Hacker's Secrets 4/Hacker's Secrets 4.iso/faq/news2431.txt

Text File | 1997-01-06 | 64KB | 1,412 lines

Subject: alt.spam FAQ or "Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts". Rev 961119
Date: 19 Nov 1996 17:50:21 GMT
Summary: This posting describes how to find out where a fake post or e-mail originated from.

Posting-Frequency: monthly
URL: http://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   What is an IP address and converting an IP address
          o   WWW IP Lookup URL's
          o   Converting that IP to a name
   o   A list of Usenet complaint addresses
          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   The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts or any fraud on the Internet
          o   1-900, 1-800 and 1-809 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.

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 <[e-mail]> :
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html

And a complete World Wide Web page on spammers and how to stop them :
http://www.vix.com/spam

Or :

For a more simplified look at headers and *lots* of tools for tracing :
http://kryten.eng.monash.edu.au/gspam.html
  Or
Simplified headers and self protection on the net:
http://www.mv.com/users/gmcgath/selfdefense.html

Spam cancellation notice (spam guidelines) :
http://spam.ohww.norman.ok.us/notice.htm

How to get rid of Junk Mail, Spam and Telemarketers:
http://www.csn.net/~felbel/jnkmail.html

Or why Netabuse is bad :
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/NetAbuse.html
(my top-level index of information about net abuse)
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/BadISPs.html
(information about all the Internet Service Providers that condone net
abuse by their users, as far as I know)
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/NetAbusers.html
(information about just a few individual abusers of the net)

And Bill's WWW page "Everything You'd Rather Not Have To Know About Net-Abuse"
:
http://www.tezcat.com/~haz1/netabuse/netabuse.html

The latest & greatest version of this FAQ will be found at:

http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html  (This is not hyperlinked, the one at
www.cs.ruu.nl is very nicely done)

Or the archive at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.spam/

Or with other abuse FAQ's at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/misc/

Or *nicely* HTML'ed at:
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html

PLEASE email follow-ups, additions / changes to [e-mail]

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 C&S) 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
============================================

Fight unsolicited e-mail and mailing list vendors :
http://host.ptbo.igs.net/~shawn/junkmail.html

First (and easiest) thing to forge is the e-mail return address.  Most
personal computer posting software lets you type in just about any e-mail
address you want to (for example the software I am using to post this
message).  Unless someone is a real idiot or they truly don't know they will
annoy tons of people, they will forge a fake e-mail return or put in the e-
mail of someone they don't like.

It seems that most machines will accept e-mail from any other machine, so
don't send e-mail to postmasters at "upstream" sites that are just passing the
message along.

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, just press the button
labeled "Blah Blah Blah" and you will get the header.  In Eudora for the IBM
PC, go under Tools menu, then under options, then to Fonts and Display and
enable the "show all headers (even the ugly ones)" option.

Look for a line like the following:
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

You should look at the message ID first & see what site it appeared to come
from (the part after the "@" sign).  If it is a bunch of numbers (an IP
address) then you should then do a "nslookup" (see further below for a
description of nslookup) to see what the site name is.  Furthermore all the
message-ID lines should have a unique number.  If not then you have someone
who is *very* familiar with the SMTP protocol and is forging the e-mail to
another site (like the Euphoria Tape spammer).  Sometimes this header will
even tell you who the message actually came from.

From the below, the only way we can tell the origin site is in the Message-Id
(which has an IP of 204.183.126.181) is to do a nslookup on the IP address,
and proceed from there.

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).

>Received: from [199.3.242.38] (ppp007.free.org [199.3.242.38]) by
>sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id EAA16681; Sat, 11 Nov 1995
>04:50:30 -0500
>X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: [199.3.242.38] (ppp007.free.org [199.3.242.38])
>X-Sender: [e-mail] (Unverified)
>Message-Id: <v0153051facca0e1e11d6@[204.183.126.181]>

Sample fake e-mail message :

From A@b.c.d Sat Nov 11 13:16 EST 1995
Received: from wavenet.com (wavenet.com [198.147.118.131]) by ddi.digital.net
(8.6.11/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA04656 for <[e-mail]>; Sat, 11
Nov 1995 13:16:03 -0500
Received: from ddi.digital.net (ddi.digital.net [198.69.104.2]) by wavenet.com
(8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id KAA27279 for [e-mail]; Sat, 11 Nov
1995 10:27:52 -0800
Received: from wavenet.com (wavenet.com [198.147.118.131]) by ddi.digital.net
(8.6.11/8.6.9) with ESMTP id OAA18017 for <[e-mail]>; Tue, 24
Oct 1995 14:09:46 -0400
Received: from inetlis.wavenet.com (port16.wavenet.com [198.147.118.209]) by
wavenet.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id LAA02685 for
<[e-mail]>; Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:21:12 -0700

This is a mail message I sent to myself just to use as an example.  I have cut
out a bit of the other header information so that I could take a look at just
the important parts.

