" REMOVE List.
Should you sign up? The best answer is probably the same one given above: "don't waste your time." Why? Because a "universal" remove list will most likely be just as much a waste of time as a plain ol' ordinary REMOVE List. In the first place, there are several "universal" remove lists, none of which are truly universal. In the second place, there is no evidence that being on a "universal" remove list does anything at all to reduce the amount of junk email sent to you.
What was the best known "universal" remove list was that produced by the Internet Electronic Mail Marketing Council (IEMMC). You may have seen references to this group in the headers of junk
email you've received in the past, along with comments about "responsible email marketing" or some similar twaddle. Unfortunately, the IEMMC was (primarily) a product of Sanford Wallace (of Cyberpromo fame), and lost its net connection along with the rest of Cyberpromo. For a historical perspective, you can check out the Adopt-a-Spammer-- Cyber Promotions page, but it looks like the IEMMC is gone forever. Sanford Wallace keeps making noises about starting his mailing service up again, but it doesn't seem that anyone will give him a connection.
Reasons for ignoring what the IEMMC says are available at Tom Betz's "Proof that you couldn't trust the IEMMC" page.
There are other lists and organizations that claim to be able to remove your name from the junk emailers' mailing lists, such as of Aristotle, but I have seen no evidence whatsoever that any of them accomplish anything at all.
It is becoming rather common for people to mess up their email address when they post to Usenet, so that the headers say it came from "no.spam@no.spam.org", "gbyshenk@tezcat.NOSPAM.com", or "gbyshenk@REMOVE.THIS.TO.REPLY.tezcat.com". The reason for this is to foil the address-gathering bots that junk mailers use to cull email addresses from news spools. Certainly the actions of the junk emailers are unacceptable, but it is not clear that messing up headers is any better.
I am unhappy (as are quite a few others) with this state of affairs. In the first place, it is a violation of RFC 1036, which requires that the From: line of a Usenet post contain the address of the person sending the post. In the second place, it can make even the appropriate replies to a post difficult or impossible to send. Finally, if the address is messed up in the wrong way, it can lead to further problems down the road.
But it is fairly common. If you are thinking of messing up your address, however, there are a few things that you should know, and I would strongly recommend that you check out the Address Munging FAQ: Spam-Blocking Your Email Address before doing it.
A better way to deal with the problem is to filter your mail. You can use something like Procmail (mail filtering software for UNIX machines) or the built-in capabilites of your mailer (most mailers have at least minimal filtering abilities). There are also various ways to use procmail easily, such as the Procmail Filters Kit.
Filtering will usually take at least a bit of effort, but the results can be quite good. For more info, check out the Filtering Mail FAQ, available through the Infinite Ink FAQ Launcher, at
You can also ask your provider to block out the more insistent junk email sites. AOL allows you to reject such mail using AOL's filters, and many providers will block sites that send nothing but junk email. Some others provide site-wide filters that you may choose to use.
There are also some more-or-less automated mail-filtering solutions:
There are a number of possible actions that can be taken, varying somewhat depending on whether the issue is usenet spam, junk email spam, or a chain letter, and also depending on how much work you want to do.
It is generally better and more productive to report spam to the administrators of the site from which the spam came. Spamming violates the Terms of Service (TOS) or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) of most sites, and the administrators are the ones who are best able to deal with it. In addition, responsible administrators will want to know if one of their users is spamming.
[Note: cyberpromo.com is used above only as an example. Cyberpromo is one of the most obnoxious junk email sites, and sending to postmaster@cyberpromo.com is (at best) equivalent to sending your mail to the trash (at worst, it could get you on more junk email lists).]
In addition, many sites also provide an "abuse" address, which is often in the form: abuse@site.xyz. It generally won't hurt to try to send a response to the abuse address, since mail to "abuse" will often get to the right people more quickly than will mail to "postmaster". Unfortunately, mail to "abuse" may bounce when the site doesn't use this address, and some sites have created their own rather odd names for reporting abuse. But, unless and until "abuse" becomes a true standard, you will have to take your chances in this area.
The folks at Abuse.net also provide a complaint forwarding service. If you register with them, then you can send any junk email to their address and they will forward it to the most likely complaint addresses.
Also from the same folks is the personal version of Sam Spade that you can run on your own machine.
The easiest spams to deal with are probably chain letters
(generally referred to on the net as "Make Money Fast" or MMF,
due to that being the subject of one of the more common chain
letters):
A chain lettter is one case when it doesn't hurt to respond to the one who posted it. Because these are actually unlawful in the US (see the USPS page,), they are generally posted only by those who don't know any better, and letting the one who posted it know is usually enough.
Please be aware that your message (included below) is both spam (one of many thousands of copies posted), and an illegal chain letter fraud. Please stop posting them immediately, and cancel them if you can.
Please read the following URL for a full explanation of the legality of these messages:
http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm
Various other forms of fraud may be unlawful, as well, and they do not magically become lawful by being disseminated via the net.
