From: gandalf@digital.net
Subject: alt.spam FAQ or "Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts". Rev 980329
Newsgroups: alt.2600, alt.spam, alt.newbie, news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.net-abuse.email, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, alt.answers, news.answers
Followup-To: news.admin.net-abuse.misc, alt.spam, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
Summary: This posting describes how to find out where a fake post or e-mail originated from.
Archive-name: net-abuse-faq/spam-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 980329
URL: http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
Greetings and Salutations:
This FAQ will help in deciphering which machine a fake e-Mail or post came from, and who (generally or specifically) you should contact.
The three sections to this eight portion FAQ (With apologies to Douglas Adams :-)) :
o Introduction
o Tracing an e-mail message
o MAILING LIST messages
o Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message
o WWW IP Lookup URL's
o Converting that IP to a name
o A list of Usenet complaint addresses
o Fraud on the Internet and The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts
o Trying to catch the suspect still logged on
o Filtering E-Mail using procmail or News with Gnus
o Rejecting E-Mail from domains that continue to Spam
o Misc. (Because I can't spell miscellaneous :-)) stuff
I couldn't think to put anywhere else.
o Origins of Spam
o How *did* I get this unsolicited e-mail anyway?
o 1-900, 1-800 and 1-XXX may be expensive long distance phone calls
o How To Respond to SPAM
o Revenge - What to do & not to do (mostly not)
o Telephoning someone
o Snail Mailing someone
Introduction
============================================
Please feel free to repost this, e-mail it, put this FAQ on CD's or any other media you can think of.
The latest & greatest version of this Spam FAQ is found at:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
Or *nicely* HTML'ed at:
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html
or
http://www.netmeg.net/faq/internet/net-abuse/spam-faq/
Or the archive at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.spam/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/misc/
This is addition to the most excellent:
Net Abuse FAQ (posted to news.admin.net-abuse.misc, alt.current-events.net-abuse etc...), brought to you by J.D. Falk jdfalk@cybernothing.org :
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
Spam cancellation notice (spam guidelines) :
http://spam.ohww.norman.ok.us/notice.htm
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/spam.html
http://www.cm.org for info on NoCeM
Software to track the headers / eliminate Spam for you :
http://mirrors.cylink.net/tucows/mac/macintosh.html - Mac software
http://www.blighty.com/spam/spade.html - WWW Spam tools
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~net-services/spam/ - Windows Spam Hater
or
BODY: open ftp.compulink.co.uk
cd /pub/net-services
get spamhl.exe
quit
http://www.internz.com/SpamBeGone - Linux FreeBSD Amiga Solaris IRIX and soon a Eudora plugin
http://www.spammerslammer.com - Works with windows e-mail programs that uses pop mail
Spammers and how to stop them :
http://abuse.net/spam-l - Improve your spam-fighting skills
http://inetw.com/home/ak/4useries/ - getit4u.txt has a Spam section
http://spam.abuse.net/spam/howtocomplain.html
http://www-fofa.concordia.ca/spam/complaints.shtml - Complaint Addresses
http://www-fofa.concordia.ca/spam/default.html
http://www.accessnt.com.au/faqs/spam.htm
http://www.ca-probate.com/aol_junk.htm
http://www.cauce.org - Trying to legislate against Spam
http://www.concentric.net/support/tos/index.html - Spam cleanup charges
http://www.csn.net/~felbel/jnkmail.html - How to Get Rid of Junk Mail, and Telemarketers
http://www.junkemail.org/scamspam/ - "Help stop Scam Spammers!"
http://www.mcs.com/~jcr/junkemail.html
http://www.ot.com/~dmuth/spam-l - Maintainer of the SPAM-L FAQ
http://www.tezcat.com/~gbyshenk/ive.been.spammed.html
http://www.yahoo.com/News/Usenet/Abuse
http://www4.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_index_19970819.html - Special Spam Fighting Edition
E-Mail headers and tracing tools FAQs and links:
ftp://info.cert.org/pub/tech_tips
http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/~tburgess/local/spam.html
http://kryten.eng.monash.edu.au/gspam.html
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html
http://www-fofa.concordia.ca/spam/tools.html - Macintosh Spam fighting
http://www.crl.com/~sjkiii/news-admin-net-abuse.html
http://www.csn.net/~felbel/jnkmail.html
http://www.elsop.com/wrc/nospam.htm
http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/spam/html.Remail - Remailer Info
http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/spam/html.Spam - Fight Spam
http://www.spam-archive.org/ - A collection of email-Spams.
http://www.ultranet.com/~gmcgath/selfdefense.html
http://www.winsite.com/win3/winsock/page6.html - Windows Internet Utilities
spam-list@toby.han.de - A mailing list bounce spam to (include the complete header and body). See http://www.spam-archive.org/spam/spam-list/forward.html)
News and E-Mail Spam Info in other languages:
http://home7.inet.tele.dk/spamlist/ - Denmark Spam page & spammer info
http://www.cup.com/negi/news.html - A general intro to news in Japanese
http://www.cup.com/negi/newsgroup0.html - What is a header in Japanese
http://www.ethereal.ru/~avk/anti-ad.html - Russian spam & headers page
http://www.grolier.fr/cyberlexnet/SECU/spam.htm - French Spam page
http://www.student.hro.nl/0445746/ - Dutch anti spam site
Or why Netabuse is bad :
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/EmailAbuseLog.html
ftp://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/EmailAbuseLog.html
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/BadISPs.html
ftp://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/BadISPs.html
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/ComplainToWhom.html
ftp://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/ComplainToWhom.html
What the alt.binaries.slack Organization has done to fight Spam :
http://208.199.189.75/sputum/dafaq.html
http://super.zippo.com/~sputum/dafaq.htm
PLEASE email follow-ups, additions / changes to gandalf@digital.net
My news source is OK, but I sometimes miss items.
There are places in this FAQ with ALL CAPS. This is where I need some help or input. I accept all and any input. I consider myself to be the manager of this FAQ for the good of everyone, not the absolute & controlling Owner Of The FAQ. I do not always write in a completely coherent manner. What makes sense to me may not make sense to others. If the community wants something added or deleted, I will do so. I removed any e-mail and last name references to someone making a suggestion / addition. This is so that someone doesn't get upset at this FAQ and do something stupid. If you don't mind having your e-mail in this FAQ (or where it is required), please tell me and I will add it back in.
First off, before trying to determine where the post or e-mail originated from, you should realize that (just like the National Inquirer, or a logical argument from Canter and Siegel) the message will have *some* amount of truth, but all or most of the information may be forged. Be careful before accusing someone.
Commands used in this FAQ are UNIX & VMS commands. Sorry if they don't work for you, you might wish to try looking around at your commands to find an equivalent command (or I might be able to help out some).
And no, I am not going to tell you how to post a fake message or fake e-mail. It only took me about 2 days (a few hours a day) to figure it out. It ain't difficult. RTFM (or more appropriately, Read The @&%^@# RFC).
Every e-mail or post will have a point at which it was injected into the information stream. E-mail will have a real computer from which it was passed along. Likewise a post will have a news server that started passing the post. You need to get cooperation of the postmaster at the sites the message passed thru. Then you can get information from the logs telling you what sites the message actually passed thru, and where the message "looked" like it passed thru (but actually didn't). Of course you do have to have the cooperation of all the postmasters in a string of sites...
Tracing an e-mail message
============================================
To trace the e-mail you have to look at the header. Most mail readers do not show the header because it contains information that is for computer to computer routing. The information you usually see from the header is the subject, date and the "From" / "Return" address. About the only thing in an e-mail header that can't be faked is the "Received" portion referencing your computer (the last received).
