 Levinson Productivity
Systems, P.C.William A. Levinson, P.E. Principal 570-824-1986  |
|
Policy
Protecting your privacy from address harvesters
Revenge spams
Key antispam resources
Links to other antispam resources.
Abuse of the ASQ Section 209 bulletin board
Levinson Productivity Systems, P.C. is absolutely opposed to unsolicited bulk commercial E-mail (UCE or "spam"). The company defines spam as an E-mail that meets all three of these criteria:
- It is unsolicited (that is, we never requested it or subscribed to it)
- It is bulk: the electronic equivalent of a form letter or a
mass mailing
- No one needs to worry about sending a personalized (i.e. one that shows that the sender actually read pages at this site) E-mail to this address even if it is commercial. Our assumption is that if it takes a human even a minute to write a note for each mailing, he is not blasting the same message to thousands or millions of addresses. "If you want someone to take the time to read it, you take the time to write it."
- On the other hand, this company is aware of bulk mailing programs that insert a bit of customized information like a domain name or E-mail address to create the illusion that the sender is writing a unique E-mail. Any unsolicited E-mails from such programs will be dealt with as spam.
- It is commercial in nature
instead of a standard mail link is to defeat spammers' address
harvesting
software. Junk E-mailers have software that crawls through Web pages
and
picks up anything in the format A@B.C where A is an address (e.g. A =
TheBoss),
B is a domain name (e.g. B = ct-yankee) and C is .com, .org, or .net.
These
addresses are then added to junk mailing lists and sold to other
spammers.
This is why some companies don't post E-mail contact addresses. Instead, you have to fill out a form to send your message to them. As shown by the image above, you can also put your E-mail address on your web page as a .GIF or .JPG image (Microsoft Paint, which comes with Windows, can save images in both formats) which cannot be picked up by conventional address harvesting software.
If you post messages to newsgroups (e.g. misc.industry.quality) be sure to "spam block" your address because address harvesters also look through newsgroups. As an example, I might use TheBoss@SPAMBLOCKct-yankee.com. A person who wants to contact me can figure out that "SPAMBLOCK" should be removed from the return address but an address harvester will collect a nonexistent address.
Revenge Spams ("Joe jobs")A revenge spam (also known as a "joe job" in news.admin.net-abuse.email) is an attempt to cause trouble for another person by sending spam with his/her E-mail address as a response address, or a spam that advertises his/her Web site. This company does not offer legal advice (we have no attorneys on staff) but common sense suggests that the spammer could easily be sued for defamation. If the spam advertises something illegal, it could constitute a "false accusation of a crime" which is automatically libel. The revenge spammer's Internet service provider would probably have to reveal the sender's identity if presented with a subpoena or court order. This company encourages the victim of any such conduct to contact an attorney regarding possible legal action.
Key Antispam Resources
| Spam
tracing |
IP
Address Lookup |
Report
software piracy |
| XWhoIs: domain lookup Sam Spade tools: OUTSTANDING UXN Spam Combat |
APNIC.net
Asian/Pacific IP addresses ARIN North American LACNIC Latin American Registro.br Brazilian service providers RIPE.NET European |
e.g. spams for "CD only,
no retail box" Adobe piracy reporting form Business Software Alliance piracy reporting form. Also 1-888-NOPIRACY Corel: Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft. Also nopiracy "at" corel.com Microsoft: piracy "at" microsoft.com Symantec (Norton) feedback; includes piracy reports |
Links to other resources (valid December 2002)
- Alchemy Mindworks Death to Spam page
- The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE)
- Child pornography reporting resouces: U.S. and European law enforcement links. You can report this kind of spam to law enforcement agencies as well as to the sender's Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- Fight Spam on the Internet
- Fight Spam on the Internet (alternate link)
- ISP Knotwork anti-spam page
- Junkbusters Privacy resources: anti-junk mail, cookie blocking software, and so on.
- Morality in Media, Inc. Form for reporting illegal pornographic spam to your state's attorney general. (Note that spam by itself is not illegal but obscene spam may violate the law if it goes to minors or violates certain state laws.)
- Net Demon Spam Tracing Software
- Network Abuse Clearinghouse
- Nigeria - The 419 Coalition Website. Information about the Nigerian "419 scam"
- Privacy Net
- Sam Spade, Spam Hunter (tracing resources: extremely useful)
- Spamcop.net
- Spamhaus.org
- Spamlaws.com Federal and State spam laws. Also European spam laws.
- Summary of spam laws by state. It is illegal to send pornographic materials in some states unless a warning is given in the subject line. It is illegal in some states to alter the headers of bulk commercial E-mail to disguise its origin.
- SPEWS (SPam Early Warning System)
- U.S. Postal Inspector's Web page
- File a complaint online to the U.S. Postal Inspector
- UXN Spam Combat
- XWhoIS. Very useful, it seems to go to the correct registrar to get the full domain information
Abuse of the ASQ Section 209 PHP bulletin board
If you are finding this link through a "member" of the ASQ Section 209 bulletin board, the individual has been banned for trying to sign up a blog that redirects to an illegal online pharmacy or some other commercial site that has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality profession. The advertised blog has been replaced with a link to this page instead.
In fairness to the board's legitimate users (members of ASQ Section 209 and prospective employers who post job ads), spam cannot be tolerated, nor will the board's administrator tolerate the waste of his time by the would-be abusers. It is therefore our policy to cause the spammer hundreds of times as much damage as any benefit he might derive from attempted abuse of this resource (they should be aware that their memberships are automatically disapproved and the sites they attempt to advertise deleted on the spot), and the following punitive actions are routinely taken.
- The advertised blog is reported as a spam blog to Blogger or Blogspot. http://help.blogger.com/?page=contact
- The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency if it advertises any "controlled substance" like Phentermine, Valium, or Xanax.
- The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to its service provider. If the service provider is hosted in another country (e.g. Germany), that country's law enforcement agencies are copied on the complaint.
- The advertised illegal online pharmacy is reported to other entities (e.g. Verisign, Ontario County Sheriff) if it misuses their logos or seals to imply fraudulently that it is endorsed by those entities.