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From: Gandalf The White <[e-mail]>
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Summary: This posting describes how to find out where a fake post or e-mail originated from.
Subject: alt.spam FAQ or "Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts". Rev 20040104 - ASFAQ.txt (1/1)
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Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu alt.2600:720383 alt.spam:93308 alt.newbie:27776 news.admin.net-abuse.misc:222356 news.admin.net-abuse.email:2117944 news.admin.net-abuse.usenet:601629 alt.answers:70933 news.answers:264104

Summary: This posting describes how to find out where a fake post or
e-mail originated from.
Archive-name: net-abuse-faq/spam-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 20040104
URL: http://gandalf.home.digital.net/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 twelve portion FAQ (With apologies to
Douglas Adams :-)) :
   o   Introduction
          o   The Easy Way To Get Rid Of spam
   o   Tracing an e-mail message
          o   What computer did this e-mail originate from?
          o   MAILING LIST messages
   o   Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message
   o   WWW IP Lookup URL's
   o   Converting that IP to a name
          o   What to do with "strange" looking Web links
          o   Getting a World Wide Web page busted
   o   Usenet complaint addresses
          o   Viruses / Trojans / Spyware
          o   Fraud on the Internet and The MMF (Make Money Fast)
Posts
          o   Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud
          o   Hoaxes
          o   Open system spammers love
   o   Filtering E-Mail BlackMail, 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   Protection for you and your kids on the Internet
          o   I am interested in eliminating spam from my emails, how
do I do this?
          o   Origins of Spam
          o   How *did* I get this unsolicited e-mail anyway?
          o   Can I find the persons name and phone from an e-mail
address?
          o   How To Respond to Spam
          o   Firewalls and protecting your computer
   o   Revenge - What to do & not to do (mostly not)
          o   Telephoning someone
          o   Snail Mailing someone
   o   1-900, 1-800, 888, 877 and 1-### may be expensive long distance
phone calls
   o   Junk Mail - The Law
   o   Additional Resources - Lots Of Links and a *really* good book


    Introduction
=============
Please feel free to repost this, e-mail it, put this FAQ on CD's or
any other media you can think of.

The latest & greatest version of the Spam FAQ is found at:
http://gandalf.home.digital.net/spamfaq.html
   or
http://home.digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html

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

My news source is OK, but I sometimes miss items.

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.

If you are in the United States and have not yet written to your
Senator or House of Representatives about how terrible the CAN-SPAM
act is, I would ask you to do so.  Bottom line is that there are many
large corporations and over 22.9 million small businesses on the
United States.  If you received just one e-mail a year from each of
the small businesses (I am not even including large companies) you
would receive 63,800 e-mails PER DAY.  According to CAN-SPAM you would
then be required to opt out of each and every one of these e-mails,
and the company has 10 days to honor your request.  Of course this
would not stop spammers from changing company names every 10 days and
just start spamming all over again.  I have written a letter
explaining why I think that this act was poorly written, and I would
ask you to write a letter to your representatives also:
http://home.digital.net/~gandalf/CAN-SPAM.htm
http://gandalf.home.digital.net/CAN-SPAM.htm

Find Your Senators at
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and
find your US Representative: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ (Fill in
your state and zip, click "Contact My Representative" and you will be
told who your representative is). Go To:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html , click on their site and
your representative should have an address at the bottom of the page
for where to write them.  I would also suggest that you cc the two
sponsors of the bill: Conrad Burns 187 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510 and Ron Wyden 516 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510.

And why CAN-SPAM won't work:
http://www.google.com/search?q=CAN-SPAM+won%27t+work
http://www.google.com/search?q=Critics+CAN-SPAM
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2003/12/11/9145/0712

Before trying to determine where the post or e-mail originated from,
you should realize that (just like The National Enquirer
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/ or a logical argument from Canter and
Siegel) 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).  There are programs for the Macintosh and Windows machines that
do the same thing the UNIX commands do, see the above URL's for where
to locate this software.

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...

The Easy Way To Get Rid Of spam
=========================

Sorry to tell you this but if you received a spam (Unsolicited
Commercial E-Mail) there is no "easy" way to get the spam stopped.
Generally if you reply (unsubscribe) this confirms that your e-mail
address is "live" and just gets your e-mail address sold to other
spammers.  Spam has to be dealt with one at a time.  Sorry, it isn't
easy to stop the spam.  The "Internet" (the collective non-profit and
profit entities of the network) is trying to fix this problem but it
is taking time.  The "easiest" way to stop getting spam is to change
your e-mail address and only give your e-mail address to people you
absolutely trust, and to NEVER allow the e-mail address to be posted
to a web site or posted ANYWHERE on the internet.  To see how many
times my e-mail address appears on the Internet go to the following
link:
http://www.google.com/search?q=gandalf%40digital.net
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/edu/2003/0324ed1.html - E-Mail
addresses on the web attract the most spam

It your e-mail address shows up on a search engine, then the spammers
can find your e-mail address also.  Be careful about giving your e-
mail address to companies that purport to be against spam:
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2003/5/15/10299/0559

There are businesses that make a good living filtering out spam both
on a personal and corporate level.  I would suggest that if you really
don't want to deal with spam that you get an e-mail address from one
of these services (Please note I am not recommending this service,
just using it as an example).  Do a search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=email+hosting+spam
And you will come up with companies like:
http://www.No-JunkMail.com/

Or if you wish to block it from your personal e-mail account do a
search on something like:
http://www.google.com/search?q=spam+blocking+software
And you will come up with examples like:
http://www.spamulor.net/ - Free
http://www.spambutcher.com/

Be aware that no spam blocking software (as of yet) is perfect and you
may get "false positives".  An e-mail from a friend may be detected as
spam and may get deleted as spam or moved to the spam box.  The spam
wars:
http://computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/groupware/story/0,108
01,75737,00.html


        Tracing an e-mail message
============================================

To trace the e-mail you have to look at the header.  Most mail readers
do not show the header because it contains information that is for
computer to computer routing.  The information you usually see from
the header is the subject, date and the "From" / "Return" address.
About the only thing in an e-mail header that can't be faked is the
"Received" portion referencing your computer (the last received).

You will need to take a look at the headers on the message as follows
(Thanks to Bob, Dave, Kathy, Michael, Piers, Russ, Simon, Chalmers and
others) :
Claris E-Mailer - under Mail select Show Long Headers.
Eudora (before ver. 3) - Select Tools , Options... , then Fonts &
Display then Show all headers
Eudora (ver. 3.x, 4.x IBM or Macintosh) - Press the BLAH button on the
incoming mail message
Eudora V5.1:
       1) Double-click on the email subject line in the current
mailbox. This displays the same message with a fuller version of the
header, which will be enough for some ISPs but not all, and also shows
an extra Toolbox which contains the BlahBlahBlah button
       2) Click on the BlahBlahBlah button
For Mac Eudora 4.x, hitting the following will cause Eudora to alter
its default setting so that BLAH will be automatically selected for
all new email received after this switch is set:
<x-eudora-setting:123=y> When checked, Eudora will show all the
headers from messages, not just an abbreviated set.
Hotmail - How to set show the mail headers in hotmail:
1.  After you login, just to the right of the tabs, select Options
2.  Under Additional Options, select Mail Display Settings
3.  In the Message Headers section, click the Advanced button
JUNO - Click on the word "OPTIONS" in the MENU BAR.
On This menu, click on "E-Mail Options (ctrl-E)"
This will get you a Dialog Box:
In the "Show message headers" part, you need to have the "Full" button
marked in order to show full message headings.
KMAIL (KDE Mail Client) - Bryan tells us To display all headers in
kmail(KDE mail client), go to 'view' and click 'all headers'.
Lotus Notes R4 and R5:
1) Examine the fields in the document.
   Click on File Ç Document Properties
   Click on fields tab (square rule)
   Scroll down to the "received" fields - there should be one for each
"received" header added.
   Copy and paste these into a file.
2) Export the headers from the document
   *important*  You need to be in the inbox folder in Notes
   Select the document.
   Click on File Ç Export
   Enter a temporary file name, ensure File type is "Structured Text"
   Under Export options, click on "selected documents", click OK.
   The generated file contains all the headers on the message along
with the message body.
MS Outlook - Double click on the email in your inbox. This will bring
the message into a window. Click on View - Options.  You can also open
a message then choose File....Properties....Details.
Microsoft Outlook 2000 - From the Menu Bar select "View" and then
"Options" from that menu.
This displays a dialogue box called "Message Options".
The largest and last text box is called "Internet headers:"
Scroll through this to read all the details.
To save a copy, highlight all the content, and copy it to the
clipboard by pressing <Ctrl C> (that's both those keys at the same
time), then go into whatever word processor or email program you wish
and press <Ctrl V> to paste the text onto that page.