There is spamming software that sends the e-mail directly to your computer. This makes only one received line in the e-mail making your life many times easier. The computer that is not your computer is the spamming computer.
You will need to take a look at the headers on the message (if you can) In PINE (for example) you have to turn on the header option in setup, then just hit "h" to get headers. In Eudora for the Macintosh or IBM, just press the button labeled "Blah Blah Blah" and you will get the header. In Claris E-Mailer under Mail select Show Long Headers.
A little different description of headers:
http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/index.htm
http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/extended.htm
Gregory tells us that assuming a reasonably standard and recent sendmail setup, a Received line that looks like :
Received: from host1 (host2 [ww.xx.yy.zz]) by host3
(8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA04298; Thu, 18 Jul 1996 12:18:06 -0600
shows four pieces of useful information (reading from back to front, in order of decreasing reliability):
- The host that added the Received line (host3)
- The IP address of the incoming SMTP connection (ww.xx.yy.zz)
- The reverse-DNS lookup of that IP address (host2)
- The name the sender used in the SMTP HELO command when they
connected (host1).
Looking at the below we see 4 received lines. Received lines are like links in a chain. The message is passed from one computer to the next with no breaks in the chain. The received lines indicate that it ended up at ddi.digital.net (my computer) from mail.connected.bc.ca. It was received at guardian.vegacom.on.ca from jj3dw3.q3q3665f.com ([209.60.248.171]). The last line suggests that it was received at relay.comanche.com from mail.apache.net. Since neither one of these computers are in the previous received line then we can ignore this line and every received after this line.
Do not get confused by the "Received: from default" portion. The word "default" can be *anything* and should be ignored.
Received: from guardian.vegacom.on.ca (vegacom.on.ca [207.164.42.2]) by ddi.digital.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id EAA01484 for gandalf@digital.net; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 04:19:21 -0500 (EST)
Received: from jj3dw3.q3q3665f.com ([209.60.248.171]) by guardian.vegacom.on.ca (Netscape Messaging Server 3.01) with SMTP id 508; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 04:18:21 -0500
Received: from SMTP.XServer (Smail4.1.19.1 #20) id m0wBzN7-009vdR; Thursday, March 26th, 1998
Received: from mail.apache.net(really [164/187]) by relay.comanche.com Tuesday, March 24th, 1998
So we complain to whomever owns jj3dw3.q3q3665f.com ([209.60.248.171]). Make sure that you do a nslookup on the IP address's. I verify 209.60.248.171 is jj3dw3.q3q3665f.com. Indeed jj3dw3.q3q3665f.com does not even exist and 209.60.248.171 does not resolve to a name when I do a NSLookup. Next would be a traceroute. See further below for more in-depth tracking on resolving an IP.
IP portion = 209.60.248.171
Traceroute 209.60.248.171 gives us:
Step Host IP
9 ny-nap.crl.com. (192.157.69.56 )
10 lga-nynap.c.us.crl.net. (165.113.50.206 )
11 sfo-vva.x.atm.us.crl.net. (165.113.50.65 )
11 san1-gw.c.us.crl.com. (165.113.52.10 )
12 165.113.121.134 (165.113.121.134)
You should complain to the postmaster@Last Two or Three words at the end of the name. I would complain to postmaster@crl.com , since after looking below at the list of complaint addresses in this FAQ there are no alternate addresses for CRL.com .
BE SURE to verify the IP address. Windows '95 machines place the name of the machine as the "name" and place the real IP address after the name, meaning a spammer can give a legitimate "name" of someone else to get someone innocent in trouble. A spammer at cyberpromo changed their SMTP HELO so that it claimed to be from Compuserve. The Received line looked like the below, but a quick verification of the IP address 208.9.65.20 showed it was indeed from cyberpromo :
Received: from dub-img-4.compuserve.com (cyberpromo.com [208.9.65.20]) by karpes.stu.rpi.edu
The above e-mail (with 3 received lines) was passed to me thru a "mule" (someone using an open SMTP port to reroute e-mail to me). I usually send the postmaster something like the following :
postmaster@XXXXX - Your SMTP mail server XXXXX was used as a mule to pass (and waste your system resources) this e-mail on to me. You can stop your SMTP port from allowing rerouting of e-mail back outside of your domain if you wish to. FYI only. See:
http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html
Test it at :
http://www.blighty.com/spam/spade.html
There are some systems that "claim" to "cloak" e-mail. It is not true. If you receive one that looks like the following :
Received: from relay4.ispam.net (root@[207.124.161.39]) by ddi.digital.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA28969 for gandalf@digital.net; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:41:46 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from --- CLOAKED! ---
It is still broken down as follows :
- The route the e-mail took originated from the system above the line marked "cloaked". There is no magic to it. Complain to that provider. If you get no response from the site that spammed, you should ask your provider to no longer allow the above site [207.124.161.39] to connect to your system.
It has been kindly pointed out to me that there is a "feature" (read "bug") in the UNIX mail spool wherein the person e-mailing you a message can append a "message" (with the headers) to the end of their message. It makes the mail reader think you have 2 messages when the joker that sent the original message only sent one message (with a fake message appended). If the headers look *really* screwy, you might look at the message before the screwy message and consider if it may not be a "joke" message.
There are also IBM mainframes that do not include the machine that they received the SMTP traffic from. You have to route the message (with headers) back to the postmaster at that system and ask them to tell you what the IP of the machine is that hooked into their system for that message.
It has also been pointed out that someone on your server can telnet back to the mail port and send you mail. This also makes the forgery virtually untraceable by you, but as always your admin should be able to catch the telnet back to the server. If they telnet to a foreign SMTP server and then use the "name" of a user on that system, it may appear to you that the message came from that user. Be very careful when making assumptions about where the e-mail came from.
MAILING LIST messages
========================================
Stephanie kindly tells me :
A MAILING LIST is a type of email distribution in which email is sent to a fixed site which holds a list of email recipients and mail is distributed to those recipients automatically (or through a moderator).
A LISTSERVER is a software program designed to manage one or more mailing lists. One of the more popular packages is named "LISTSERV". Besides Listserv, other popular packages include Listproc which is a Unix Listserv clone (Listservs originated on BITNET), Majordomo and Mailserve. Most importantly -- not all mailing lists run on listservers, there are many mailing lists that are manually managed.
You may hear of mailing lists being referred to as many things, some strange, some which on the surface make sense, like "email discussion groups". But this isn't accurate either, since not all mailing lists are set up for discussion.
Istvan suggests running your list under majordomo software. "I used to use listserv, but far prefer majordomo for a number of reasons, one of which is the ability to control spam. One of the options which can be set in the majordomo config file is whether or not non-list members can post to a particular list. This makes spamming much harder work -- before a message can get sent out, the spammer has to subscribe to the list."
And ... "Majordomo software is remarkably funny about headers. It does not like headers which contain anything odd. All messages the software receives which do not conform to its rigorous standards are simply forwarded to the list moderator. It turns out this feature is effective at stopping between 80 and 90% of spam actually getting to the list. This is a great feature, which (if I recall correctly) listserv does not share."
