1. It is unsolicited (that is, we never requested it or subscribed to it)
2. 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.
3. It is commercial in nature
   

Important note, October 5, 2009. We received several returned spam E-mails with ct-yankee.com in the return address field. They did not originate from Levinson Productivity Systems, and the sender (advertising "Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore"--an illegal online pharmacy) does not have our permission to use this domain name for any purpose whatsoever. The advertised Web site has been reported to the Food and Drug Administration for illegal sale of medications over the Internet, and to the FBI's Internet Crime Center for criminal violation (use of another person's or company's domain name as a fraudulent return address just to begin with) of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore is a criminal enterprise, and anybody who actually tries to buy anything from them is putting their credit card information into the hands of criminals. (It is, just to begin with, against the law to sell prescription medications to people who do not have prescriptions. Furthermore, we tested their E-commerce system, and the connection is not secure even though the scammers have in the past fraudulently used the logos of Verisign and/or similar entities to claim that it is.) We encourage people to Google "Canadian Pharmacy, #1 Internet Online Drugstore" because this entity is very bad news; as just one example, the Web site "Ripoff Report" figures very prominently in the search results.

The telemarketer tells you that they are calling to update your free online business listing. Then they turn you over to a "quality control" person to verify your information. The latter's job is to get you to say "yes" to a series of rapid-fire questions, into which they later merge a recording that makes it seem like you are agreeing to pay them hundreds of dollars for the listing. If you don't pay, they threaten to turn your account over to a collection agency.

Our experience is that they impersonate the genuine Yellow Pages and other legitimate businesses. On January 8 2010, A "Mike Adams" said he was from Yellowpages.com, and he directed us to his "quality control" supervisor Frank. When we attempted to look up Levinson Productivity Systems on Yellowpages.com, we could not find it, whereupon Frank said Mike had been mistaken and that the company was really Superpages.com. (We could not find our company listed there either). It is quite clear that "Mike" and "Frank" lied about representing Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com.

As for any attempts by these scammers to bill this company for anything (and we recommend that our visitors and prospective clients look into this as well), the scammers may as well send their bills  directly to this address and cut us out as the middleman. Note that the complaint form includes an entry for "False bill or notice" for "directory solicitation." The U.S. Postal Service takes a very dim view of those who use its resources to perpetrate wire fraud. Were a collection agency to contact us about such a bill, our immediate response would be to name them to law enforcement as either a material witness (i.e. with knowledge of the identity of those who sent the bill) or accomplice to a crime.

Complaints.com includes a story about how the scammers sent a bill by fax instead of U.S. Mail (maybe they know that it is not a good idea to use the U.S. Mail to perpetrate a scam) but there is also something known as wire fraud. We cannot give legal advice but our own inclination would be to forward any such bills to law enforcement agencies so they can decide whether it constitutes wire fraud or some other crime.

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.

• 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
• 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.
• U.S. Postal Inspector's Web page 
• XWhoIS. Very useful, it seems to go to the correct registrar to get the full domain information

1. The advertised blog is reported as a spam blog to Blogger or Blogspot. http://help.blogger.com/?page=contact
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.