Spam Tips

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Spam Tips
Ray Everett-Church is cofounder and counsel for CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email), an ad hoc, volunteer organization created to advocate a legislative solution for spam. Here are his spam-fighting tips:

Don't reply to spam.
Don't post your email address on your website or in a newsgroup.
Check a website's privacy policy before giving it your email address.
Use a spam filter. (To set up a filter in Outlook Express, read this article.)
Send the offender's email header to your ISP.
Never buy anything advertised in spam.

How to get header information:
The only way to determine where spam mail is actually coming from is by obtaining all the header information. Spammers are becoming more and more sneaky and are disguising the "from" box to look like the mail is coming from you! You can get the full header information by following the instructions found at http://spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html.

When forwarding spam related issues to us (abuse@i-dentity.com), please make sure to include the "full" header information.

Why are "full headers" so important?
The only way that we can track down the origin of a piece of spam is by analyzing the header information included in every email. The header information contains all kinds of information about the email message, including who it's from and how it got into your mailbox. Many spammers try to disguise their identities and intentionally try to "fake" header information to make their spam emails untraceable. Full header information looks like this:

by gaia.host4u.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g7JDTfg08412 
for ; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:29:41 -0500 
Received: from Steve (ds3B151.snowcrest.net [65.215.241.151]) 
by mail.snowcrest.net (8.12.3/8.12.3) with SMTP id g7JDTXGt022965 
for ; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 06:29:34 -0700 (PDT) 
Message-ID: <011401c24754$766ec020$97f1d741@Steve> 
From: home@neco.com
To:  
Subject: From a Reseller 
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 06:29:30 -0700 
MIME-Version: 1.0 
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; 
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0111_01C24749.C6736070" 
X-Priority: 3 
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal 
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 
Status:

Catch-all email:
Another way to reduce incoming spam is by removing your 'Catch-all' account if do not need it.

The catch-all account is when anything addressed to your domain name is NOT setup as a separate POP or email forwarding account.

To remove your catch-all account, please follow the instructions below:

Plusmail Servers:
Login to your Control Panel (http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/plusmail) and click on 'Email Forwarding'. Completely delete the line that starts with 'default':

Then click on 'Add/Edit Redirects'.

Ensim Servers:
Login to your Control Panel (http://www.yourdomain.com/admin) and click on 'Email Aliases'.

Click on the pencil icon next to 'catch-all'. 'Forward To:' site_blackhole:

Then click on 'Edit Alias'.

Email Spoofing:
Email spoofing is the practice of changing your name in email so that it looks like the email came from somewhere or someone else.

Spoofing is generally used by spammers as a first defense against people finding out who they are. It's also used by general malcontents to practice mischievous and malicious behavior.

There is really no way to prevent receiving a spoofed email. If you get a message that is outrageously insulting, asks for something highly confidential, or just plain doesn't make any sense, then you may want to find out if it is really from the person it says it's from. You can look at the Internet Headers information to see where the email actually originated.

Remember that although your email address may have been spoofed this does not mean that the spoofer has gained access to your mailbox.

Call toll-free 1-877-903-2475