Example Header appears below:
Received: from dir.bham.ac.uk (dir.bham.ac.uk [147.188.128.25]) by gol1.gol.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id GAA27292 for XXXX@gol.com; Sun, 5 May 1996 06:31:15 +0900 (JST)
Received: from bham.ac.uk by dir.bham.ac.uk with SMTP (PP) using DNS id 26706-38@dir.bham.ac.uk; Sat, 4 May 1996 20:56:49 +0100
Received: from emout09.mail.aol.com (actually emout09.mx.aol.com) by bham.ac.uk with SMTP (PP); Sat, 4 May 1996 21:13:03 +0100
Received: by emout09.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id PAA29156; Sat, 4 May 1996 15:35:53 -0400
Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 15:35:53 -0400
From: Jeanchev@aol.com
Message-ID: 960504153553_287142426@emout09.mail.aol.com
Subject: CRaZy Complimentary Offer........
This is a post from Kevin Lipsitz for his "=== FREE 1 yr. USA Magazine Subscriptions". Reports are that he doesn't provide very good service after the sale of the subscription (that is if you even get a magazine). In relation to the Internet he makes a slimy used car salesman look like a saint.
The latest information indicates that the state of New York has told him he should stop abusing the Internet for a while ... lets hope it is forever.
For more info about "Krazy Kevin" or the Magazine Spam , Tony tells us the page "Stop Spam!" is available in html format at:
http://www.iac.co.jp/~issho/stop-spam.html
But as David reminds us, There are a million Kevin J. Lipsitz's out there. All selling magazines, Amway, vitamins, phone service, etc. All the losers who want to get rich quick, but can't start their own business.
Like :
http://com.primenet.com/spamking/
That having been said, e-mail from a Listserve can usually be broken down the same way as "normal" e-mail headers. There are just more waypoints along the way. As you can see from the above, the e-mail originated from :
emout09.mail.aol.com
You might with to also direct the listserve owner to look at & ask questions in news.admin.net-abuse.misc about how to keep spam off the listserve. It probably won't be all that difficult of a thing to do.
Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message
============================================
If someone posts a message with your e-mail in the From: or Reply-To: field, it can (and will if you request) be canceled. Please repost the message to news.admin.net-abuse.misc WITH THE HEADERS (or it will probably be ignored) so that the message cam be canceled (the message-id is the most important) with a suggested subject of the following:
Subject: FORGERY Subject from the Spam message
Try to make sure that the message has not already been posted to news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.net-abuse.email or news.admin.net-abuse.usenet and that it is less than 4 or 5 days old. Chris reminds us that yes, there are a lot of annoying, off-topic and stupid postings out there. But that doesn't make it spam. _Really_. All we're concerned with is _volume_. Don't report any potential spams unless you see at least two copies in at least 4 groups. The content is irrelevant. Spam canceling cannot be by content.
For off topic posts, see http://digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html
The first thing to do is to post the ENTIRE message (PLEASE put the header in or it will probably be ignored) to the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Do not reply or post it back to the original group. A suggested subject is one of the following:
Subject: EMP Subject from the Spam message
Subject: ECP Subject from the Spam message
Subject: UCE Subject from the Spam message
Subject: SEX Subject from the Spam message
Please include the original Subject: from the original Spam so that it can easily be spotted. Thank you.
An Excessive Multiple Post (EMP) may exceed the spam threshold and may be canceled. An Excessive Cross Post (ECP) may not be canceled because it hasn't reached the threshold. A UCE is for Unsolicited Commercial Email, SEX is for off-topic sex-ad postings.
Make Money Fast message is immediately cancelable and are usually canceled already by others, so please do not report MMF posts. See MMF section below.
Tracing a fake post is probably easier than a fake e-mail because of some posting peculiarities. You just have to save and look at a few "normal" posts to try to spot peculiarities. Most people are not energetic to go to the lengths of the below, but you never know.
Dan reminds us that first you should gather the same post from *several* different sites (get your friends to mail the posts to you) and look at the "Path" line. Somewhere it should "branch". If there is a portion that is common to all posts, then the "actual" posting computer is (most likely) in that portion of the path. That should be the starting postmaster to contact. Be sure to do this expeditiously because the log files that help to trace these posts may be deleted daily.
If you *really* want to see some fake posts, look in alt.test or in the alt.binaries.wares.* groups.
A fake post:
Path: ...!news.sprintlink.net!in2.uu.net!news.net99.net!news!s46.phxslip4.indirect.com!vac
From: XXX@indirect.com(Female User)
Subject: Femdom In Search of Naughty Boys
Message-ID: DHLMvE.24H@goodnet.com
Sender: XXX@indirect.com(Female User)
Nntp-Posting-Host: s46.phxslip4.indirect.com
Organization: Internet Direct, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows[Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #1]
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 01:59:38 GMT
Approved: XXX@indirect.com
Lines: 13
This poor lady (Name deleted by suggestion) was abused by someone for a couple of days in an epic spam. Many messages were gathered. The message ID was different for several messages. But several anomalies showed an inept poster.
The headers were screwed up, and when looking at a selection of messages from several sites, the central site was news.net99.net, where goodnet.com gets / injects news at. This lead to the conclusion that either goodnet.com or news.net99.net should be contacted to see who the original spammer was. I never heard the results of this, but the spamming eventually stopped.
You can try looking at sites & see if they have that message by :
telnet s46.phxslip4.indirect.com 119
Connected to s46.phxslip4.indirect.com.
200 s46.phxslip4.indirect.com InterNetNews server INN 1.4 22-Dec-93 ready
430
Message was not found at that site, so it did not go thru that computer, or the article has already expired or been deleted off of that news reader.
If you wish to track a particular phrase, user-id (whatever) take a look at the URL for getting all the posts pertaining to "X" :
WWW IP Lookup URL's
=============================
A whole *host* of WWW IP utils is thoughtfully provided by Mike at :
http://sh1.ro.com/~mprevost/netutils/netutils.html
IP lookup:
http://www.aggroup.com/AGNetTools/
Or Yet Another Traceroute :
http://www.frontiernet.net/cgi-bin/trace-route
For a WWW version of Dig :
http://sh1.ro.com/~mprevost/netutils/dig.html
SWITCH WHOIS Gateway:
http://www.alldomains.com/nfindex.html - Worldwide Domain lookup
http://www.switch.ch/switch/info/whois_form.html
Or
http://www.internic.net/wp/whois.html
IP to Lat - Lon (For those times when only a Tactical Nuke will do ;-)) :
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2ll/
http://www-pablo.cs.uiuc.edu/~slamm/ip2ll/links.html
Yet Another IP to name:
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2name
Converting that IP to a name
=============================
When all you have is a number the looks like "204.183.126.181", and no computer name, then you have to figure out what the name of that computer is. Most likely if you complain to " postmaster@[204.183.126.181] " it will go directly to the spammer themselves (if it goes anywhere at all).
Marty reminds us that there are some "special" IP's that are allocated as private networks. These fall within the confines of 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 but should be ignored. Two of these are 10.X.X.X and 172.16.X.X ... See :
http://www.umnet.umich.edu/groups/UMnet-Routing/UAssignedPrivateIP.html
First off try using NSLookup (there is software for PC's or look at the URL's at the top of this FAQ). If the NSLookup does not give you a name then try a Traceroute. Somewhere you will get a "name" and at that point I would complain to the postmaster@that name. See below for complaint addresses.