For example: dealing in securities (stocks, etc.) is pretty strictly regulated, and someone touting stocks via spamming is probably at least close to the legal edge; health claims made for any drug are regulated and must be demonstrated, and someone spamming the health benefits of their product probably does not have FDA support; there are certain legal requirements regarding what is a legitimate Multi-Level-Marketing program (as opposed to being an illegal pyramid scheme -- see Make Money Fast!/chain letters above), and the vast majority of so-called "MLM" programs advertised via spamming do not meet the legal test, thus being illegal; etc.
There are a number of email addresses to which you can forward information on suspected fraudulent offers (if they come from the USA -- for those outside the USA, you might check with your own government):
And more information on fraud is available on the web from the Internet Consumer Fraud Information Service.
For chain letters originating in Canada, or using Canadian mailing addresses, you can send email to the Bureau of Competition, at complaints@bcp.ic.gc.ca, or use the fill-in form provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Email spam is easy to identify -- if you receive some junk mail that you didn't ask for or end up on a mailing list that you didn't ask to be put on, then it's spam -- but identifying its source can be much more difficult.
The problem here is that junk emailers all know that everyone hates to receive junk email, so they have become quite creative in forging their addresses. Some junk emailers for hire offer"flame-proof mailboxes", and Cyberpromo (one of the big junk emailers who tried to get an injunction barring AOL from blocking mail -- and failed) has gone so far as to create whole new phony domains to send junk mail from in an attempt to get past people's mail filters.
So, in order to complain effectively about junk mail, you will need to learn at least a little bit about reading headers; just sending to postmaster@sendingdomain.xyz will more likely than not just cause your mail to bounce.
But there is one trick that sometimes works. Because junk emailers generally want to sell you something, they have to give you some way to contact them. So you can check out the body of the message, which will very often contain an email address or a web page to go to for "more information". And you can try complaining to the postmaster at the domain in that address.
And you could always check out "Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts" (discussed in this FAQ under "So whatshould I do?") and learn to read email headers.
Finally, you can report junk email spam to news.admin.net-abuse.* on usenet and let the despammers take a crack at it (see "Reporting spam to usenet" below).
And, remember, always include full headers whenever you complain.
This probably wasn't a "mistake", but mail sent using the Bcc: header.
What the Bcc: (Blind Carbon Copy) header does is send email to an address without including that address in the mail when the recipient finally gets it. Some junk emailers use this feature to send the same email to hundreds or thousands of different people without having a To: or Cc: list that is hundreds or thousands of lines long.
What the recipient sees is a piece of email that is addressed To: someone else. Some junk emailers even try to make their junk mail look like it was personal mail intended for someone else that "accidentally" got mailed to you. Don't be fooled. There isn't any way that mail sent to someone.else@somewhere.else could end up in your mailbox "by mistake". (If your ISPs mailer is messed up, it might be possible for mail addressed to someone.else@your.domain to arrive in your mailbox, but mail sent to some other ISP should not end up in your mailbox.)
Maybe that person was right... then again, maybe not.
note: this section on the legality of junk email is almost entirely US-centric, for a number of reasons:
That said, it should be noted that just sending junk email may be a violation of the law in some countries; spammers and spammees should check their local laws.
As of July, 1997, there is movement on this front: whether or not junk email is illegal now, at least certain forms of it may become so in the near future.
There have now been introduced three different bills dealing with junk email: HR 1748 by Chris Smith in the House of Representatives, S 771 by Murkowski in the Senate, and S 875 by Toricelli also in the Senate.. They are not at all the same: the Murkowski bill bans address-forging and requires the use of keywords in junk email, but permits its sending; the Toricelli bill requires that junk emailers remove you from their lists if you so request, but still permits them to send it until you "opt out"; the Smith bill amends the "Junk Fax" law to prohibit unsolicited commercial email, but does not prohibit non-commercial bulk email.
More information on these bills, and other legal info, is available at The Junk e-mail Call to Action, The Consumer Information Organization's Unsolicited Junk E-Mail, Spam, Etc. page, and from The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, which supports the Smith bill.
There has also been considerable discussion of these bills and the legal issues surrounding junk email legislation in the news.admin.net-abuse.email Usenet newsgroup.
Until such time as some law is enacted, the legal status of junk email remains unclear.
On another, equally plausible reading, the "Junk Fax" law cannot possibly apply to email, because (among other things) if it did, then just about every email message would be a violation.
Because there has not yet been any judgment by a court on this matter, the question remains open. In any case, junk email has not (yet, anyway) been held to be illegal by a court, which is what matters where the law is concerned.
If you wish, you can read the relevant parts of the law yourself at Cornell's US Code web page.
As in the case of the "Junk Fax" law, however, there has not yet been a judgment by a court that such charges are legally enforceable. In addition, many knowledgeable people argue that any such notice cannot be considered a binding contract.
Again, this has not, to my knowledge, been tested in court.