Because Microsoft Outlook has many security flaws, the below
instructions may expose your computer to risks.  See:
http://www.the-foxhole.org/Disabling_IE_Security_Flaws.htm
MS Outlook Express - Alt-Enter, or Alt-F then R.
MS Outlook Express - More Detailed:
  To look for, copy and send headers In Outlook Express
  1- Press CTRL F3
  2- Press CTRL A
  3- Press CTRL C
  4- Press Alt F4. (At this point the message is already copied)
  5- Open a new message. Right click and paste or select Edit and
paste.

Mike tells us a better way to expose the headers and copy the body for
MS Outlook Express is as follows:
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/119.html
The mouse selections are File/ Properties/ Details tab/ Message source
button.  The keyboard access is alt-Enter ctrl-Tab alt-M.  Once
accessed the remainder of commands are as discussed elsewhere:  Mouse;
R click context menu, Select all, Copy or Keyboard;  ctrl-A ctrl-C.
The Message Source described here is the headers + attached spam body.
If one only wanted the complete headers without spam body, they would
stop one step earlier at the Details tab section above.

Netscape 3 - In the mail viewing window: Options > Show Headers > All
- When all the headers are displayed in the NS3 mail window, they are
formatted. This is much more readable than the display in a text
editor such as Notepad.
Netscape 4.xx - Double click on the email in your inbox. Click on View
- Headers - All.
PINE - You have to turn on the header option in setup, then just hit
"h" to get headers.
WebTV - http://www.haltabuse.org/help/headers/webtv.shtml :
   1)  While viewing the email, hit "Forward" on the sidebar. Address
the document to yourself. Completely erase the subject line.
   2)  Put your cursor on the first line of the "body" (text area);
Hit "Return" (enter) twice. Your cursor should now be on the 3rd line
of the text area.
   3)  Type any "Alt" character on this line; DO NOT HIT "RETURN"
   4)  Cut and Paste the "Alt" character onto the subject line:
(CMD+"A"), (CMD+"X"), (CMD +"V") The "Alt" character should "jump"
down to the message text-area.
   5) Hit "Send"; open the received mail.
Ximian Evolution (Linux email program) to display full headers, open
the message, go to the VIEW menu and choose message display>full
headers.
Yahoo-
-Click on the "Mail Options" link located near the top right-hand side
of the page.
-Click the "General Preferences" link.
-Locate the Show Headers heading and select either "Brief" or "All."
-Click the "Save" button to put your new settings into effect.
Another way to show you how to display headers, please see (with some
good screen shots):
http://help.att.net/docs/use/email/gen/prb_msol_mac_headerinfo.htm?pla
tform=osnone - MS Outlook Express for the Mac
http://help.att.net/docs/howto/other/win/prb_all_all_ns-
header.htm?platform=osnone - Netscape Messenger or Netscape Mail
http://www.wurd.com/cl_email_outlook_headers.php - MS Outlook
http://www.wurd.com/cl_email_msie_headers.php - MS Outlook Express

Programs that do not comply with any Internet standards (like cc-Mail
(depending on how it is configured), Beyond Mail, VAX VMS) throw away
the headers.  You will not be able to get headers from these e-mail
messages.

George tell us that the gateway that Lotus provides, SMTPLink (is one
of those Microsoft-style utilities that's functional, but just barely)
has an administrator-configurable setting for handling RFC-822 headers
on inbound (to cc:Mail) messages.  Headers can be completely
discarded, or copied to an attachment.

George also tells us in the R6 client, headers (if saved to an
attachment in the gateway) are viewable as an attachment, as noted
above.  The R8 client handles things differently, hiding the existence
of the headers attachment, and making the content available only by
going to the inbox or a message folder, right-clicking on
"Properties", then selecting the "history" tab.  From there, it's
possible to copy/paste into another document.  Header information is
left in its original chronological order (unlike Notes, which takes
the liberty of sorting all the headers into alphabetic order).

Aussie tells us that in Pegasus to view the full headers for each
message, use CTRL-H. This will show the full headers for the
particular message, but will not add them to any reply or forward. You
need to cut/paste the message into the reply/forward to send these
headers.

Richard tells us with Nettamer, a MS DOS based email and USENET group
reader you must save the message as an ASCII file, then the full
header will be displayed when you open the saved file with your
favorite ASCII editor.

At this point if you are "pushing the envelope" on your ability to
figure out how to get that complaint to the correct person, I would
suggest joining the Usenet group alt.spam or news.admin.net-
abuse.email and post the message with a title like "Please help me
decipher this header".  Unfortunately there is no "single" place to
complain to about spam (or Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail).  Complaints
have to be directed to the correct ISP (Internet Service Provider)
that the spam originated from.  See the below section entitled
"Reporting spam".

URL's to help you figure out how to look at the headers:
http://support.xo.com/abuse/guide/guide1.shtml
http://www.rahul.net/falk/mailtrack.html

A little different description of headers:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/trachead.html - Line by line tracing of a
spammers e-mail
http://digital.net/~gandalf/trachead2.html - Line by line tracing of a
spammers e-mail when the spammer has inserted a "Fake" Received line
to confuse tracking the e-mail.
http://help.mindspring.com/docs/006/emailheaders/
http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/extended.htm
 http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers/headers.html - In depth header
analysis

There is spamming software that sends the e-mail directly to your
computer.  This makes only one received line in the e-mail making your
life many times easier.  The computer that is not your computer is the
spamming computer.

Also, please look through the body of the message for e-mail addresses
to reply to.  Complain to the postmasters of those sites also (see
below for a list of complaint addresses).

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).

Looking at the below we see 6 received lines.  Received lines are like
links in a chain.  The message is passed from one computer to the next
with no breaks in the chain.  The received lines indicate that it
ended up at digital.net (my computer) from mail.bestnetpc.com.  It was
received at mail.bestnetpc.com from unknown (HELO paul-s.-aiello)
([205.160.183.123]).  The last three lines suggests that it was
received at in2.|bm.net from mh.tomsurl|.com and from
reb50.rs41|1date.net.  Since none of these computers are in the first
two received lines then we can ignore these lines and every received
entry after this line (this UCE had 4 or 5 more faked Received lines
in it that were deleted for this example).  We also know that these
lines are faked because no domain name has a "|" character in the
name.  Domain names only have alphabetic or numeric characters in the
name.

Do not get confused by the "Received: from unknown" portion.  The word
"unknown" can be *anything* and should be ignored, this is whatever
the spammer put in the SMTP HELO command when they connected to the
SMTP server.

Received: from mail.bestnetpc.com (IDENT:[e-mail]
[205.160.183.3]) by digital.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id CAA10768
for <[e-mail]>; Thu, 26 Nov 1998 02:55:11 -0500 (EST)
Received: (qmail 25259 invoked from network); 26 Nov 1998 08:05:49 -
0000
Received: from unknown (HELO paul-s.-aiello) ([205.160.183.123])  by
mail.bestnetpc.com with SMTP; 26 Nov 1998 08:05:49 -0000
Received: (from uudp@lcl|lhost) by in2.|bm.net (8.6.9/8.6.9) id
CFF569794 for <suppressed>; Thursday, November 26, 1998
Received: from tomsurl|.com (mh.tomsurl|.com [100.257.57.69]) by
m4.tomsurl|.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id PAA21932 Thursday,
November 26, 1998
Received: from reb50.rs41|1date.net ([e-mail]41|1date.net
[256.36.1.176]) by tomsurl|.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id
PBA023891 for <suppressed>;

So we complain to whomever owns unknown (HELO paul-s.-aiello)
([205.160.183.123]).  Make sure that you do a nslookup (or use
http://samspade.org/t/ , put the address in the section "address
digger", click on WhoIs IP block and Traceroute and click on "do
stuff") on the IP address's.  I try to verify 205.160.183.123 is paul-
s.-aiello.  Indeed paul-s.-aiello does not even exist and
205.160.183.123 does not resolve to a name when I do a NSLookup.  Next
would be a traceroute.  See further below for more in-depth tracking
on resolving an IP.

IP portion = 205.160.183.123

Traceroute 205.160.183.123 gives us:
Step  Host                          IP
Find route from: 0.0.0.0 to: 205.160.183.123 (205.160.183.123), Max 30
hops, 40 byte packets
<snip>
13 acsi-sw-gw.customer.alter.net.   (157.130.128.26 ):   235ms
14 atlant-ga-2.espire.net.          (206.222.97.24  ):   272ms
15 206.222.104.37                   (206.222.104.37 ):   279ms
16 orland-fl-1-a5-0.espire.net.     (206.222.99.7   ):   362ms
17 iag.net.orland-fl-1.espire.net.  (206.222.106.6  ):   195ms
18 d1.s0.gw.dayb.fl.iag.net.        (207.30.70.38   ):   230ms
19 s0.gw.bestnetpc.net.             (207.30.70.254  ):   231ms
20 *     *     *
21 205.160.183.123                  (205.160.183.123):   372ms

See the traceroute section below for how to interpret the "*" (and
other codes) that are returned from a traceroute.