If the site is a IP address like "198.41.0.5", you can do a DNS lookup to backtrack the site. A DNS lookup or a host command (see example below) uses the info in a Domain Name Server database. This is the same info that is used for packet routing. The UNIX command is :
nslookup 198.41.0.5
Commands:
nslookup hostname dns_server
or
dig @dns_server hostname
And you get :
Name: RS.INTERNIC.NET
Addresses: 198.41.0.5, 198.41.0.6
If you are having problems with this, Josh suggests you try :
$ nslookup
Default Server: ddi.digital.net
Address: 198.69.104.2
set type=ptr
181.126.183.204.in-addr.arpa
Server: ddi.digital.net
Address: 198.69.104.2
Non-authoritative answer:
181.126.183.204.in-addr.arpa name = kjl.com
Authoritative answers can be found from:
126.183.204.IN-ADDR.ARPA nameserver = escape.com
126.183.204.IN-ADDR.ARPA nameserver = ns.uu.net
escape.com Internet address = 198.6.71.10
ns.uu.net Internet address = 137.39.1.3
InterNIC is your friend. The InterNIC Registration Services Host contains ONLY Internet Information (Networks, ASN's, Domains, and POC's). Please use the whois server at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information. Try :
telnet rs.internic.net
whois 198.41.0.5
Dan has said that the NIC technical contact is the address to contact if there is a technical problem with the name service records for that domain. Sending spam notifications to the zone tech contact is an abuse of the NIC whois records. Sending to the admin contact is marginally more justifiable, but should only be used after postmaster has been tried.
Thanx to Leslie, whom to contact about domains that have invalid contact information :
Internic Registration Services should be contacted by email:
To see who the upstream provider is, try :
traceroute ip30.abq-dialin.hollyberry.com
You might get :
traceroute to IP30.ABQ-DIALIN.HOLLYBERRY.COM (165.247.201.30), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 cpe2.Washington.mci.net (192.41.177.181) 190 ms 210 ms 120 ms
2 borderx1-hssi2-0.Washington.mci.net (204.70.74.101) 100 ms 100 ms 60 ms
3 core-fddi-0.Washington.mci.net (204.70.2.1) 180 ms 130 ms 70 ms
4 core1-hssi-4.LosAngeles.mci.net (204.70.1.177) 150 ms 140 ms 150 ms
5 core-hssi-4.Bloomington.mci.net (204.70.1.142) 180 ms 200 ms 180 ms
6 border1-fddi-0.Bloomington.mci.net (204.70.2.130) 170 ms 290 ms 240 ms
7 internet-direct.Bloomington.mci.net (204.70.48.30) 300 ms 210 ms 270 ms
8 165.247.70.1 (165.247.70.1) 180 ms 240 ms 180 ms
9 abq-phx-gw1.indirect.com (165.247.202.253) 290 ms 220 ms 230 ms
10 * * *
Humm..... Seems that after abq-phx-gw1.indirect.com we get no response, so *that* is who I would complain to... or you can just send a message to postmaster@indirect.com ... If that doesn't work then complain to MCI.net.
JamBreaker sez : Be sure to let the traceroute go until the traceroute stops after 30 hops or so. A reply of "* * *" doesn't mean that you've got the right destination; it just means that either the gateways don't send ICMP "time exceeded" messages or that they send them with a ttl (time-to-live) too small to reach you.
Try 'dig' (or one of its derivatives), it is used to search DNS records :
(For the software : http://www.rediris.es/ftp/infoiris/red/ip/dns/dig-2.0/
yourhost dig -x 38.11.185.89
; dig 2.0 -x
;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY , status: NOERROR, id: 6
;; flags: qr aa rd ra ; Ques: 1, Ans: 1, Auth: 3, Addit: 3
;; QUESTIONS:
;; 89.185.11.38.in-addr.arpa, type = ANY, class = IN
;; ANSWERS:
89.185.11.38.in-addr.arpa. 86400 PTR ip89.albuquerque.nm.interramp.com.
;; AUTHORITY RECORDS:
11.38.in-addr.arpa. 86400 NS ns.psi.net.
11.38.in-addr.arpa. 86400 NS ns2.psi.net.
11.38.in-addr.arpa. 86400 NS ns5.psi.net.
;; ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
ns.psi.net. 86400 A 192.33.4.10
ns2.psi.net. 86400 A 38.8.50.2
ns5.psi.net. 86400 A 38.8.5.2
;; Sent 1 pkts, answer found in time: 64 msec
;; FROM: (yourhostname) to SERVER: default -- (yourDNSip)
;; WHEN: Thu Nov 16 23:30:42 1995
;; MSG SIZE sent: 43 rcvd: 216
A list of Usenet complaint addresses
============================================
O.K... So you have a common site that you can complain to. Good. If you cannot figure out where the message came from, you can post the FULL HEADERS (this is *very* important for tracing) to news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.net-abuse.email or news.admin.net-abuse.usenet (see the section entitled Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message). Usually you can get someone to help with the message.
If you complain (or asked to be removed) to the spammer directly, you may just be confirming a "real" live e-mail address, which may lead to even more junk e-mail. I would suggest complaining to the owner of the site only. You can send e-mail to foo.bar.com@abuse.net (where foo.bar.com is the provider you are complaining to) and it will get forwarded to the "best" e-mail address.. See http://www.abuse.net/
There is a list of admins to contact (besides the list contained here):
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/ComplainToWhom.html
http://www-fofa.concordia.ca/spam/complaints.shtml
Greg reminds us that if you are complaining to a postmaster about a week-old post, don't bother. It's not on their server, they can't verify it. Make sure you use terms correctly. A recent trend is to call any off-topic post "spam". It's not. I deal with spammers and off-topic or advertising posters differently. Other providers do also. Also, try to keep the clutter in your complaints down. I don't need a copy of the referenced RFC or statute. It doesn't help either of us if I can't find your complaint in between all the mumbo jumbo.
Send complaint with FULL HEADERS in e-mail to any or all of the below :
Note : abuse@site.net and admin@site.net are not "standard" complaint e-mail addresses, but I have seen those listed more and more frequently.
A nice Perl script put together to complain about spam (by Nate) is at :
http://www.metareality.com/~nathan/visit.cgi/spam/html.Perl
Chris tells us :
If you see MMFs or other gross abuses from AOL, MSN, MCI (_not_internetmci), Primenet, Panix, please do not report them to news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Just wastes bandwidth. Email your report directly to the provider:
By "gross abuses", please try to ensure that it really is likely to be spam. Not one article cross-posted lots, but lots of articles that you see yourself. In AOL or MCI's case, the definition of abuse is somewhat stricter (AOL bans commercial use. MCI's tolerance thresholds is lower)
For the following providers the correct e-mail address is:
ABSnet - support@abs.net or abs-admin@abs.net
AGIS.NET - postmaster@AGIS.NET or abuse@agis.net
Aloha.Net - abuse@aloha.net
AOL - abuse@aol.com . Emergency - send complete copies to atropos@aol.net
www.angelfire.com or angelfire.com - mail@angelfire.com
Ameritech.net - abuse@content.ameritech.net - $1,000 fine for Spam :-)
APNIC.net - IP Lookup - whois -h whois.apnic.net IP address - APINC Does not provide network services. APINC is the Internet registry for the Asia and Pacific Rim regions -- we primarily delegate blocks of addresses to service providers. We do not run a network (other than our internal network) nor do we have customers or non-staff accounts.