Obvious faked piece is the "From" address.  You read the headers from the
bottom to the top to trace which sites the message has gone thru.

Make sure that you do a nslookup on the IP address's (for example I would
verify 198.147.118.131 actually is wavenet.com).  If the IP doesn't jive with
the name then you may have the IP address of the e-mail faker.  A spammer at
cyberpromo changed their mail answer 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 message IP's decode to the following

port16.wavenet.com = 198.147.118.209
wavenet.com = 198.147.118.131
ddi.digital.net = 198.69.104.2

From site               To site            Date / Time (delta GMT)
                                                Time in GMT hh:mm:ss
==============================================================
inetlis.wavenet.com  wavenet.com     Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:21:12 -0700
                                                      18:21:12
wavenet.com          ddi.digital.net Tue, 24 Oct 1995 14:09:46 -400
                                                      18:09:46
ddi.digital.net      wavenet.com     Sat, 11 Nov 1995 10:27:52 -800
                                                      18:27:52
wavenet.com          ddi.digital.net Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:16:03 -500
                                                      18:16:03

Wolfgang Schelongowski <[e-mail]> reminds us :
The first is hh:mm.ss WULT (WULT == Widely Unknown Local Time :-)) with a
delta from GMT, so you add in the delta to get a "zero" time.  The time is
from the computer transmitting, so it is possible to have the clocks several
minutes apart.
GMT = Greenwich Mean Time.  The "time" was kept at RGO (Royal Greenwich
Observatory?), Greenwich England at one time and is also known as UTC (UTC =
Coordinated Universal Time, or Universal Coordinated Time) or "Zulu" or Zero
time.  It is kept by the UK National Physical Laboratory, and is no longer at
the RGO (Royal Greenwich Observatory?).

I manually inserted the first two mail transfers myself (as you can see from
the date / times) to muddy the waters.  It looks like this message originated
from inetlis.wavenet.com, when in reality it came from ddi.digital.net.  The
date / time (in this case) tells you that something is wrong, but sometimes a
computer may be down along the way which would hold up the mail.

You really need cooperation from other people & get multiple messages to
compare the headers.  There will be a common "injection" point.  Whether it is
the starting point or in the middle.  Ask that postmaster  to look thru the
logs & figure out who sent that e-mail.  Someone from the first common
injection point "From" site spammed out the e-mail.

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.

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.

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 <[e-mail]>; 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
<[e-mail]>; 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: [e-mail]
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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.
We won't even start to discuss the fact the he likes to use female names for
his messages...

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 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.

Once again, start by looking at the Message-ID, and ask yourself if that site
makes sense.  Again, look at the number after the Message-ID and see if it is
identical for several *different* posts (i.e. posts to different groups).
Message-ID's are unique for each *different* post.  If the Message-ID is the
same, then it is faked.  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.c
om!vac
From: [e-mail](Female User)
Subject: Femdom In Search of Naughty Boys
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail](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: [e-mail]
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.

E-Mail return is probably the easiest to fake and is * always * suspect.  The
NNTP-Posting-Host and / or Message-ID are harder to fake (but not *much*
harder...) and probably deserve a closer look at those sites.

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
head <[e-mail]>
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" :

http://www.reference.com/

What is an IP address and converting an IP address
============================================
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).

