Fighting the never ending tide of spam mail can turn
into a very frustrating experience if you don't know
the real tricks of the trade. After all, there's a
whole lot more to it than simply responding to a
(usually bogus) From: address with a peevish complaint!
Here's a fairly extensive overview of resources that
will aid you in effectively combatting unsolicited
email, showing you the possibilities (and, alas, the
limits!) of your endeavor.
General resources
The Spamhaus Project features a database tracks known
Spam Gangs, Spam Support Services and the providers who
keep organized spamming alive by knowingly hosting
stealth spamming services on their networks. An
extensive set of databases allows for tracking of
established spam outfits, including statistics, etc.
< http://www.spamhaus.org/ >
Look up this list of established spambots:
< http://mosa.unity.ncsu.edu/brabec/antispam.html >
Resources for header reading are listed at the
Forum for Responsible and Ethical E-mail (some broken
links, though):
< http://www.spamfree.org/resources/headerreading.html >
Some spambot harrassment programs are listed here:
< http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/harassment.html >
Spam.abuse.net calls for spam boycots and offers lots
of information an spam prevention legislation, and more.
< http://spam.abuse.net/ >
Read their useful guide titled "How To Complain To
The Spammer's Provider" at:
< http://spam.abuse.net/howtocomplain.html >
Mail forwarding services
Protect your mail box with disposable email addresses
by signing up with Sneakemail: this service forwards
everything to your regular box without disclosing your
real address. If you find your Sneakemail address is
being abused, you can simply delete it. Plus, it will
help you track down businesses that flog your address
to third party marketers. Neat.
< http://sneakemail.com/ >
Free email forwarding claiming to sport the net's best
anti-spam filters can be found at Despammed.com.
Basically, it works as a remote spam filter. (That's
why they term themselves a "mail filtration service".)
< http://www.despammed.com/ >
Spamex takes a similar approach, offering disposable
email addresses as a measure to counter spam. It
doesn't bother with sophisticated spam filters, though -
the minute your Spamex address receives spam, simply
nuke it and get a new one. You can also fit their log
in box link into your web browser's links bar for
facilitated access. Their slogan is noteworthy, too:
"Because Sending You Email is a Privilege Not a Right!"
< http://www.spamex.com/ >
One of the best known anti-spam forwarders is Spammotel
(what a name!) which also offers a pretty sophisticated,
award winning plug-in for your email client, allowing you
to keep track of whom you have given which email address
of yours. This, of course, makes it dead easy to test web
sites' privacy policy.
Moreover, it makes for a great tool to help you organize
the e-mail you actually do want to receive.
(Windows only.)
< http://www.spammotel.com/ >
Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC offers a commercial
spam protection forwarding service at:
< https://stop.mail-abuse.org/ >
Spam filters
Webmasters running their own mail server may be
interested in The MAPS Relay Spam Stopper, a queryable
DNS-based database of spam-relaying mail servers.
You can configure your server to utilize their list
if you want to refuse mail from these types of servers.
< http://work-rss.mail-abuse.org/rss/ >
The same site offers the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL).
This is a system for creating intentional network outages
("blackholes") for the purpose of limiting the transport
of known-to-be-unwanted mass e-mail. The RBL is a
subscription-only system, working in such a manner that
no one is denied connectivity to a non-RBLSM-subscriber.
< http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/ >
Reporting spam
This spam complaint primer spells it all out as it is
and offers a sample complaint covering every important
aspect of reporting spam to get spammers' accounts and
web sites terminated.
< http://combat.uxn.com racing.html >
The all-time classic to report spam to is the
not-for-profit Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC.
< http://mail-abuse.org/ >
The Network Abuse Clearinghouse is a complaint
service that will forward your spam complaints to the
culprits flooding your mail box.
< http://www.abuse.net/ >
The MMF Hall of Humiliation takes the approach of
ridicule to combat spammers. Lots of parodies and
spoofs of obnoxious unsolicited commercial emails,
and more. Still, it has a very serious background,
informing in detail about fraud indictments and
offering rudimentary legal analysis of spam scams.
< http://ga.to/mmf/ >
This site offers monthly case studies of reporting
spam and lists successes. You'll see that while it's
quite an uphill battle, it can be done.
< http://www.obliquity.com/computer/spambait/ >
Reporting Tools
Some abuse reporting tools are listed here:
< http://www.abuse.net ools.html >
As for anything on the net, there's a fitting mailing
list available for people interested in software tools
that detect and process unsolicited bulk e-mail:
< http://www.abuse.net/spamtools.html >
Proactive Strategies
UXN Spam Combat offers a nice one-page form aggregating
all the tools you need to solve the spam problem,
ranging from NSlookup and Trace Routing to Pings,
decoding of obfuscated web URLs, etc. Very useful.
< http://combat.uxn.com/ >
Uni-encoding the email addresses displayed on your
web site is still a very efficient method of thwaring
email address harvesters or extractor bots:
< http://fantomaster.com/famshield0.html >
This page offers you tools to "poison" the spambots
with by feeding them tons of invalid email addresses.
While this admittedly places some strain on bandwidth
and system resources, it's also pretty easy to crash
a spammer's system this way - ah, sweet revenge!
< http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip2.html >
Many spammers are now offering their pathetic wares
not via the internet but offline, preferably using
toll free numbers. This article outlines a strategy
on where and how to hit them hard - in their pockets!
< http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip3.html >
Probably the most effective method of prevention is
blocking spammers and their harvester bots from your
web site altogether. This tip expounds the strategy
to pursue.
< http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip4.html >
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
(CAUCE) is an international organization promoting
anti-spam legislation.
< http://www.cauce.org/ >
They also publish "True Tales of Spam" here, where
you may see your own story featured some day if you
wish tp submit it:
< http://www.cauce.org ales/index.shtml >
Fighting spam with procmail under Unix is discussed
in detail here:
< http://www.itworld.com/App/354/lw-03-geek1/ >
The Mega Zine SpamScript software generates tons of
bogus email addresses on the fly to feed (and crash!)
spambot systems with.
< http://www.softham.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/spambots.htm >
For people who can't run CGI on their systems, here's a
remotely hosted version of the spam script:
< http://www.softham.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/spambots.htm >
Tips on how to lure in spambots to special, "poisoned"
sections of your site while keeping away innocent visitors
can be found here:
< http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/lure.html >
Articles
Steven Champeon, Save Your Site from Spambots.
Techniques to Prevent Address Scraping
< http://webtechniques.com/archives/2001/08/champeon/ >
Spambot Fighting site:
< http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/ >
Humor
As a comic aside, spam haikus (some more, some less
witty) are featured by the chockfull here:
< http://www.mmfhoh.org/mmf/haiku.html >
Finally, yours truly's "Spam Sonnet" is offered as
an educative example of what spam can inflict on the
sensitive artistic mind...
< http://fantomaster.com/faantispamtip5.html >
About the Author
Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of
fantomaster.com Ltd. He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is
editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter
focusing on search engine optimization, available at:
< http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html >
You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com