AT&T - dial-access.att.net - abuse@att.net
AT&T WorldNet Services - abuse@worldnet.att.net
BCtel.net - abuse@bctel.net - http://www.bctel.net/aup
Bellatlantic.net - abuse@bellatlantic.net
Bellsouth - abuse@bellsouth.net
Best.com - abuse@best.com
Cais.net - noc@cais.com - http://www.cais.net/caisweb/cais-aup.html - CAIS acceptable use
Codetel.net.do - SysAdmin@auth2.codetel.net.do
coam.net - abuse@coam.net
Com.BR - Policy - demi@agestado.com.br security violations write the list cert-br@listas.ansp.br
Compuserve - abuse@compuserve.com
Concentric.net - abuse@concentric.net - http://www.concentric.net/support/tos
Cyberlynk.net - abuse@cyberlynk.net - http://www.cyberlynk.net/policies.html
CyberPromo.com - Cyberpromo has finally been eliminated. See http://members.aol.com/macabrus/cpfaq.html
Demon.net - abuse@demon.net , postmaster@demon.net or newsmaster@demon.net
DejaNews - abuse@dejanews.com - See http://postnews.dejanews.com/post.xp
Dialsprint.net - abuse@dialsprint.net
Digex.net - abuse@digex.net (along with your name & postal address (including city & state) http://www.access.digex.net/~policy/digex-aup.html
Digital-market.com - www.digital-market.com - See CyberPromo
Direct.CA - complaints@direct.ca
earthlink.net - abuse@earthlink.net or spam@earthlink.net http://www.earthlink.net/company/aupolicy.html - Acceptable use
Erols.com - abuse@erols.com
Exec-PC Inc. - abuse@execpc.com
Freenet.carleton.ca - abuse@freenet.carleton.ca
Funtv.com - webmaster@funtv.com
Geocities.com - abuse@geocities.com
gergs_bane.org (does not exist, it is faked) - See UUNET - help@uunet.uu.net
GlobeComm, Inc. - GlobeComm is the parent company of iName - abuse@iname.com
GNN.Com - For help regarding a problem with a GNN member - GNNadvisor@gnn.com.
GTE.net - abuse@gte.net
Hongkong's ISPs - send an email to hkinet@glink.net.hk with anything in the subject/body. You'll get a most recent version of the list contacts by email within minutes.
Hotmail.com - abuse@hotmail.com - http://www.hotmail.com/nospam.html
IBM Net - abuse@ibm.net - Also see http://www.ibm.net/helpdesk.html
IDT.Net - abuse@idt.net, but parthiv@admin.idt.net is an emergency contact
iName - iname.com - abuse@iname.com
Inreach.com - postmaster@inreach.com - http://www.inreach.com/inreach/AUP.html
interramp.com - abuse@interramp.com or psinet-domain-admin@PSI.COM
interserve.com.hk - Mr. K H Lee - khlee@interserve.com.hk.
INS Info Services (netins.net) - abuse@netins.net
iSTAR Canada (istar.ca, inforamp.net, hotstar.net, magi.com, or nstn.ca) - abuse@iSTAR.ca
Juno.com - postmaster@juno.com
LAKER.NET admin@laker.net or VOICE 1-954-359-3670 FAX 1-954-359-2741
Loop.Com or Loop.net - greg@loop.com
MALIBU - postmaster@pbi.net
MCI Net - spamcomplaints@MCI.NET For security problems see http://www.security.MCI.NET
Campus.MCI.Net - postmaster@campus.mci.net
MCSNet - support@mcs.net
Mindspring.com - abuse@mindspring.com See: http://www.mindspring.com/aboutms/policy.html
ML.org - abuse@ml.org
money.com or money.now - postmaster@cam.org
MS.UU.Net - Example CustXX.MaxXX.city.ST.MS.UU.NET and explicitly contains an MSN e-mail address (@msn.com) - abuse@msn.com
MS.UU.Net - Example CustXX.MaxXX.city.ST.MS.UU.NET and does not have @msn.com - fraud@uu.net
Netcom or @ix.netcom.com - Put "E-Mail" or "News" in Subject - abuse@netcom.com for standard SPAM junk. security@netcom.com is for instances of forgery, cracking etc. NetCruiser Technical Support - support@ix.netcom.com. For a Netcom network customer (like shippingplanet.com) send e-mail to noc@noc.netcom.net.
Netcom.ca - abuse@netcom.ca
Netins.net - abuse@netins.net
pacbell.net - david@pbi.net, policy@pbi.net
Pipeline.com - postmaster@pipeline.com
PIPEX- postmaster@dial.pipex.com , International - int-sup@pipex.net , Unipalm PIPEX - postmaster@unipalm.pipex.com
portal.com - support@portal.com
Prodigy - mailadm@prodigy.com or abuse@prodigy.net (but many times this mailbox is full). I don't think postmaster@prodigy.com is read by a person. Security issues can be sent to security@prodigy.com .
pwrnet - abuse@pwrnet.com
PSI Net - abuse@psi.com , net-abuse@psi.com PSI Net policies - http://www.psi.net/csg/netabuse.html ... Note : Earthlink uses PSINet's pops
Rain.net - abuse@rain.net
savetrees.com - See CyberPromo.com
Slip Net - hellman@slip.net - Tech Support
Southwindent.com - dave@vcity.net - See http://www.southwindent.com/policies.htm
Sprint - abuse@sprint.net
Sprintlink - 800-669-8303 abuse@sprint.net , noc@sprintlink.net . For dialsprint.net abuse reports send to abuse@dialsprint.net . For sprintmail.com abuse reports send to abuse@sprintmail.com . You can view Sprint's Policy at http://www.sprintbiz.com/data1/ip/policy.html
sprynet - postmaster@spry.com
SWBell.net - postmaster@swbell.net See : http://www.swbell.net/legal/use.html
Teleport System Administration - teleport.com - admin@teleport.com
tip.net - postmaster@tip.net hh@tip.net
University of Pennsylvania - millar@pobox.upenn.edu - For security matters : security@isc.upenn.edu
Other matters: millar@pobox.upenn.edu
USA.Net - http://netaddress.usa.net/nospam.html
UK.uu.net - E-Mail problems - mail@support.uk.uu.net , News problems - news@support.uk.uu.net , Security problems - security@support.uk.uu.net
UUNET Customer Liaison - MASSMAIL (E-Mail SPAMS) - fraud@uu.net (just the e-mail and headers, nothing else), Newsgroup Spams - spam-complaint@uu.net . help@uunet.uu.net See Also MS.UU.Net - For abuse of the open UUNET NNTP port, UUNET will block the site if you complain. See Gergsbane.org
From : David Jackson (djackson@aol.net) (and this applies to *any* abuse) :
To report an instance of USENET abuse send mail to postmaster@aol.com - please remember to include a complete copy of the USENET article, including all headers, to help us quickly quash the abuse.
Scott reminds us :
It might also be a good idea to remind people that sometimes the postmaster _is_ the spammer. Joe Spam might have his own domain (since they _used_ to be free) inside of which they are the postmaster. This is terrifyingly common with net.twits (kooks, etc.) but seems rare for spam. A quick note that if the spammer is the admin contact in whois, notifying the postmaster will surely generate laughs on their end.
In the letter to the postmaster, you might wish to mention Joel's very good FAQ about advertising on the Internet :
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/usenet/advertising/how-to/part1.html
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/usenet/advertising/how-to/part1/faq.html
And where they *should* advertise :
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/finding-groups/general.html
Or for why posting business or e-mailing business ads are bad :
http://www.phoenix.net/~lildan/FAQ/commercial-ads-faq.html
If you don't get a proper response from the postmaster, remember, Whois - rs.internic.net is your friend. See the section labeled "Converting that IP to a name" for more information on Internic.
This *should* get you a person to talk to & their personal e-mail address. If you don't get any response from that postmaster, then you should try the provider to that site. This gets a little trickier, but a traceroute should show you the upstream provider, and from there you can try contacting the postmasters of *that* site.
Any non-profit organization (like a University) should be very happy to help get rid of a spammer if the non-profit organizations resources are being used to spam a for-profit business. The IRS can take their non-profit status away for such things. Talk to the legal council at the non-profit organization if you don't get a positive response from the postmaster.