    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
Or for finger, nslookup, whois, and traceroute :
http://www.magicbox.net/~unabest/tools/
Or for a WWW Traceroute you can try the URL :
http://webware-inc.com/wtr.html
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
WWW Nslookup : http://thor.clr.com/nslookup.html
SWITCH WHOIS Gateway:
http://www.switch.ch/switch/info/whois_form.html
  Or
http://www.internic.net/wp/whois.html
TIG Internet Domain-Name Database :
http://home.tig.com/cgi-bin/genobject/domaindb
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
Yet another Domain Name lookup:
http://www.imperative.com/cgi-bin/genobject/index2 then click on the domain
database lookup

Converting that IP to a name
=============================
If the site is a IP address like "127.0.0.0", 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

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

If that doesn't provide anything, try chopping off the last digits and you
might get:
Whois: 204.162.179
BBN BARRNET, Inc. (NETBLK-NETBLK-BARRNET4) NETBLK-BARRNET4
204.160.0.0 - 204.163.255.0
Slip.Net (NETBLK-NETBLK-SLIP)   NETBLK-SLIP      204.162.160.0 - 204.162.191.0

Success!  BARRNet has the blocks of the IP's.

John tells us :
Um yes, but that particular sub-block belongs to slip.net...  barrnet is
obviously slip.net's provider, the barrnet block looks like 4 class B's (or
256 THOUSAND IP's..), while the slip.net block is a mere 32 class C's (or 8
thousand IP's)...
So a whois NETBLK-SLIP gives us (among other information) :
Slip.Net (NETBLK-NETBLK-SLIP)
   Netname: NETBLK-SLIP
   Netblock: 204.162.160.0 - 204.162.191.0

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.

To see who the upstream provider is, try :

multinet 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
[e-mail].

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.  Post the
FULL HEADERS (this is *very* important for tracing) to news.admin.net-
abuse.misc (see the section entitled Reporting Spam and tracing a posted
message)

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 :

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

Note : [e-mail] and [e-mail] 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

There is a list of admins to contact at (and a way to add to the list):
http://www.gil.net/~infoline/abusebox.html

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:

        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail]
        [e-mail] - DO NOT use [e-mail], this is a private user
(with a poor taste in user names)

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 - [e-mail] or [e-mail]
Aloha.Net - [e-mail]
AOL - [e-mail]. Emergency - send complete copies to [e-mail]
www.angelfire.com or angelfire.com - [e-mail]
AT&T WorldNet Services - [e-mail]
Best.com - [e-mail]
Compuserve - compumail [e-mail] or compumail
[e-mail], compunews [e-mail]
CyberPromo.com - (answerme.com, cyberpromo.com, omni.cyberpromo.com,
gamut.cyberpromo.com) - [e-mail]
Demon.net - [e-mail], [e-mail] or [e-mail]
DejaNews - [e-mail] - See http://bastion.dejanews.com/post.xp
Direct.CA - [e-mail]
earthlink.net - [e-mail]
Erol.com - [e-mail], [e-mail]
Freenet.carleton.ca - [e-mail]
gergs_bane.org (does not exist, it is faked) - See UUNET - [e-mail]
GNN.Com - For help regarding a problem with a GNN member - [e-mail].
Hongkong's ISPs - send an email to [e-mail] with anything in the
subject/body. You'll get a most recent version of the list contacts by email
within minutes.
IBM Net - [e-mail] - Also see http://www.ibm.net/helpdesk.html
IDT.Net - [e-mail], but [e-mail] is an emergency contact
interramp.com - [e-mail] or [e-mail]
interserve.com.hk - Mr. K H Lee - [e-mail].
INS Info Services (netins.net) - [e-mail]
iSTAR Canada (istar.ca, inforamp.net, hotstar.net, magi.com, or nstn.ca) -
[e-mail]
Juno.com - [e-mail]
LAKER.NET [e-mail] or VOICE 1-954-359-3670 FAX [phone]
Loop.Com or Loop.net - [e-mail]
MALIBU - [e-mail]
MCI Net - [e-mail] .  Per Joel ( [e-mail] ) 800-
977-iNOC is staffed 24 hours a day. Complaints regarding Internet abuse are
taken seriously at MCI.
MCI spam alert to MCI.NET: [e-mail] or [e-mail]
    Note : If the Spam crosses MCI lines, Contact [e-mail] if the
headers in a Usenet or Email spam indicate that it had something to do with
MCI or its lines.
Campus.MCI.Net - [e-mail]
MCSNet - [e-mail]
Mindspring.com - [e-mail] Note : Mindspring is no longer
affiliated with INTERRAMP.COM
money.com or money.now - [e-mail]
MS.UU.Net - Example Max23.New-York.NY.MS.UU.NET - [e-mail] and
[e-mail] - DO NOT use [e-mail], this is a private user (with a
poor taste in user names)
Netcom or any account with an @ix.netcom.com address - [e-mail]  for
standard SPAM junk.  [e-mail] is for instances of forgery, cracking
etc. NetCruiser Technical Support - [e-mail]
Netins.net - [e-mail]
pacbell.net - [e-mail], [e-mail]
Pipeline.com - [e-mail]
PIPEX- [e-mail], International - [e-mail], Unipalm
PIPEX - [e-mail]
portal.com - [e-mail]
Prodigy - [e-mail]
pwrnet - [e-mail]
PSI Net - [e-mail] or [e-mail] or [e-mail] - From
[e-mail]  PSI Net policies - http://www.pipeline.com,
http://www.usa.pipeline.com, http://www.interramp.com
Slip Net - [e-mail] - Tech Support
Sprintlink - 800-669-8303 [e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail], [e-mail]
sprynet - [e-mail]
Teleport System Administration - teleport.com - [e-mail]
tip.net - [e-mail] [e-mail]
University of Pennsylvania - [e-mail] - For security matters :
[e-mail]
Other matters: [e-mail]
UUNET Customer Liaison  - [e-mail] 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 ([e-mail]) (and this applies to *any* abuse) :
To report an instance of USENET abuse send mail to [e-mail] - 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