Note - if you see something like the following realize that the only
portion you can trust is within the "([" and the "])".  The spammer
put in the (faked) portion "mail.zebra.net (209.12.13.2)" :
Received: from mail.zebra.net (209.12.13.2) ([209.12.69.42])

Kamiel tells us that you might also want to make sure that the IP is
not hosted by an intermediary site.  Check it out at:
http://www.arin.net/

You should complain to the abuse@ or postmaster@<Last Two or Three
words at the end of the name>.  I would complain to [e-mail] OR
[e-mail] (but NOT both sites) since after looking below at the
list of complaint addresses in this FAQ there are no alternate
addresses for iag.net or espire.net.  Unless it is a "major provider"
(someone in the below complaint list) I usually complain to the
upstream provider rather than risk the chance of complaining to the
spammer and being ignored.  If you go too far up the chain, however,
it may take quite some time for the complaint to filter down to the
correct person.

Louise tells us that you are entitled to make an 'alleged' accusation
but to prevent yourself from being libel, prefix your statement with:-
"Without prejudice: I suspect you are the culprit of such and such."

The constitutional and legal boundary of 'Without prejudice' exempts
Politician's opinions being spoken publicly and this prefix is often
adopted by Solicitors (English) or Lawyers/Attorneys (USA).

I use :
abuse@XXXXX - Without prejudice I submit to you this Unsolicited
Commercial E-Mail is from your user XXXX.  UCE is unappreciated
because it costs my provider (and ultimately myself) money to process
just like an unsolicited FAX.  Please look into this.  Thank you.

BE SURE to verify the IP address.  Windows '95 machines place the name
of the machine as the "name" and place the real IP address after the
name, meaning a spammer can give a legitimate "name" of someone else
to get someone innocent in trouble.  A spammer at cyberpromo changed
their SMTP HELO 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 below e-mail was passed to me thru a "mule" (un1.satlink.com
[200.9.212.3]).  The Spammer hijacked an open SMTP port to reroute e-
mail to me:
Received: from un1.satlink.com (un1.satlink.com [200.9.212.3]) by
digital.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id GAA06372; Fri, 27 Nov 1998
06:53:20 -0500 (EST)
Received: from usa.net ([209.86.128.234]) by un1.satlink.com (Netscape
Messaging Server 3.54)  with SMTP id AAT2FEA; Fri, 27 Nov 1998
08:46:07 -0200

A NSLookup on 209.86.128.234 resolves to
user38ld07a.dialup.mindspring.com, so after I complain to
mindspring.com I also send the postmaster of the open SMTP port the
following :
postmaster@XXXXX - Your SMTP mail server XXXXX was used as a mule to
pass (and waste your system resources) this e-mail on to me.  You can
stop your SMTP port from allowing rerouting of e-mail back outside of
your domain if you wish to.  FYI only.  Info on how to block your
server, see:
http://www.ordb.org/
http://dsbl.org/main
http://relays.osirusoft.com/
http://relays.osirusoft.com/cgi-bin/rbcheck.cgi - See if a server is
on a BlackHole list, i.e. an open relay
http://www.dorkslayers.com/
http://spamhaus.org/sbl
http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/usage.html
http://samspade.org/t/
http://www.abuse.net/relay.html -  Test for server vulnerability

Now that Cable Modems are so popular, companies are starting to put
their "personal" e-mail servers on cable / DSL modems and are (of
course) not configuring them correctly.  I received UCE from an open
SMTP server:
Received: from SDMAIN (DT1-A-hfc-0251-d1132e93.rdc1.sdca.coxatwork.com
[209.19.46.147])                  by digital.net (8.9.3/05.21.76) with
SMTP id SAA04761;            Fri, 30 Mar 2001 18:35:24 -0500 (EST)
Received: from Received: (qmail 554 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2001
23:56:02                  (ip207.miami41.fl.pub-ip.psi.net
[38.37.111.207])        by SDMAIN; Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:19:58 -0800

Complain to Cox ( [e-mail] in this case) about their open SMTP
server.

There are some systems that "claim" to "cloak" e-mail.  It is not
true.  If you receive one that looks like the following :

Received: from relay4.ispam.net (root@[207.124.161.39]) by digital.net
(8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA28969 for <[e-mail]>; Thu,
26 Jun 1997 10:41:46 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from --- CLOAKED! ---
      or
Received: from cerberus.njsmu.com ([204.142.120.2]) by digital.net
(8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA06250 for <[e-mail]>; Mon,
25 Jan 1999 07:11:18 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]
Received: from The.sender.of.this.untracable.email.used.MAILGOD.by.IMI

It is still broken down as follows :
 - The route the e-mail took originated from one of the systems above
the line marked "cloaked" or the line "untraceable" (in fact this
makes it even easier to trace).  There is no magic to it.  Complain to
that provider.  If you get no response from the site that spammed, you
should ask your provider to no longer allow the above site
[207.124.161.39] to connect to your system.

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.

There are also IBM mainframes and misconfigured Sun Sendmail machines
(SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) that do not include the machine that they received
the SMTP traffic from.  You have to route the message (with headers)
back to the postmaster at that system and ask them to tell you what
the IP of the machine is that hooked into their system for that
message.

An example of a Microsoft Exchange server that the "HELO" transaction
is taken as the "From" portion (and is completely false) :
Received: from dpi.dpi-conseil.fr (dpi.dpi-conseil.fr [195.115.136.1])
by digital.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA06614        for
<[e-mail]>; Thu, 26 Aug 1999 10:51:31 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from FIREWALL ([192.168.0.254]) by dpi.dpi-conseil.fr with
SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2448.0)
id QW11TJV1; Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:44:38 +0200

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.

Note for AOL users when looking at headers:
If you get double headers at the end of a message (like the below) the
spammer has tacked on a extra set of headers to confuse the issue.
Ignore everything except the last set of headers.  These are the
*real* headers.

------------------ Headers --------------------------------
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from  rly-za05.mx.aol.com (rly-za05.mail.aol.com
[172.31.36.101]) byair-za04.mail.aol.com (v51.16) with SMTP; Mon, 16
Nov 1998 19:16:02 1900
Received: from mailb.telia.com (mailb.telia.com [194.22.194.6]) by
rly-za05.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id TAA05189;
Mon, 16 Nov 1998 19:15:53 -0500 (EST)
From: [e-mail]
Received: from signal.dk ([194.255.7.40]) by mailb.telia.com
(8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id BAA14174; Tue, 17 Nov 1998 01:15:50 +0100
(CET)
Received: from 194.255.7.40 by signal.dk
viaSMTP(950413.SGI.8.6.12/940406.SGI.AUTO) id AAA28586; Tue, 17 Nov
1998 00:53:13 +0100
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 98 18:27:19 EST
To: [e-mail]
Subject: ATTENTION SMOKERS - QUIT SMOKING IN JUST 7 DAYS
Reply-To: [e-mail]

------------------- Headers --------------------------------
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from  rly-yd04.mx.aol.com (rly-yd04.mail.aol.com
[172.18.150.4]) by air-yd02.mx.aol.com (v56.14) with SMTP; Mon, 11 Jan
1999 23:54:48 -0500
Received: from phone.net ([207.18.137.42])
                    by rly-yd04.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
                    with SMTP id XAA01327;
                    Mon, 11 Jan 1999 23:51:03 -0500 (EST)
From: <[e-mail]>
To: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 20:54:19 -0600
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Subject: Life insurance, do you have it?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable


  What computer did this e-mail originate from?
==================================================

You cannot generally tell by a e-mail header which specific computer
the e-mail came from.  Just about every time you dial into your ISP
(Internet Service Provider) you are assigned a different IP address.
If someone sends you an e-mail and they log out, the next time they
log in their IP address will most likely be different.  If the
computer has a permanently assigned IP address *and* you have the
cooperation of whomever owns that block of IP addresses you *might* be
able to get information on who might have sent the e-mail.

About the only way to tell *exactly* which e-mail account the e-mail
was sent from is to get the ISP (Internet Service Provider) to tell
you.  Usually the ISP will require you to get the local police
involved (a warrant of some type) to force the ISP to give you that
information.  Even given that you know the account the e-mail
originated from, a forger can find out that person's account /
password and log in as them, they can gain access to that computer
while the person who owns that computer is away from the computer or
they could install a back door program that allows them to control
that person's computer remotely.  If this were to happen then the
forger could send the e-mail and nobody would know who *specifically*
sent the e-mail.


        MAILING LIST messages
========================================

Stephanie kindly defines MAILING LIST versus LISTSERVER :

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.