Worst case, a site can be UDP (Usenet Death Penalty) out so that other sites stop accepting news or even e-mail from that site. They are cut off from the net. Decisions like this are discussed in the news group news.admin.net-abuse.misc .
If the spammer site has problems trying to figure out where the spam came from, they can *always* get help from the denizens of news.admin.net-abuse.misc, but have them take a look at their logs first and see if they see something like (Thanks to help from Michael):
My news logs (for INND) are:
$ cd /usr/log/news
$ ls
OLD expire.log news.err unwanted.log
errlog news news.notice
expire.list news.crit nntpsend.log
and here is my syslog.conf:
## news stuff
news.crit /usr/log/news/news.crit
news.err /usr/log/news/news.err
news.notice /usr/log/news/news.notice
news.info /usr/log/news/news
news.debug /usr/log/news/news.debug
but, what they need to remember, is they HAVE TO LOOK QUICK!. INND expire puts all these logs in OLD, and recycles them, and expires them at the 7th day (and gzips them), i.e., OLD/:
ls -l news.?.*
-r--r----- 1 news news 181098 May 23 06:26 news.1.gz
...
-r--r----- 1 news news 319343 May 17 06:29 news.7.gz
so... to grep an old log looking for sfa.ufl.edu:
(the {nn} is how many days ago, 1 is yesterday, 2 is 2 days ago, etc)
cd {log/OLD}
gunzip -c news.1.gz | grep sfa.ufl.edu | more
Fraud on the Internet and The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts
================================================================
A partnership of the National Association of Attorneys General, the Federal Trade Commission and The National Consumers League :
Call 1-800-876-7060 or fill out an on-line scam sheet:
http://www.fraud.com/nficmail.htm
The Better Business Bureau has a web site at:
To give feedback, go directly to:
http://www.bbb.org/council/feedback/index.html
Hoaxes and scams :
http://www.abraxis.com/fans/PAGE_7.htm
http://www2.scambusters.org/scambusters/
Subscribe to the fraud discussion at :
To subscribe by email send a message to :
The body of the message to read :
join fraudnews
In the United States :
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission web page (stock solicitations) http://www.sec.gov/enforce/comctr.htm or Email: enforcement@sec.gov
The Food and Drug Administration :
http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/problem.html
Make Money Fast is a pyramid (or Ponzi) scheme where you are in a chain of people wherein you send money to a few people and try to recruit others to send money to you. Basically if it even remotely smells like a MMF scheme it is illegal (even tho' many of the MMF schemes "claim" to have been looked at by a lawyer or checked by the United States Postal Authorities).
For a list of countries where Make Money Fast is illegal see :
http://www.pacifier.com/~klucke/mmf/mmf_table.html
http://www.pacifier.com/~klucke/mmf/mmf_myth.html
http://www.clark.net/pub/rolf/mmf/home.html
Please, only report MMFs in news.admin.net-abuse.misc if they're spam and you've seen it in lots of groups and / or the postmaster/user are defiantly stupid.
MMFs should be reported to the user and their postmaster and the following :
The law in Australia and where to send complaints to :
http://www.wa.gov.au/gov/mft/pages/mftbn10.html
Ministry of Fair Trading
P O Box 6355
EAST PERTH 6536
In Canada I believe that the applicable Canadian description can be found at :
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/html/commerc.htm
And from the Canadian Department of Justice server ( http://canada.justice.gc.ca/ ):
STATUTES OF CANADA, C, Competition - PART VI OFFENSES IN RELATION TO COMPETITION - Definition of "scheme of pyramid selling" - Section 55.1
EXTRACT FROM THE CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODE
Chain-letters
206. (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years who . . .
Pyramid Schemes
55.1 (1) For the purposes of this section, "scheme of pyramid selling" means a multi-level marketing plan whereby ...
United Kingdoms:
Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy Directorate 2
Department of Trade and Industry, 1 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0ET
Tel: 0171 215 0344
Have a booklet called 'The Trading Schemes Guide' which is very useful
indeed and explains the UK legal details on these things,
In the United States, you should write the Federal Trade Commission Ms. Broder ( bbroder@ftc.gov ). For more info on pyramid schemes use pyramid@ftc.gov
To find your nearest postal inspector in the USA, see URL
http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/locators/find-is.html
California MMF law :
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquery?codesection=pen&codebody=endless
DOES ANYBODY HAVE POSTAL INSPECTOR ADDRESSES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES THAT PONZI / MMF SCHEMES ARE ILLEGAL IN?
Trying to catch the suspect still logged on
==================================================
If you think you know a machine close to the spammer, you can change your default DNS lookup server (and get *lots* more info ;-)) by :
$ nslookup
server wb3ffv.abs.net
Default Server: wb3ffv.abs.net
Address: 206.42.80.130
ls -d kjl.com
[wb3ffv.abs.net]
kjl.com. SOA kjl.com dns-admin.abs.net. (10 21600 3600604800 86400)
kjl.com. NS ns1.abs.net
kjl.com. NS ns2.abs.net
kjl.com. MX 10 abs.net
kjl.com. SOA kjl.com dns-admin.abs.net. (10 21600 3600604800 86400)
If you are quick enough, you can see if the spammer is still on by :
rusers rust.nmt.edu
And you might get :
kuller ray timbers jweinman timbers john timbers rayzer
Assuming that the spammer is from ingress.com you can expand the Spammers UserID (some sites have expn / vrfy turned off) by:
telnet ingress.com smtp
Trying 199.171.57.2 ...
Connected to ingress.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ingress.com Sendmail 4.1/SMI-4.1 ready at Sun, 22 Oct 95 15:13:39 EDT
expn krazykev
250 Lipsitz Kevin krazykev@kjl.com
We connect to port 25 (smtp) and issues an expn command. Looks like krazykev@kjl.com is being used as a maildrop for this user. I'll would send my complaint to postmaster@kjl.com as well (not that it would do any good in Krazy Kevin's case... but the reply to your e-mail might be amusing).
To find out the Mail Exchange records, do a nslookup for the MX records only. You can then look up the expansion of the postmaster or root to see who they really are. For example :
% nslookup
set type=mx
gnn.com
gnn.com preference = 20, mail exchanger = mail-e1a.gnn.com
gnn.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail-e1b.gnn.com
% telnet mail-e1a.gnn.com smtp
220 mail-e1a.gnn.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.7.1/8.6.9 ready at Thu, 11 Jan 1996 12:54:26 -0500 (EST)
expn postmaster
250 gnnadvisor@mail-e1a.gnn.com
expn root
You can use the 'host' command. It's really simple:
% host -t any domain.name
This will give you anything your name server can find out.
% host -t ns domain.name
This tells you the name servers. Not all systems have host, but it's a small program which should be easy to compile (like whois).
The command "last" will tell where the spammer logged on from last, but it has to be done by a user from that site. For example :
last imrket4u
Would produce :
imrket4u ttypf ip30.abq-dialin.hollyberry.com Fri Sep 15 00:27 - 00:34 (00:06)
imrket4u ttyq8 ip30.abq-dialin.hollyberry.com Fri Sep 15 00:19 - 00:20 (00:01)
imrket4u ttyqc abq-ts1 Thu Sep 14 20:42 - 22:21 (01:39)
imrket4u ttyqc rust.nmt.edu Thu Sep 14 18:39 - 18:41 (00:01)
imrket4u ttypb abq-ts1 Thu Sep 14 17:55 - 17:57 (00:02)
Filtering E-Mail using procmail or News with Gnus
==================================================
Get the procmail FAQ :
http://www.ii.com/internet/faqs/launchers/mail/filtering-faq/
or
http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/faqs/launchers/mail/filtering-faq/
http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/
or
http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/robots/
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/filtering-faq/faq.html
Or read about it when it is posted to :
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc , comp.mail.elm , comp.mail.pine , comp.answers , news.answers
Subject: Filtering Mail FAQ
Bob tells me that Eudora Pro has a good filtering capability. You can filer based on who you send e-mail to, known spammers, etc. Enough filters and you may see hardly any Spam. Claris E-Mailer, likewise, has a filter option.