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.  You can get information on / about a site by:

telnet rs.internic.net
whois spammer.site.net

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.

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 multinet traceroute
should show you the upstream provider, and from there you can try contacting
the postmasters of *that* site.

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 .

Thanx to Leslie, whom to contact about domains that have invalid contact
information :
Internic Registration Services should be contacted by phone:
    703/742-4777
 or email:
    [e-mail]

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

   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 :

multinet 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 <[e-mail]>

We connect to port 25 (smtp) and issues an expn command.  Looks like
[e-mail] is being used as a maildrop for this user.  I'll would send
my complaint to [e-mail] 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-<[e-mail]>
250 <[e-mail]>
expn root
250-<[e-mail]>
250 <[e-mail]>

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.jazzie.com/ii/faqs/archive/mail/filtering-faq/
http://www.jazzie.com/ii/internet/mailbots.html
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

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
====================================================
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:
### 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 are some suggestions :
moneyworld.com
interramp.com
dm1.com
zygon.com
zygn.com
stockpick.com
netamerica1.com
selfhelpnet.com
helpnet.net
buytime.com
jackpots.com
cyberpromo.com
californiakid.com
lsat.com
megd.com
pwrnet.com
bulk-e-mail.com
bigprofits.com
bbbiiizzz.com
owlsnest.com
natureplus.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...) where a couple go into a
restaurant, and try 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.

To join a discussion list for Spams, send a message to [e-mail]
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 [e-mail] 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

A collection of Spam links :
http://www.io.org/~spamily/Spam.html
http://wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us/~sean/spam/spam-faq.html
http://semantic.rsi.com/spam/

The Church of Spam :
http://www.goodnet.com/~swiggy/

Come visit Beiner's SPAM-O-RAMA at:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6274

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>

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
`unmount /tmp`@localhost
;unmount /tmp;@localhost
`halt`@localhost
;halt;@localhost


The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts or any fraud on the Internet
================================================================
Chris ruminates that the original proponent and other supporters of
alt.make.money.fast for MMF tracking has long since abandoned this relatively
pointless exercise.  MMFs posted without obvious followup/references/">"
indentation in a.m.m.f get autocancelled like everywhere else...

MMFs should be reported to the user and their postmaster and the following :

Federal Trade Commission Ms. Broder ([e-mail]), the staff attorney
assigned to handle MMF
Fraud Department at the Internal Revenue Service ([e-mail])
National Fraud Information Center (NFIC) ([e-mail])
And the US Postal Inspection Service ([e-mail]).

Complain reasonably politely with a copy of the USPS URL on MMFs.  This stops
99%+ dead in their tracks.  I've only had one person resist the full treatment
of getting the USPS web page dropped in their mailbox - but their system admin
fixed him up right quick :->

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.