Istvan suggests "Majordomo software is remarkably funny about headers.
It does not like headers which contain anything odd. All messages the
software receives which do not conform to its rigorous standards are
simply forwarded to the list moderator.  It turns out this feature is
effective at stopping between 80 and 90% of spam actually getting to
the list."

Kirk tells us that you can set majordomo up so that new subscribers
have to reply to a subscribe request, thus verifying the address is
legit.  Additionally the lists can be configured so that only
subscribers can post.  And finally you can put filters on content.
I've got the list I manage configured to reject multipart email and
email which contains html.

Jeff adds that this would be the closed+confirm option in the
configuration file so that only subscribers can post. Also, to prevent
multipart or HTML this would be the taboo_headers configuration.

Richard mentions "Listserv can be configured to restrict non-members
from sending to a list and can restrict spam based on the headers
similar to Majordomo.  I've used both of these features successfully.
You can read more about Listserv capabilities, if you are interested,
at:
     http://www.lsoft.com/listserv.stm
     http://www.lsoft.com/spamorama.html - FILTER (info on its spam
filter)
I suspect that Listserv's spam filter may be better than Majordomo's
(but I've not managed any Majordomo lists)."

Jeff adds that having ran a majordomo list for almost 4 years, I find
majordomo to be every bit as good.  I should, however, qualify that;
the listowner needs to have his/her clueons in good working order.
Simply put, no listowner in their right mind should leave their
majordomo lists set to anything other than closed+confirm.  Alas,
there are listowners who will leave their lists wide open.  I've also
seen others knock themselves dead creating their own filters just so a
listmember can post to the list from a web-based e-mail account while
on vacation.  I usually tell anyone in such a situation to subscribe
to the list from whatever free e-mail account they plan to use.  IMO,
I cannot justify compromising list security for such reasons.  Lists
should be closed+confirm...plain and simple.

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". 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.  In relation to the Internet he
makes a slimy used car salesman look like a saint.

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.

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

Jeff also mentions that news.admin.net.abuse.e-mail is a good
newsgroup to monitor about how to keep spam off the listserve.  I have
seen mailing list issues arise occasionally.

  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>

Or you can look at the Cancel FAQ at :
http://www.killfile.org/faqs/cancel.html

Try to make sure that the message has not already been posted to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.net-abuse.email or
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet 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.

Take a careful look at the header, if there are "curious characters"
(characters that look like garbage) in the X-Mailer: line, or any
other line in the header, then delete those characters otherwise the
message may end up truncated.  The offending line consists of the
EIGHT characters D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1 (in hex).

If the post is particularly amusing (Spammer threat or a postmaster
threat), put C&C in the subject.  Seymour tells us it means Coffee and
cats. This originated from a post claiming that a particular
outrageous article had caused spewing of coffee into the keyboard and
jumping while holding a cat, resulting in scratched thighs.

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.

If you *really* want to see some fake posts, look in alt.test or in
the alt.binaries.warez.* groups.

A fake post:

Path:
...!news.sprintlink.net!in2.uu.net!news.net99.net!news!s46.phxslip4.in
direct.com!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.

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://groups.google.com/

WWW IP Lookup URL's
=============================
http://samspade.org/t/- My personal favorite.  All the tools you need
on one page.
http://www.geektools.com/- Does lookups at all of the servers (Arin,
RIPE, APNIC, etc.)
http://www1.dshield.org/ipinfo.php- Look up IP address / complaint
address for Denial of Service attacks.
http://andrew.triumf.ca/cgi-bin/spamalyzer.pl- Check and see if the
address is in one of the real time abuse databases.
 http://cities.lk.net/trlist.html- Traceroute Lists by States and
Backbone Maps List
http://www.net.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/netops.cgi- Traceroute and ping
Index to Traceroute pages:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Communications_and_Network
ing/Software/Networking/Utilities/Traceroute/
http://www.traceroute.org/
SWITCH WHOIS Gateway:
http://www.switch.ch/search/whois_form.html
  Or
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois - European countries WhoIs
http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl- Asian Pacific WhoIs
http://whois.nic.or.kr/- Korean WhoIs
http://www.arin.net/- North / South America WhoIs (Upper Right Corner)
IP to Lat - Lon (For those times when only a Tactical Nuke will do ;-
)) :
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2ll/
Yet Another IP to name:
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2name
What do those domain names mean :
http://www.alldomains.com/alltlds.html
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/country-codes.txt- Country
Codes for the last characters in a domain name


Converting that IP to a name
=============================
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).

WhoIs or a traceroute will give you the upstream provider, complain to
that organization.

Marty reminds us that there are some "special" IP's that are allocated
as private networks.  These fall within the confines of 0.0.0.0 to
255.255.255.255 but should be ignored.  If the number is greater than
255 then it is faked.  The addresses are :

Class  Start Address  End Address
  A     10.0.0.0     10.255.255.255
       127.0.0.0    127.255.255.255 - Loopback addresses
  B   172.16.0.0     172.31.255.255
  C  192.168.0.0    192.168.255.255
  D    224.0.0.0    239.255.255.255 - Multicast
  E    240.0.0.0    255.255.255.255 - Multicast

For a full list of bogus IP addresses see:
http://www.cymru.com/Documents/bogon-dd.html
http://www.cymru.com/Documents/bogon-list.html

And a couple of other "mysterious" private IP addresses (that are not
mentioned in any of *my* network books):
169.254.0.0 - 169.254.255.255 - IPV4 Auto Configuration address range
(Draft RFC)
192.0.2.0 - 192.0.2.255

See :
http://www.ja.net/CERT/JANET-
CERT/prevention/cisco/private_addresses.html

First off try using NSLookup (there is software for PC's, I use
http://samspade.org/t/ , put the address in the section "address
digger", click on WhoIs IP block and Traceroute and click on "do
stuff" or look at the URL's at the bottom of this FAQ).  If the
NSLookup does not give you a name then try a Traceroute.  Somewhere
you will get a "name" and at that point I would complain to the
postmaster@<that name>.  See below for complaint addresses.


What to do with "strange" looking Web links
===========================================

http://1%30%38%35%338%31%32%39%32/ has some %-encoded characters, but
decoding those gives http://1085381292/
1085381292 is just another way of writing the IP address
64.177.154.172

To convert a decimal number to a "dotted quad octet" :
http://3438189385/yt/rotten1/

You can put this "strange" number in at any of the following :
http://samspade.org/t/
http://www.webspawner.com/users/ipconverter

URL Decode:
http://www.swishweb.com/dec.htm

An example of a complex URL decode:
http://home.digital.net/~gandalf/URLDecode.txt

http://www.netdemon.net/decode.html - This CGI handles ALL the recent
types of spammer tricks, including decimal, octal, hex addresses,
username/password tricks, hex encoded characters, and redirectors.

http://www.netdemon.net/tools.html - All the tools.

And you get an answer like:
204.238.155.73

You can try the "strange" number at :
http://www.abuse.net/cgi-bin/unpackit

Kirk tells us wsftp and the traceroute that comes with wsftp will take
those number and automatically translate them into the IP addresses.

Or under Widows 95 :
 start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Calculator
Choose view --> Scientific
Put in the "strange" number (3438189385) and click on HEX.  You get:
CCEE9B49

Then type in each of the two characters in HEX and click DEC after
each number:
CC = 204
EE = 238
9B = 155
49 =  73

Viola ... Your IP is 204.238.155.73


For more general funny URLs, like
http://23123443~32:3758493879/www.samspade.org/10.00.0.1/xxxstuff.html
, try http://samspade.org/t/

Or if that doesn't work, Andreas suggests:
Something like following does NOT work the obfuscated URL form at
samspade but I figured out that these can be typed into a html-file
with a texteditor or in Netscape composer 6.x in the source-mode, than
loading or switching to the html mode will immediately show the
decoded characters, should be an URL with a form mailer or something
like "mailto:[e-mail]"
97;ilto:jimmy1
2;40200&#

If you get a strange URL like:
http://www.nt.dahouc.mx^T^B^T^E^T.com|net.fr^B^E^T^B^T^E^T^T.ooooooooo
ooooooooo.com:80/nt/dahouchy/
Where the ^B = Control "B", ^T = Control "T", etc. you can look at the
very end right before the first "/" to figure out what the site is, on
this case it is oooooooooooooooooo.com, using port 80.  The rest of it
is "decoded" by oooooooooooooooooo.com to give the "real" site name.
For MS Windows the program at http://www.netdemon.net/ will decode
these with ease.