The current status of Cyberpromo v. AOL suggests that no one has the "right" to send you email, but this means only that you can block attempts by anyone to send you email, not that they can't try to send it to you.
All that said, remember also that even if just sending junk email is not illegal, the mere fact that something occurs via email does not mean that other laws do not apply. Chain letters and other forms of fraud are unlawful even if the communication occurs via computer (see Make Money Fast!/chain letters and Other Frauds and Scams above).
The most common source of email addresses seems to be posts to usenet. It is fairly easy to use or write a program to collect From: addresses from usenet posts, and if you post to usenet, it is likely that your email address will be collected.
Some mailing lists allow anyone to get a list of subscribers, and it is possible that your email address was collected in this way if you are on a mailing list.
Some machines allow outsiders to collect users addresses, and this is another possibility.
Finally, once you are on one list, that list is quite likely to be sold to other junk emailers or for a junk emailer for-hire to use the same list to send junk email for large numbers of different clients.
The first thing to do with spam on usenet is to be sure that it actually is spam. Remember, what makes something spam is that there are lots of copies. You'd be surprised how many people will post one, but only one, wildly off-topic article into one group. Remember, a single post, no matter how wildly off-topic, is not "spam".
If you see a single massively cross-posted article (typical multi-group trollbait), it probably isn't spam. Such massive crossposts may be supremely annoying, but a crosspost (even a massive one) is only a single copy of the article on the news server, so it isn't the same thing many times, and hence, isn't "spam".
You can't really consider something spam on usenet unless you see multiple copies of it, either the same thing posted multiple times (with different message-ids) in one newsgroup or posted individually (not crossposted) to multiple newsgroups. In short, if you don't see more than one copy, you can't say that it's spam.
then it's probably an alpha-spam, and, thus, a spam.
If you see something that you think might be spam, and you want to get a better idea, you can check with dejanews, and do a search on the subject of the post you're wondering about: if dejanews shows that the same article has been posted 20+ times, then it is definitely spam.
Complaining about usenet spam is more or less the same as complaining about email spam.
And always include full headers whenever and wherever you complain.
There is a whole hierarchy, news.admin.net-abuse.*, related to spamming and other net-abuse. Each of the groups in this recently reorganized hierarchy has a specific function, and reporting of spam will be most useful if it is done in the right place. The relevant groups are:
There are at least three cases in which you may, despite what is said above (under "Some things not to do"), wish to send in a REMOVE request to a junk emailer.
If there is to be any chance of collecting, you will need something that at least could be a contract: if the junk emailer isn't even aware of your charges, it will be nigh on impossible to convince a court that the junk emailer has agreed to them.
Technically, such a message would not need to be a REMOVE request -- it could be a notification of the archiving charges and a notice that further mail will constitute acceptance of the terms -- but the terms must be communicated to the junk emailer.
If you wish to convince such a junk emailer's provider that the junk emailer is not "responsible", then demonstrating that they do not honor REMOVE requests (by showing that they continue to send junk email after receiving a REMOVE request) may succeed.
Of course, in some cases, the provider doesn't really care, and even such a demonstration of lack of responsibility will accomplish nothing: anyone who buys the "responsible junk emailer" defense probably won't take action even when the defense is shown to be a sham. In addition, acceding to the demands that you should send a REMOVE request also serves to legitimize sending the junk email in the first place, something that many people find completely unacceptable: if everyone wanting to sell something were to send you just one junk email, you would spend all of your time sending REMOVE requests.
1.1: Introduction
1.2: Email versus Usenet spamming
1.3: What is "Spam"?
(as a web page in HTML)
(as a plain text file via ftp)
1.4: That's not spam!
1.5: A note on "flaming" and other "abuse".
Part 2: What you can do
2.1: Ok, I understand that, but what can I do about it?
2.2: Some things not to do.
2.2a: What about "Universal" Remove lists?
2.3: What about messing with my email address?
2.3a: A better solution than munging your address.
Even more finally, there are some new entries in the blocking game, about which I don't know very much, but that could be worth checking out:
2.4: So what should I do?
Some general rules:
Part 3: Types of Spam and How to Deal with Them
3.1: Make Money Fast!/chain letters.
3.1a: Other Frauds and Scams.
3.2: Email Spam / Junk Email.
3.2a: I got junk email that wasn't even addressed to me...
3.2b: Someone told me that sending junk email is illegal.
3.2c: How do junk emailers get my address, anyway?
3.3: Spam on Usenet.
Part 4: Usenet - Reporting and Reading about Spam
4.1: Usenet groups for reporting spam.
4.2: Reporting Spam to Usenet.
General guidelines:
Make Money Fast! Chain Letters:
Junk Email Spams:
Usenet Spams:
Part 5: When to Send a REMOVE request...
5.1: When to send a "REMOVE" request.
Part 6: Sources of further information.
6.1: Further info.
Maintained by Greg Byshenk, gbyshenk@tezcat.com.