Rolf has created a page dedicated to making fun of MMF losers :
http://www.clark.net/pub/rolf/mmf/home.html

Keep track of On-Line Fraud, subscribe to the fraud discussion at :
http://www.silverquick.com

To subscribe by email send a message to :
[e-mail]
The body of the message to read :
join fraudnews

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission now has a web page specifically
set up to take reports of financial scams promoted over the Internet. For the
full story see :

http://www.sec.gov/enforce/comctr.htm or Email: [e-mail]

Basically, anything that involves promoting stocks, bonds, and such comes
under their authority.  A big fraction of the MAKE MONEY FAST postings fall in
this category.

There is a WWW site dedicated to *any* kind of fraud.  It is :
A partnership of the National Association of Attorneys General, the Federal
Trade Commission and The National Consumers League
http://www.fraud.org/

Wolfgang Schelongowski <[e-mail]> sez :IMHO MMF is associated with
"Hello, my name is Dave Rhodes. In 198...".
There was also a forged article purporting to tell how MMF is illegal :
 From: [e-mail] (Melvin Purvis)
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ he arrested / shot John Dillinger.
 Subject: 'Make Money Fast' Scam

Jon said : "Hermann" appears to have spammed at least 27 Bitnet mailing lists,
including TANGO-L, where I saw it, with a standard MMF. I checked at the US
Post Office web site and verified that chain letters are federal crimes under
Title 18, United State Code, Section 1302. This does apply to email as well as
paper; quoting from URL

From http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm :
"Recently, high-tech chain letters have begun surfacing. They may be
disseminated over the Internet, or may require the copying and mailing of
computer disks rather than paper. Regardless of what technology is used to
advance the scheme, if the mail is used at any step along the way, it is still
illegal."
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
I believe that the applicable Canadian description can be found at :
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/html/commerc.htm
[French language version]
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/folio.pgi/fstats.nfo/query=pyramidale+/doc/{@1}/hi
t_headings/words=4/hits_only?
[English language version]
http://canada.justice.gc.ca/folio.pgi/estats.nfo/query=[jump!3A!27c34_000r!2Ee
0055!2E1!281!29!27]/doc/{@20517}?
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 ...

DOES ANYBODY HAVE POSTAL INSPECTOR ADDRESSES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES THAT PONZI /
MMF SCHEMES ARE ILLEGAL IN?


1-900, 1-800 and 1-809 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 :
1-809-XXX-XXXX - Virgin Islands and other Caribbean islands
1-242-XXX-XXXX - Bahamas
1-246-XXX-XXXX - Barbados
1-441-XXX-XXXX - Bermuda
1-787-XXX-XXXX - Puerto Rico

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/scams01.htm Online Scams
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/fraud.htm Reporting fraud

(from the "Online Scams page)

For More Information
If you have a question or complaint about a suspect online ad or promotion,
contact your commercial service provider. In addition, you can file complaints
with your state attorney general, consumer protection office or with the
Federal Trade Commission (write to: Correspondence Branch, Federal Trade
Commission, 6th St. & Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20580). Also,
contact the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus, 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.

Questions about whether or not an investment sales person is licensed, or if
an offered security is registered, should be directed to the Office of
Consumer Affairs, Securities and Exchange Commission, 202-942-7040.

The National Fraud Information Center maintains a toll-free Consumer
Assistance Service, 1-800-876-7060, to provide consumers with answers to
questions about telephone or mail solicitations and online scams. They also
offer information about how and where to report fraud and give help in filing
complaints.
  Or fill out an on-line scam sheet :
http://www.fraud.com/nficmail.htm

Or E-Mail to [e-mail] in the form :
Your Name:
Your email address:
Subject:
Message:

NFIC tells us:
We will try to respond as quickly as possible. We will not be able to respond
if you have not included your e-mail address.
If you wish to inform us of an incident, please provide us with information
about the company, the incident, your name and a snail mail address at which
you can be reached.  Thank you.
Please, do not use this service to relay confidential information!

The Better Business Bureau has a web site at:
http://www.bbb.org
To give feedback, go directly to:
http://www.bbb.org/council/feedback/index.html

   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 [e-mail], 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. 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 pissed 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/cgi-bin/taos_mf.pl?unix (advanced search options).

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.

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

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.
On the upside note, the spammer will have to try to figure out where these
"anonymous" cards were coming from (especially hard to do in a big city).

Of course if someone (every once in a while) reminded the newsgroup of the
spammers address by posting a message (for informational purposes only, and
not to encourage mail bombing), I don't see how that could be considered
harassment ;-).

I am not a lawyer, and all of the above could be wrong.  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 - [e-mail] - 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