If you are looking thru the HTML source and you get something like:
<!-- CHANGE EMAIL ADDRESS IN ACTION OF FORM --><FORM name="form"
method="post" action="mailto
;:mortma
;il6@yah
;oo.com?
;subject
;=Debt1" enctype="text/plain"
Then take the "funny" looking part and paste it into the "Obfuscated
URLs" section of http://samspade.org/t/ like so:
http://mailto
;:mortma
;il6@yah
;oo.com?
;subject
;=Debt1
And you get:
http://mailto:[e-mail]?subject=Debt1

So then you send a complaint to yahoo.com asking them to delete their
user [e-mail].

If the site is a IP address like "198.41.0.5", 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
Commands:
nslookup hostname dns_server
  or
dig @dns_server hostname

And you get :
Name:    whois.arin.net
Addresses:  198.41.0.5, 198.41.0.6

If you are having problems with this, Josh suggests you try :

$ nslookup
Default Server:  digital.net
Address:  198.69.104.2

> set type=ptr
> 181.126.183.204.in-addr.arpa
Server:  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

Looking up IP address ownership

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 :

Bruce tells us that there are three places where you can lookup an IP
address, being the current trinity of Regional Internet Registries.
These RIRs are:

Jeef says Geektools will work out which one, as well as display the
results.

Asia and Pacific Rim: APNIC - Asia Pacific Network Information Centre
        whois.apnic.net
        http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl

 Americas and parts of Africa: ARIN - American Registry for Internet
Numbers
        whois.arin.net
        http://www.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl

 Europe and Surrounding Areas: RIPE NCC - Rseaux IP Europens, Network
Coordination Centre
        whois.ripe.net
        http://www.ripe.net/db/whois.html

Under Unix, you can use:
    whois -h whois.arin.net 198.41.0.5
          or
    whois -h whois.apnic.net 198.41.0.5
          or
    whois -h whois.ripe.net 198.41.0.5

Each of the above three RIRs may refer to one of the other RIRs.
Please do not send complaints to any of the RIRs as they merely
provide contact information, and are not related in any way to the
possible spammers.

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
and abuse address has been tried.  Sending a complaint to all of the
intermediate sites in a traceroute should *not* be done, these sites
in all likelihood cannot do anything about the problem (with the
exception of possibly the next to last site).

For domains that have invalid contact information you should contact
the appropriate RIR (see above)

To see who the upstream provider is, try :

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  * * *

The first column is the "hop" that traceroute is working on.  The next
is the "computer" (and IP) of the computer at that hop.  The last
three numbers are the milliseconds it took to get an answer from that
computer.

You can get "codes" instead of the milliseconds.  An example of a
"code" is the "* * *" for hop 10.

Here is a list of the codes:
? Unknown packet type.
H Host unreachable.
N Network unreachable.
P Protocol unreachable.
Q Source quench.
U Port unreachable.
* The Traceroute Packet timed out (did not return to you).

Chris clarifies that a '*' in actuality could be caused by a timeout
OR something listening on the UDP ports traceroute uses to get it's
port unreachables back from, to work, OR the router simply does not
support ICMP/UDP unreachable ports and traceroute cannot determine
it's status so it displays asterisks.

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] ... If that doesn't work then
complain to MCI.net.

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 (Domain Information Groper) (or one of its derivatives), it
is used to search DNS records :
http://www.spacereg.com/a.rpl?m=dig
http://www.gulftech.org/webtools/webutil.pl?dig
http://tools.bintec.com/

What DIG tells you:
http://home.att.net/~marjie1/Dig.htm

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

Getting a World Wide Web page busted
====================================

Many spammers use throw away accounts, accounts that they know will be
deleted as soon as the service gets a complaint.  Of course the
spammers mentality is "if it is free it is for me to abuse".  If the
spammer really annoyed you then you might wish to dig and get every
account possible deleted.  What you need to do is actually go to the
WWW page that they advertise, look at the page and usually the page
will redirect you to another site (or possibly redirect 2 or 3 times).
Send a complaint to these sites (with the original spam).  It is
important to explain to the site you are complaining to how you got to
their site so that they don't ignore you.

In Netscape and Explorer there is an option to "view source".  This
will pop up a page with all of the http source from the page.  This
page will have all of the "links" to the next site.

If you look at the http source and it is unreadable (and sez
"Haywyre"), take a look at :
http://www.netdemon.net/haywyre/

There are spammers out there that actually have a clue.  They use open
Web Proxies to reroute their web page to another location.  When you
do a ping of a web site, the ping is of the open web proxy.  The open
web proxy then redirects you when it gets the request for the web
page.  A complete technical explanation can be found at:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=3ee16105$[e-mail]


Usenet complaint addresses
============================================
O.K... So you have a common site that you can complain to.  Good.  If
you cannot figure out where the message came from, you can post the
FULL HEADERS (this is *very* important for tracing) to alt.spam,
news.admin.net-abuse.misc, news.admin.net-abuse.email or
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet (see the section entitled Reporting Spam
and tracing a posted message).  Usually you can get someone to help
with the message.

If you complain (or asked to be removed) to the spammer directly, you
may just be confirming a "real" live e-mail address, which may lead to
even more junk e-mail.  I would suggest complaining to the owner of
the site only.  You can send e-mail to [e-mail]  (where
foo.bar.com is the provider you are complaining to) and it will get
forwarded to the "best" e-mail address.. See http://www.abuse.net/

I used to post a long list of abuse addresses in the alt.spam FAQ, but
the abuse.net lookup is much better, in fact it is the way that I look
up abuse addresses.  Look up the abuse address of the ISP that you
think the spammer is a customer:
http://abuse.net/lookup.phtml

There is a list of admins to contact:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~slambo/spamreports.htm

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.

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

One company that was suckered in by a bulk e-mail company received 35
responses to the addresses in the body of the message, and 100% of
them were negative. Additionally the ISP that hosted them received 15
complaints asking for them to terminate their service. UUNet received
50+ complaints about this UCE.

And where they *should* advertise :
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/finding-groups/general.html

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jmm/papers.html#efi - Economic FAQ
about the Internet

If you don't get a proper response from the postmaster, remember,
WhoIs - rs.internic.net is your friend. See the section labeled
"Converting that IP to a name" for more information on InterNIC.

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

Any non-profit organization (like a University) should be very happy
to help get rid of a spammer.  If the non-profit organizations
resources are being used to spam a for-profit business the IRS can
take their non-profit status away. Talk to the legal council at the
non-profit organization if you don't get a positive response from the
postmaster.

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 .

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


Viruses / Trojans / Spyware
===========================
If you do not have anti-virus software loaded on your computer *or*
you do not have the latest and greatest virus definitions then run -
do not walk - to the closest software store and buy the latest anti-
virus software or download the latest definitions if you have the
software and haven't updated the definitions lately.

The grief you will have if you are infected with a virus is many times
the grief of loading and maintaining anti-virus software.

More and more viruses propagate thru e-mail.  If your friends machine
is infected you can receive a virus from them because the virus sends
a copy of itself to you (the virus send itself to everybody in your
friends address book).  DO NOT open attachments even if they are from
someone you know unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN the attachment is
virus free.

http://www.incidents.org/react/avinfo.php - Online scanning of your
hard drive and reporting viruses

If you think that you have received a virus in an e-mail, there are
some online scanning tools that will scan for the latest and greatest
viruses:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.commandondemand.com/
http://security1.norton.com/us/intro.asp?venid=sym&langid=us

You can submit the virus to your choice in anti-virus vendors, please
take a look at their site to see if they have any particular
submission instructions:
"Command AntiVirus" [e-mail]
http://www.commandcom.com/virus/think_you_have_a_virus.html
"Computer Associates" [e-mail]
http://www3.ca.com/virusinfo/
"F-Secure" [e-mail]
"Kaspersky AntiVirus" [e-mail]
http://www.avp.ru/
"Network Associates" [e-mail]
http://www.mcafeeb2b.com/naicommon/avert/avert-research-center/submit-
sample.asp
"SARC" [e-mail]
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/submit.html
"Trend Micro" [e-mail]
http://www.antivirus.com/vinfo/trendlabs/submit.htm

A Trojan is a program that you are tricked into executing that has a
devious purpose. You run a small game that (in reality) loads itself
onto your computer to allow someone else to get into your computer.
Most anti-virus programs *should* protect against this. See:
PestPatrol Glossary
http://www.safersite.com/PestInfo/G/Glossary.asp
PestPatrol White Paper: About RATs (Remote Admin Trojans)
http://www.safersite.com/Support/About/About_Rats.asp
http://www.pestpatrol.com/whitepapers/Comparison/Product_Details.asp
Also see "A Comparison of Pest Detecting Tools" at:
http://www.pestpatrol.com/Whitepapers/Comparison/Index.asp

Spyware is software that tracks what you do at your computer and
reports that information via the Internet back to the company that
wrote the software . Depending on how paranoid you are and how much
you want companies to know what you are doing, you might wish to
remove this software from your computer:
http://grc.com/optout.htm

There are companies spamming (and ostensibly making money) off of
Trojan programs.  They tell customers they can spy on children,
spouses, employees, etc (which is, by the way, illegal in the USA and
many countries):
"Spy on Anyone by sending them an Email-Greeting Card!
Spy Software records their emails, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, ACTUAL
Computer Passwords, Chats, Keystrokes, PLUS MORE."