Brian has a Gnus scorefile from the Internet blacklist :
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/gnus/BLACKLIST
Or his example global scorefile :
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/gnus/SCORE
Many news readers have a "kill" file that will filter out the posts from either a certain user-id, or posts with certain titles. Each news reader is unique. You might wish to read the help file on the subject of kill files.
Rejecting E-Mail from domains that continue to Spam
====================================================
Spamfilters can be found at:
http://www.io.com/~johnbob/jm/index.html
http://www.samiam.org/spam/index.html
http://www.best.com/~ariel/nospam
List of spammers:
http://www.samiam.org/spam/spammers.txt
http://www.idot.aol.com/preferredmail/
Or look at a page on how to block e-mail :
http://www.nepean.uws.edu.au/users/david/pe/blockmail.html
Sendmail patch that permits filtering by envelope sender and recipient as well as by Received: lines, header recipient (To: friends@public..) and enables refusing of relaying _before_ transmission of the message:
ftp://ftp.hiss.org/pup/sendmail
Ask your admin to add the following to their sendmail.cf. This will reject all mail that continues to come in from domains that only send out spam. This is a group effort from many admins :
Modify your sendmail.cf in the following way.
1. Setup a hash table with the domains you wish to block:
# Bad domains (spam kings)
FK/etc/mailspamdomains
2. Add the following rules to S98 (be sure that there are three lines (i.e. the lines are not split up) and be sure to put a TAB character between the $* and the $#error, not a space) :
### Spam blockage
R$* @$*$=K . $* $#error $@ 5.1.3 $: "Your domain has been blocked due to spam problems. Contact your administrator."
R$* @$*$=K $* $#error $@ 5.1.3 $: "Your domain has been blocked due to spam problems. Contact your administrator."
3. Make your hash table. Here is a very small example :
moneyworld.com
globalfn.com
Mail that comes in from any of these domains will be returned to sender with the error. If the sender is bogus, it will bother the postmaster at the bad domain in an appropriate manner.
Keep in mind that *ALL* email from these domains will be blocked. This is really only a good solution for domains that are setup by spammers for spamming. Blocking something like aol.com, although it may seem initially attractive, would cause problems for legitimate users of email in that domain. Compile your list after careful verification that these domains fit the above description.
Misc.
=================================
Origins of Spam
======================
The history of calling inappropriate postings in great numbers "Spam" is from a Monty Python skit (yes, it is very silly... see http://www.ironworks.com/comedy/python/spam.htm ) where a couple go into a restaurant, and the wife tries to get something other than Spam. In the background are a bunch of Vikings that sing the praises of Spam. Pretty soon the only thing you can hear in the skit is the word "Spam". That same idea would happen to the Internet if large scale inappropriate postings were allowed. You couldn't pick the real postings out from the Spam.
Bob's alternate view is that SPAM is an acronym for Send Phenomenal Amounts of Mail.
To join a discussion list for Spams, send a message to listserv@internet.com
In the body of the message type :
subscribe spamad your_name your_affiliation
Or a real mailing list for the discussion on spamming and about what is and/or isn't possible in dealing with this problem. If you would like to join the mailing list send mail to majordomo@psc.edu with the following message in the body :
subscribe spam-list [preferred address]
Black listed Internet Advertisers :
http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/ (Europe)
or
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/BL/ (USA)
First off, the only CORRECT way to "Spam" the net :
Show SPAM Gifts http://wolf.co.net/spamgift/index.html
Or for the free SPAM recipe Book ($1.00 postage and handling) :
SPAM recipe Book, P.O. Box 5000, Austin, MN 55912
Or for SPAM merchandise and apparel call 1-800-LUV-SPAM
The Church of Spam :
http://www.goodnet.com/~swiggy/
There is also a letter circulating about "dying boy wants postcards" (Craig Shergold) which is no longer true. Same as with the Blue Star LSD addicting children hoax. See Urban Folklore FAQ at :
http://www.urbanlegends.com/classic/craig.shergold/craig_nyt.html
http://www.urbanlegends.com/classic/blue.star.tattoos/blue_star_lsd_faq.html
A complete Urban Legends listings (It is big) :
http://www.urbanlegends.com/afu.faq/listing.html
There has been some discussion that such things should be canceled because they exceed the BI 20 index. They are untrue and they waste bandwidth.
How *did* I get this unsolicited e-mail anyway?
==================================================
Unfortunately just posting a message to a news group can get unsolicited e-mail. Some spammers "harvest" e-mail addresses by stripping e-mail return addresses out of messages people post. Try posting to alt.test a few times. You will get not only a few autoresponder messages (that is how it is *supposed* to work) but also a few unsolicited pieces of e-mail.
Another way to get e-mail is to have a World Wide Web page. Some spammers just start a web spider (a piece of software that just traverses World Wide Web pages and collects information) going and collect e-mail that way. A suggestion of some nasty little HTML items to have in your WWW page (invisible, of course) are :
A HREF="mailto:root@[127.0.0.1]"/a
or if your server allows "server-side includes" (and .shtml) :
a href="mailto:abuse@!--#echo var="REMOTE_ADDR"-- "anti spambot/a
Also you might include a mail to news gateway like the following so that the Spam is posted to Usenet :
See http://www.sabotage.org/~don/mail2news.html for mail to news gateways.
A HREF="mailto:news.admin.net-abuse.email@myriad.alias.net"/a
Or
A HREF="mailto:news.admin.net-abuse.misc@myriad.alias.net"/a
Or
A HREF="mailto:news.admin.net-abuse.usenet@myriad.alias.net"/a
Note : You should note on your World Wide Web page that these links should *not* be followed by Lynx users, as they will see them no matter how you choose not to display them on a graphical interface. The last few in the below list are particularly not nice as they execute commands on a UNIX host. Substitute root@[127.0.0.1] with any of the following :
postmaster abuse root admin postmaster@localhost abuse@localhost root@localhost admin@localhost postmaster@loopback abuse@loopback root@loopback admin@loopback
`cat /dev/zero /tmp/...`@localhost
;cat /dev/zero /tmp/...;@localhost
`umount /tmp`@localhost
;umount /tmp;@localhost
1-900, 1-800 and 1-XXX may be expensive long distance phone calls
=================================================================
Be very careful when dialing a 1-800 or a long distance number you are not familiar with. It may end up being a very expensive mistake. Remember to dial these numbers from a phone booth so that your home phone will never be charged.
All 1-800 numbers are *not* free. See below.
Likewise, numbers that may "look" like they are United States long distance phone numbers may in fact be out of country and may cost you $25 or more for a couple of minutes call. These calls are not refundable. A scam artist trying to get money from the phone calls (he gets a skim off the top) was dialing random beepers with an out of country number.
Some area codes to look for (some may not be active for another year or two):
(Also see http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/assignments.html
)
242 Bahamas
246 Barbados
264 Anguilla
268 Antigua
284 British Virgin Islands
340 U.S. Virgin Islands
345 Cayman Islands
441 Bermuda
473 Grenada
649 Turks and Caicos
664 Monserrat
670 CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands?)
671 Guam
758 St. Lucia
767 Dominica
784 St. Vincent and Grenadines
787 Puerto Rico
868 Trinidad and Tobago
869 St. Kitts and Nevis
876 Jamaica
If the ad says "Procall", it is a large service bureau for 1-900 numbers in Arizona. When you call a pay-per-call number, there should be a recorded intro that will give a customer service number. That *should* connect with a live person.
