What can you do about spam?


To all College of Education Staff, Faculty, Students:

We are recommending that faculty and staff do the following: (1) Use the Purdue PureMessage anti-spam filter, and (2) use Outlook 2003+ to block inappropriate email images from loading automatically....

This is a short primer for those of who are getting increasing amounts of unsolicited, junk email-- affectionately known as "spam". You might have heard the term "spam" used in various ways such as,

Most likely, if you hear Purdue students talking about "spam", they are not talking about a meat product (by-product) but junk email. Spam is a huge problem which takes on many forms such as:

It is important for everyone to know that if you start getting spam, you are not alone and you are not being singled out. There are several ways for spammers to get your email address. If you give your email address to companies either by phone or via a web form, they may sell your email address to an email advertising company.  Rebates and complimentary magazine subscriptions may be another leak.  Examples of spamming companies are,

 

There are a few things you can do about spam: 

(1) You can set up email "rules" or "filters" that automatically delete unwanted messages. Using filters requires that you know something about the unwanted messages *before* they arrive. For instance if you know that there are certain words (perhaps offensive words) that you never want to receive in an email message, you can set up a filter to detect these words and automatically delete messages where they are found. Or if you know that a certain company (using a certain email address or host name) sends you lots of unwanted email, you can set up a filter to detect them and automatically delete the messages.  You can also filter for messages that are not addressed directly TO you and have them moved to a CC and/or LIST folder.  For more on rules / filters see the Education IT Outlook FAQ

(2) Turn off the preview pane and watch for file sizes.

(3) It is wise to ignore (delete) spam. Some spammers will automatically add you to an email list and then tell you to "unsubscribe if you do not want to receive further messages". We would not advise that anyone respond to these spam messages because it confirms to the spammers that your address is a valid address where someone actively reads email.  Thus your confirmed address is valuable and can be sold. It's an unending cycle and the best thing to do is filter/delete/ignore. 

(4) You can try contacting the ISP (internet service provider) of the person or group that sent the message and ask for help.  The administrator of an email server can usually be contacted by emailing postmaster@hostname, abuse@hostname, and  root@hostname where hostname is the name of the computer from which the email originated.  For example, if you get a message from test123@purdue.edu, you could try sending a note to postmaster@purdue.edu, abuse@purdue.edu, root@purdue.edu.

Sometimes spammers and email viruses use fake return email addresses and hostnames.  In this case, you need to examine the "full email header" to find out which email server the message originated from and contact the administrators of that server.  In Outlook, you can view the full email header by opening a message (double click it), go to the View menu, and select "Options".  In Netscape Messenger, you can view full email headers by going to the "View" menu and selecting headers--> all.  Look near the top of the header for the first computer name in a "Received" or "From" header.  Here is an example:

Received:  from herald.cc.purdue.edu (herald.cc.purdue.edu [128.210.11.29]) by education.purdue.edu (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id g0MD6wA05318 for <test123@education.purdue.edu>; Tue, 22 Jan 1998 08:06:58 -0500

In this case, you would send a note to postmaster@herald.cc.purdue.edu, abuse@herald.cc.purdue.edu, root@herald.cc.purdue.edu.

You could also check to see if there is a web site with contact info at this hostname by opening your web browser and entering http://herald.cc.purdue.edu

(5) You can contact your local email administrator and see if there is anything they can do.  But keep in mind that server administrators a busy people and are not lawyers or Internet police.  They have no authority over email administrators at other sites.  At Purdue you can contact the following for email and network problems,

mailhub-admin@purdue.edu

abuse@purdue.edu

 

USA Today recently ran a short blurb about spam which was relayed to us via Edupage (http://www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html):

FEELING SPAMMED? INTERNET USERS DELUGED BY JUNK E-MAIL
A Gartner Group survey of 13,000 e-mail users shows that more than
90 percent receive junk e-mail at least once a week, a probability
that increases to 96 percent for those Internet users who have
had an e-mail address for at least four years. The survey shows
that one of every three Internet users receives six to 20 spam
e-mail messages per week. Money making schemes, adult ads, and
software offers were the most frequently received bulk e-mail.
Survey respondents said they are loath to deal with spam because
it wastes time, violates privacy, and is often offensive. The
survey shows that ISPs lose 7.2 percent of their new customers
every year due to spam. Forty percent of those surveyed would
like to see a ban on spam, 25 percent say it should be regulated,
and 25 percent say that deleting spam is the only way it can be
controlled. Not everyone detests spam -- 1 percent enjoy receiving
it and 2 percent enjoy it somewhat. (USA Today 06/14/99)

See also:

STATES OUTLAW SPAM
Upwards of a dozen and a half states have anti-spam laws on the
books or are working on such laws. Many enable ISPs and spam
recipients to sue spammers. California, with three laws
governing commercial e-mail, may soon have another. Efforts are
underway to place a spam-ban initiative on this fall's ballot.
Hawaii also has three anti-spam bills in the works. Law in both
Delaware and Connecticut prohibits the use of software to falsify
routing data and bars commercial e-mail from containing false
routing data. Iowa law also bars the use of falsified return
addresses, while Oklahoma law forbids forged routing information.
A 1997 Nevada law permits spam, but only if it is labeled and
contains opt-out information. Spammers have a rough time in
Rhode Island, where e-mail forgery and falsified headers earn
criminal charges. Tennessee law requires spam to be identified as
"ADV" in the subject line. (Salon.com, 19 April 2000)