Last (and best) a program that gets rid of many (but not all Trojans)
of the above nuisances :
http://security.kolla.de/ - Spybot Search And Destroy


Fraud on the Internet and The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts
================================================================
There are many hoaxes and frauds on the Internet. No different than RL
(Real Life).

You must be very careful of any e-mail that you receive.  If the e-
mail is asking for any account and password there is a very good
chance that this is a fraud.  The fraud artist is trying to get you to
divulge information to them that they should not know.  Never click on
a link that says anything about updating your account.  There are ways
that the links you click on "look" like they are pointing to a
legitimate site but in reality are pointing to the fraud site that
looks JUST LIKE the real site.  If you are worried that your account
may need updating, go to your browser and type in the site name by
hand and then look at your account.  See :
http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,88583,00.html?nlid=SEC2

Donna tells us If you would like to see a safe sample of this mischief
visit:
http://www.zapthedingbat.com/security/ex01/vun1.htm

Examples of the e-mails that I have received that are fraud or viruses
purport that they are from E-Bay, PayPal, Amazon, Earthlink, a
multitude of banks and from Microsoft.  An example of the URL (that
looked like it was from Earthlink) and how it was decoded can be found
at:
http://home.digital.net/~gandalf/URLDecode.txt

In addition some of these fraud artists are targeting technically
unsophisticated office workers claiming they have control over the
workers computer (when they really don't), or that they will get them
in trouble by putting pornography on their computer unless they pay
them :
http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,88623,00.html?nlid=PM

A partnership of the National Association of Attorneys General, the
Federal Trade Commission and The National Consumers League :
http://www.fraud.org/
Call 1-800-876-7060 or fill out an on-line scam sheet:
http://www.fraud.org/info/repoform.htm
http://www.ifccfbi.gov/ - Internet Fraud Complaint Center
http://www.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/howtofile.asp - How to file a
complaint - "It is important that you keep any evidence you may have
related to your complaint"
http://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp - File a complaint
http://www.junkemail.org/scamspam/ - FTC ScamSpam - [e-mail]
http://www.gcn.com/21_9/top-stories/18494-1.html - An article on what
the FTC is doing to stop scams
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/dotcon/index.html FTC Scam Page
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/15/HNftcspammer_1.html - The
FTC goes against spammers
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/story/
0,10801,78551,00.html?SKC=cybercrime-78551 - Internet fraud is
expanding.  Spam has been sent out with fake sites that "look" like
real sites to steal credit card information, etc.
http://www.acidics.com/ - How all the MMF, envelope stuffing, paid to
surf, read e-mail, etc scams work.  That is work for the con artists.
You (of course) lose money.

The Better Business Bureau has a web site at:
http://www.bbb.org

Hoaxes and scams :
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/Fraud/
http://HoaxBusters.ciac.org/
http://www.scambusters.com/
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39298,00.html - A scam if
you download a program you may pay $250 in telephone charges.
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00680235.html - Article
on Chain e-mail, pyramid schemes, fraud

Virus updates, scams and hoaxes:
From Security Wire Digest (
http://www.infosecuritymag.com/digest_intro.shtml )
MTX-TESTING E-MAIL SCAMS USERS
A scam artist has been making money off gullible users by sending a
virus alert about testing for the MTX Worm. The e-mail advises users
to call a 900 number, which costs $2.69 per minute, for a recorded
message that instructs users to visit three antivirus Web sites--sites
that provide AV definitions free of charge. Always check virus alerts
and possible hoaxes against hoax web sites or legitimate antivirus
authorities, such as Sophos, Trend Micro and TruSecure.
http://www.vmyths.com
http://www.sophos.com
http://www.trendmicro.com
http://www.trusecure.com

In the United States :
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission web page (stock
solicitations, stock manipulation by sending out spam after buying a
stock to get others to buy the stock and increase the price)
http://www.sec.gov/enforce/comctr.htm or Email:
[e-mail]
http://www.sec.gov/answers/pumpdump.htm - Pump and Dump tips
http://www.sec.gov/news/headlines/netfraud.htm - SEC prosecutions
Net Securities scam: Report to [e-mail]

The Food and Drug Administration :
http://www.fda.gov/opacom/backgrounders/problem.html
Medical Items:
US Food and Drug Administration - MedWatch - [e-mail]
I sent Medwatch a spam about a "miracle fat removing creme" and I
received the following, so for non-prescribed drugs I guess you report
to the following:
Thank you for your comments. The office of MedWatch does not look into
this type of complaint. This information may be given directly to FDA
via the web. Please go to http://www.fda.gov.
Buying Medical Products Online -
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/100_online.html
Notifying FDA about problem Web Sites -
http://www.fda.gov/oc/buyonline/default.htm

Make Money Fast is a pyramid (or Ponzi) scheme where you are in a
chain of people wherein you send money to a few people and try to
recruit others to send money to you. Basically if it even remotely
smells like a MMF scheme it is illegal (even tho' many of the MMF
schemes "claim" to have been looked at by a lawyer or checked by the
United States Postal Authorities).

For a list of countries where Make Money Fast is illegal see :
http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/mmf/mmf_table.html
http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/mmf/

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.

MMFs should be reported to the user and their postmaster and the
following :
Where to send complaints to in Australia:
Ministry of Fair Trading
P O Box 6355
EAST PERTH 6536

The applicable Canadian description can be found at :
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams/scams_e.htm
Specifically http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams/pyramid_e.htm
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 ...

Norway - Sylfest tells us Norwegians should report these via email to
the national taskforce on economical crime, the »KOKRIM by forwarding
the mail with full headers to: < [e-mail] >

United Kingdoms:
Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy Directorate 2
Department of Trade and Industry, 1 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0ET
Tel: [phone]
Have a booklet called 'The Trading Schemes Guide' which is very useful
indeed and explains the UK legal details on these things,

In the United States, you should write the Federal Trade Commission
Ms. Broder
( [e-mail] ). For more info on pyramid schemes use
[e-mail]
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/0212antispam.html?net - Federal
Trade Commission is cracking down on illegal spam
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

Another type of fraud is one where the spammer sends out a HTML
message with a message / URL link that says "try a new game". When you
click on the URL there is nothing related to the original message.
What the spammer has (at the very least) done is gotten some money for
himself by you clicking on his "click to pay" URL. Worst case the
spammer may have taken advantage of a security hole in your browser
and done something nefarious. Bottom line, do not click on the
spammers URL, look at the e-mail and complain to the upstream
provider.

And just when you thought that the spammers had reached new lows you
get a spam from Word-of-Mouth.Org or WordofMouthConnection.com or
womc.net (as the scam gets reported I am sure they will continue to
change their name).  They purport:
"An acquaintance of your's recently shared their experience with you
in our online community, Word-of-Mouth.Org. It could be a friend, a
family member, co-worker, business associate, or someone else you have
run into at some time.
Why are we sending you this email?
When people find out others are talking about them -- whether it is
good or bad -- they want to know. At Word-of-Mouth.Org, we feel
responsible to alert people so they have an opportunity to find out
what is being said."

When you go to the site to find out what is being said, all you can
find out for "free" is that your e-mail address is in their database.
To find out exactly what is going on you have to "join" (and, of
course, pay a fee).  After you pay mysteriously your report cannot be
found.  See:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=word-of-mouth+scam
(Look at the news.admin.net-abuse.email posts)
Also See:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/wordofmouth.asp
And:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2003/0901sec1.html

Yet another fraud arrives via e-mail with a subject of "Pre Action
Warning." addressed to "Dear Sir" (didn't even know my name).  It
specifically stated:
"I am writing to you in connection with you debt that you have with
our company, Due to inflation and other factors outside of my control,
your debts have exceeded       $1100.94 (one thousand one hundred and
ninety four cents) I regret to inform you that we are pushing for
legal action against your person.
We will offer you the opportunity to pay your debt. within the next 7
business days, if you fail to comply, our partners, hold the right to
litigate on behalf of our organization."

The E-Mail went on to state that I could send Banking details, Banking
Authorization, etc.  Even better it stated:
"CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: E-mail may contain confidential information
that is legally privileged. Do not read this e-mail if you are not the
intended recipient. This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files
or previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain confidential
and proprietary information that is legally privileged.  If you are
not the intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it
to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any
disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any of the information
contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED."

These are all scare tactics trying to get you to give them money and
not report this to someone else.  I (of course) immediately complained
to [e-mail] and the two providers linked to this fraud (with the
entire e-mail message and headers).  You don't owe money; they just
want to make you think so.  When you get any e-mail that tells you to
give someone money because they say you owe it, don't do it.  Trust
me, if they want the money bad enough they won't be using e-mail to
collect.