I would like to thank Eileen at the FTC for kindly answering my questions about 1-900 & 1-800 phone numbers.
Paraphrasing what she e-mailed me :
When a 1-900 number is advertised, the price must also be disclosed (this may be found at 16 CFR Part 308).
When calling a 1-800 number that charges, there must be an existing subscription agreement between the buyer and the seller
http://www.ftc.gov/ Federal Trade Commission Home Page
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/telemark/rule.htm Telemarketing Sales Rule
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/telemark/telesale.htm Telemarketing Sales Rule
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/ Online Scams
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/fraud.htm Reporting fraud
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/conline.html Consumer Line
(from the "Online Scams page)
How To Respond to SPAM
===========================
Howard reminds us :
Note to all: NEVER followup to a spam. NEVER. Express your indignation in mail to the poster and/or the postmaster@offending.site, but NEVER in the newsgroups!
Karen asks:
But what about the newbies who look at a group, see lots of spam and ads, see NO posts decrying them, and conclude that ads are therefore OK?
Ran replies :
When it gets bad, you'll usually see some "What can we do about this?" threads. That's a good place to attach a reply that tells people why it's bad, and what they can, in fact, do.
Austin Suggests:
At the risk of attracting flames, let me suggest an exception to Howard's law. A followup is allowed if the following 3 conditions hold.
1) The offending article is clearly a SCAM (for instance, the *Canada* calls with the Seychelles Islands phone # scam)
2) No one else has followed-up with a posting identifying it as a scam (in other words, no 'Me too' warnings)
3) It is unlikely to be canceled soon, either because it seems to be below the thresholds, or it is in a local hierarchy that doesn't get cancels, or Chris Lewis is on vacation in the Seychelles Islands. If all three conditions are met, a followup that X's out the contact information , severely trims the contents and identifies the post as a scam is exempt from Howard's law.
Comments?
Bill's and Wolfgang's addition :
4) Follow-ups should be cross posted to news.admin.net-abuse.misc _and_ the groups of the spam, but Followup-To: *MUST* be set to news.admin.net-abuse.misc *ONLY*
_or_
post a follow-up and *SET* Followup-To: alt.dev.null.
In the first case change
Subject: Important FREE $$$
to
Subject: SPAM (was Re: Important FREE $$$)
and include the original Newsgroups and Message-ID line, so the professional despammers will immediately find what you're talking about. Do not post unless you're absolutely sure that you can do all that properly. Also 1) - 3) do apply.
If you see the same article with different Message-IDs in several groups, collect the _complete_ headers of each article and check news.admin.net-abuse.misc if it's already been reported. If not, start a thread with Subject: SPAM (was Re: original Subject) in news.admin.net-abuse.misc or news.admin.net-abuse.usenet . Include all of the headers and as much of the body of one article as you see fit.
Revenge - What to do & not to do
========================================
No matter how much we hate Spam and how much we dislike what the spammers to our quiet little corner of the Universe known as the Internet, Spam is not illegal (yet). If you try anything against the spammers, please * do not * put yourself in risk of breaking the law. It only makes them happy if you get in trouble because you were trying to get back at them.
The reason why spammers use "throwaway" accounts is because they know the e-mail account will be deleted. They usually provide either another e-mail address or a name / phone number or postal address so that prospective "customers" can be contacted. Be sure to complain to the postmaster of all e-mail names provided to make sure that this route is inhibited.
Telephoning someone
======================
Calling someone once is fine. If enough people are irritated at the spammer and they all call the 1-800 number the spammer provides, the spammer will get the idea (sooner or later) that it is costing them more in irate people (and most especially loss of business) and it is not worth it to spam.
Do not dial any phone numbers more than once from your home. Phone harassment is * illegal * and you * can * be prosecuted in court for this. Even tho' *67 prevents your number from being displayed on their telephone at home if they have caller ID, *57 will give the phone company the number. If it is a 1-800 number there are two problems. First they can *always* get your phone number, and secondly it may *not* be a toll free number. You may be charged for calling a 1-800 number.
Likewise, do not call collect using 1-800-COLLECT or 1-800-CALL-ATT from home, once again this can be traced.
Austin comments : I would say that calling a listed non-800 number *once* collect to voice a complaint is not harassment, but justified. They sent you a postage due message, didn't they? If they don't want to accept collect calls, they should say so - and if they do, you should be a responsible person and not do it again.
AT&T Information for 1-800 numbers is 1-800-555-1212, but that only helps if you know the company name you are trying to call. Also, you can try searching for a 1-800 number (you do not have to know the company name) at :
http://www.tollfree.att.net/dir800/
or
http://www.tollfree.att.net/dir800/advsea.html (advanced search options).
Other telephone search mechanisms:
Snail Mailing someone
=======================
Likewise, one well thought out letter sent to the spammer might help convince the spammer not to do this again. Especially if the spammer was part of a corporation that didn't realize the detrimental effects of spamming the Internet.
If you decide to deluge the spammers postal address by filling out one or two "bingo" (popcorn) postage paid cards in the technical magazines (by circling a few dozen "product info" requests per card & putting on printed out self sticking labels with the spammers address), or by putting preprinted labels on postage paid cards that come in the mail in the little plastic packages, don't organize a public campaign (that they can point to) against the spammer in the newsgroup.
Scott also reminds us :
Since this is the "Spam FAQ", I'd like to point this out: You're basically Spamming the company offering information in a magazine. It costs companies money, not the one you're spamming. They get a free pile of junk which is easy to throw out. In other words, this may be harming third parties more than the intended target. I'm not trying to be Mr. Nice Guy, just trying to point out an important technicality.
Junk Mail - The Law :
http://www.vtwctr.org/casewatch/
http://192.41.4.29/index.html - 'Lectric Law Library
You should also read Title 47 of the United States Code, Section 227. There is a FAQ at cornell.law.edu for the text of the law (gopher or ftp or http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.html ), and you can use DejaNews to read the USC 47 thread on news.admin.net-abuse.misc to make up your own mind (it invariably comes up) or you can look at :
http://www.cybernothing.org/docs/code47.5.II.txt
In Washington (State) (for example) fax laws (RCW 80.36.540 - Telefacsimile messages) define "telefacsimile message" in such a way that could be interpreted to include E-mail. It was not originally written to cover E-Mail, but that is for the courts to decide :-). California regulates it thru Section 17538(d) of the Business and Professions Code.
Organizing a campaign against the spammer in a news group could lead to the spammer trying to get a cease & desist police order against the organizers.
Disclaimer : I am not a lawyer, 80% of the Internet is bull, free advice is worth every penny you paid for it :-).
------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and
quick to anger.
E-Mail - gandalf@digital.net - Gandalf The White O- Ken Hollis
WWW Page - http://digital.net/~gandalf/
WWW Trace E-Mail forgery - http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
WWW Trolls crossposts - http://digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html
The image below is a link to a CGI program.
It is intended to foil E-mail harvesting robots.
It will randomly generate what looks like web page
after page. It is not suggested that you follow this link.
This link was for the old page at Geocities. Some brilliant genius from an unnamed company decided to harvest a friends mailto: link and tell him that "he" had a broken link. Well, I've put web-poison on every page in the PETI folder, and hopefully, we won't have that problem again.