Another fraud (Bad English and all ...) to try and get you to send the
spammer your credit card purports:
"We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in
amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography webmaster
or deal with dirty money, which require us to laundry them and then
send to your checking account).
If you feel this transaction was made by our   mistake, please press
"No".
If you confirm this transaction, please press  "Yes"  and fill in the
form below.
Enter your credit card number here:
Enter  your credit card expiration date: "

As always be a cynic when receiving unsolicited e-mails.  The frauds
are getting more and more complex.

Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud
============================

Robert Heinlein has a saying "TANSTAAFL" (There Ain't No Such Thing As
A Free Lunch).  If it looks too good, it probably is.

There is also a fraud promising you millions of dollars from a
"government official" (or Widow, or son of a widow, etc.) in Nigeria
(or some other small country) with a "secret" bank account, but all
they need to transfer the money to you is:
(a)Your Company's Name and Address
(b)Your full Name(s), Telephone, and Fax numbers (Private and Company)
(c)Your Bank Name, Address, Account number, Telex and swift code (if
any).

This is the start of the Nigerian AFF (Advance Fee Fraud).  A summary
is that they ask for you to "help" pay some fees that are required to
get the money out of the country, then they try to get you to go to
Nigeria (or a bordering country) to meet.

At this point they try to get you into the country without a visa,
promising that they will get you a visa.  At that point they have you
under their control since you are in Nigeria without a visa (no, they
never got you a visa) and they start intimidation (physical or
otherwise) trying to get money from you.
According to the Department Of State in publication 10465 (release
April 1997) "15 foreign businessmen (one American) have been murdered
in Nigeria AFF scams".

To see the details of this fraud:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,53818,00.html - Short Version
- Meet the Nigerian E-Mail Grifters
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/2189.pdf - The longer
detailed version, Department Of State Publication 10465
Send scams to [e-mail] (Put No Monetary Loss in the
header if you haven't lost any money)
Also see:
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,695
62,00.html
http://www.nigerianfraudwatch.org/
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/news1998.htm
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ - How to contact the US Gov't
about this scheme
http://www.scambusters.org/NigerianFee.html - How the fraud works
http://www.cbintel.com/nigeriafraud.htm
http://www.scamorama.com/ - The Nigerian Scammers - Can you scam a
scammer?
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/story/
0,10801,80200,00.html?nas=AM-80200 - The Nigerian Fraud continues to
claim victims
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2003/0224sec1.html - Two more
scams, one like Nigeria scam, one demanding money you don't owe
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2003/1013sec1.html - M. E.
Kabay talks about scams that allege you have won a lottery in Europe.
M. E. Kabay mentions "it's illegal for a U.S. resident to participate
in a foreign lottery".  Again, if it looks too good it probably is

Hoaxes
=====
Lat but certainly not least there are many hoaxes circulating around
the internet.  For example there is 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_fa
q.html

A complete Urban Legends listings (It is big) :
http://www.urbanlegends.com/afu.faq/index.html

Some other hoax pages:
http://www.pfir.org/statements/hoaxes - Why hoaxes are damaging
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html - Symantec Hoax Page
http://chekware.com/hoax/ - Scams and hoaxes page
http://kumite.com/myths/myths
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ - Hoaxes / Chain Letters
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/billgate.asp - All about the
Bill Gates Hoax chain letter that was followed by a hoax letter from
The Gap, Bath & Body Works, Old Navy, Abercrombie & Fitch and probably
just about any company you can imagine.
http://www.vmyths.com - Virus Myths
http://www.hoaxkill.com - Look on the site and see if an e-mail is a
hoax and if you can't find it forward your e-mails to
[e-mail] and they will look at it for you. If it is a
hoax send it to [e-mail] and they will notify everyone in
the e-mail that the message is a hoax
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/scams/ - Hoaxes and Scams

My usual response goes something like:
(Quote part of the hoax)
Hi! My name is Janelle McCan, Founder of the Gap. I am offering
thirty five dollar gift certificates to every seven people you send
this to.

If you ever get an e-mail that tells you to forward it to other
people, it is *almost certainly* a hoax. Specifically if it tells you
about a "new virus" or free money. Before you send it along *please*
look it up by going to http://www.google.com and typing words from the
e-mail into the search line, like (in this example) and the word hoax:
Gap gift certificates e-mail hoax

Sorry. This is a hoax. See:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/billgate.htm

Plus, if the Gap could trace your e-mails, don't you think the
Government could do the same and wouldn't that make you worry *just* a
bit? Not that they aren't trying, see:
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2606926,00.html

But anyway, there are no free Gap certificates, no free $1,000 bills
from Microsoft or any free trips to Disney. Sorry.

PLEASE read about the Gullibility Virus. This is a very funny
editorial to be passed along to your friends who send you all these
kinds of hoaxes :
http://www.virtualsalt.com/warning.htm
end of hoax message

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.


  Open system spammers love
================================

FormMail is a free program used by many legitimate sites to glean data
submitted via online forms. Last year, a vulnerability was discovered
in the FormMail.pl gateway that allows external users to run the
program. As a result, unsecured FormMail installations have become
favored targets with junk emailers.

Many of the viruses circulating now leave "back doors" into the
computers that they infect.  Armed with the knowledge of the back
door, spammers hijack the computer and use the hijacked computer to
send out their spam.

Of course open SMTP servers are ALWAYS the computer of choice to blast
a few million e-mails out with.

Bottom line, the owner of the computer is responsible for keeping
their computer secure.  Complain to the upstream provider about their
customer and get the computer disconnected from the network until the
problems can be corrected.


Filtering E-Mail BlackMail, procmail or News with Gnus
=======================================================

Filtering with BlackMail. This is free software that works with
Mailers Smail, Sendmail, Qmail or Fetchmail under the OSes: Aix,
various BSD, Irix, Linux, NeXTStep 3.x, Solaris, SunOs, SVR4:
http://www.jsm-net.demon.co.uk/blackmail/blackmail.html - Written by
Ken Hollis (Not me ...) and maintained by James Murray
Or
http://www.jsm-net.demon.co.uk/blackmail/source
Get the procmail FAQ :
http://www.ii.com/internet/faqs/launchers/mail/filtering-faq/
or
http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/faqs/launchers/mail/filtering-faq/
http://www.ii.com/internet/robots/
or
http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/robots/
Procmail ruleset :
http://www.impsec.org/email-tools/procmail-security.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

Bob tells me that Eudora Pro has a good filtering capability. You can
filer based on who you send e-mail to, known spammers, etc. Enough
filters and you may see hardly any Spam. Claris E-Mailer, likewise,
has a filter option.

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.

Columnist Al Fasoldt suggests a method for filtering your own e-mail:
http://www.twcny.rr.com/technofile/texts/bit121901.html


Rejecting E-Mail from domains that continue to Spam
====================================================
Spamfilter can be found at:
http://www.samiam.org/spam/index.html

See Sendmail site: http://www.sendmail.org/
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 (be sure that there are three lines
(i.e. the lines are not split up) and be sure to put a TAB character
between the $* and the $#error, not a space) :
### Spam blockage
R$* < @$*$=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 is a very small example :
moneyworld.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.
=================================

Protection for you and your kids on the Internet
=================================================
The kids have learned the Internet first, and there is a good point
made that the Internet may be the first "system" created where kids
are teaching parents about ethical use of the Internet.

Learn about it yourself to help your kids use the Internet
responsibly.  When educating yourself, be *very* sure to read all
privacy notices (or anti-privacy policies in this instance).  Many of
the online contests have "privacy" policies that (basically) say that
they can sell any and all information that you submit to anybody that
they feel like.  That could include selling your e-mail address to
spammers.  Even when you make an online purchase, scrutinize the
privacy policy.  An example of a company who's privacy policy allows
them to redistribute your information is Ticketmaster.  See:
Ticketmaster's Privacy Policy: Opting Out is Not an Option
http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2003/7/24/84435/6284

http://www2.norwich.edu/mkabay/cyberwatch/index.htm - Protecting
yourself and your kids on the Internet, teaching your kids about
ethical Internet Use

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/infosecurity/ - FTC generic
information about keeping secure on the Internet.  In addition there
is a Childs quiz about being a safe cybersurfer.

A company "Alyon Technologies" installed a dialer on home computers
and connected / charged the consumers for pornography calls even when
they were away on vacation:
http://www.channel3000.com/technology/2189632/detail.html

http://www.cheycobb.com/comp_sec_advice.html - Computer security for
non geeks
And her book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764516795/102-0644946-4499357


I am interested in eliminating spam from my emails, how do I do this?
=====================================================================
First off NEVER reply to the "Remove Me" e-mail addresses or sites.
This only confirms that you have a live e-mail address and makes
*your* e-mail address more valuable to sell to other spammers.

Start off by reading this spam FAQ.

It may take a while to digest all of the new information, but just
read it and see what you can get out of it.

Start complaining to the ISP (Internet Service Provider) of where the
spam came from.  Understanding the "Received:" headers is key to this.
Trace back in the Received: header to where it looks like the spam
came from and complain to that provider about the spam.

Look in the body of the e-mail.  If someone tells you to reply to back
to a e-mail address or if they point you to a web site then complain
to the ISP owner of that web site or e-mail address (NEVER complain to
the spammer, they already know it is wrong and will ignore you).

These steps will help get the spammers accounts eliminated.

Will it stop you from getting spam?   Probably not.  If spammers have
your e-mail address it is already too late.  They are selling your
address to each other, passing it around.  About the only way to do
that is to change your e-mail address and give it out to as few people
as possible.


   Origins of Spam
======================
The history of calling inappropriate postings in great numbers "Spam"
is from a Monty Python skit (yes, it is very silly... see
http://www.ironworks.com/comedy/python/spam.htm ) where a couple go
into a restaurant, and the wife tries 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.

The very first spam was on 2 May 1978 from Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC):
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

Geek cartoons, some anti-spam cartoons mixed in:
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/ - Type "spam" and click
"Submit Query"
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990226 - :-)

The Spammers Rules (and their lies):
http://bruce.pennypacker.org/spamrules.html
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Rules+of+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]

Oldmilk tells us the alt.spam Commandments :
1) Thou shalt not post binaries to a non binary group.
2) Thou shalt not post "sPaM this l00zer" to alt.spam
3) Thou shalt not post to inform us for the thousandth time that this
group was started to discuss the fine spiced ham product from Hormel.
4) Thou shalt not spam this newsgroup.
5) Thou shalt not post on a topic that has nothing to do with spam
fighting.
6) Thou shalt not harass any regular poster here, lest your ass be
spanked to rosy hue.
7) Thou shalt not attempt to make any straw man arguments that spam is
good.
8) Thou shalt read the newsgroup before posting.

First off, the only CORRECT way to "SPAM" the net :
http://www.spam.com/
http://www.spam.com/fc.htm - SPAM Fan Club
http://www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm - Spam, SPAM and the Internet ... Use
"Spam" when referring to Internet Unsolicited E-Mail, ONLY use "SPAM"
(all CAPS) when referring to the Hormel Product.
Show SPAM Gifts http://www.spamgift.com/
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
SPAM Sites (the food) / The Church of Spam :
http://www.spamhaiku.com/ - SPAM Haiku
http://www.go2net.com/internet/useless/useless/spam.html
http://www.vivalasvegastamps.com/spam.html

A conversation with a spammer. I was amused. First time I had ever
spoken with one. I also forgot to mention (in our very short
conversation) that his World Wide Web service would be deleted (which
it was) :
Me (7:04 PM): I got your spam. By Monday morning all your accounts
should be canceled. That would be your AT&T account, your Hotmail
account and this AOL account. You are welcome. Bye.
GS711 (7:05 PM): snip - Expletive Deleted
Me (7:05 PM): Thank you very much. You should learn how to advertise
correctly on the Internet.
Me (7:06 PM): If you do it correctly than you won't have to run and
hide.
GS711 (7:06 PM): thanks for letting me know who you are
Me (7:06 PM): Who am I? :-) ...
Me (7:06 PM): BTW, all your Spams will be reported by many other
people other than myself ...
(He signed off)
And another exchange with a spammer:
http://petemoss.com/spamflames/ShifmanIsAMoronSpammer.html
Just keep the spammer in a conversation -
http://www.thespamletters.com/

A Spammers Soliloquy. I had to keep this one because it was actually
very creative (unexpected from a spammer) :
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spammersoliloquy.html

And if you cannot get enough Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, you can
listen to it coming from your speakers:
http://spamradio.com/html/listen.html

And a final note to spammers (I try not to make too many "personal"
statements in this FAQ ...). It is best not to be such a pain that the
Geeks find an intense interest in you. They are almost certainly
smarter than you, at the very least they are smarter in the ways that
the Internet works. The worst thing for you, however, is that they
usually have no life and can easily make you "their life".


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. The solution to this is to "mung"
your address when you post by adding in extra characters (like "Spam")
in your return address. You then put in your signature something like
"Remove the word Spam from my e-mail to contact me". See:
http://www.private.org.il/harvest.html - How spammers harvest
addresses
http://home.cnet.com/software/0-3227888-8-6602372-1.html - Riskiest e-
mail behaviors on the Net
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/mungfaq.html - Address Munging
http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2001/07/20010730122944.shtml -
converting email addresses to "digital entities"
http://www.inter-linked.com/content/spiderbait.php3 - A Java script to
encode your e-mail address on a web page

*Do Not* ever reply to the "unsubscribe" option in a spam. That only
confirms your e-mail as "real" and gets your e-mail address sold to
others. More spam for you.

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. To prevent your e-mail from being harvested,
you can "mung" your web e-mail.

Yet another way for spammers to verify your address is real is to have
multiple unique pages to their site so that when you click on the URL
they provide, they know that you (and only you) got that URL. See:
http://cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/14/email.privacy.idg/index.html

Greg tells us of yet another clever trick. The spammer imbeds a unique
image (Web Bug) in a spam e-mail so that just the act of opening the
e-mail tells the spammer that your address is "live":
img src="http://209.73.247.130/cgi-
bin/loadbalance/load.cgi?servers=clusters_1-9 &
image=39E218DC0DE2341934ED231E203E382D2193A7B975B23CA8EA-3.jpeg"
border=0

Pierre suggests that when putting a mailto URL in a web page, precede
and follow it with "%20". When someone clicks on it, it will merely
put spaces, which will be ignored, around the address, but when a
spammer harvests the address, it will have a %20 in it, which will
render it undeliverable.

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>
or if your server allows "server-side includes" (and .shtml) :
a<A HREF="mailto:abuse@!--#echo var="REMOTE_ADDR"-- "anti spambot></a>

Also you might include a mail to news gateway like the following so
that the Spam is posted to Usenet :
See https://ssl.dizum.com/help/mail2news.html for mail to news
gateways.
A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]"/a
Or
A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]"/a
Or
A HREF="mailto:[e-mail]"/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
`umount /tmp`@localhost
;umount /tmp;@localhost
`halt`@localhost
;halt;@localhost


   Can I find the persons name and phone from an e-mail address
==================================================================
The short answer is no, not unless the person isn't very smart.  The
only person that can definitively tell you who owns that e-mail
address is the ISP (i.e. rr.com, digital.net, etc).  They will most
likely not tell you this information unless you have a warrant from
the police forcing them to do so.  You *might* find something if you
search for any e-mail addresses that they used and see if it pops up
any information:
http://www.google.com/ - Search the Internet
http://groups.google.com/ - Search Usenet


   How To Respond to Spam
===========================

Howard reminds us :
Note to all:  NEVER follow-up 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 follow-up 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 follow-up that X's out the contact
information , severely trims the contents and identifies the post as a
scam is exempt from Howard's law.
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 or news.admin.net-abuse.usenet . Include all
of the headers and as much of the body of one article as you see fit.

Shalon adds:
One note here: in the soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm group, we have 3 or
4 netcops who *do* follow up each spam message with header, WhoIs,
traceroute, and contact address info so that those in the group who do
not have the technical skills to determine this can complain. It's an
unmoderated sex-related newsgroup which has almost no spam -- so it
would appear that the technique works extremely well.

  Firewalls and protecting your computer
========================================

If your computer is constantly connected to the Internet (DSL, cable
modem, thru a corporate connection) you should have *some* kind of
software or hardware that monitors to keep hackers out.
Something I put together about firewalls in general:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/firewall.html

You have no excuse for not installing virus and firewall software on
your computer.  Computer Associates is giving away its consumer anti-
virus and firewall software product with a year's subscription to
virus signature updates until June 30 2004.  See
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/1120comdeca.html?nl
http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/

CERT has released a white paper designed to help technical folks
spread the word to home users about Internet security:
http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/home_networks.html

A description of what a firewall looks for / can tell you is at:
http://www.robertgraham.com/pubs/firewall-seen.html

Review and explanation of firewalls:
http://grc.com/su-firewalls.htm

An example of personal firewall software is:
http://ntbugtraq.ntadvice.com/ - Click on the FAQ link and there is a
link to a page with a very extensive  list of firewalls.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Personal+Firewall - Google search for
personal firewalls

The problem with some of these types of software is that they are
"technical" when they report an "attack" and the "attack" may or may
not be worth noting. ZoneAlarm by Zonelabs and Network Ice (Black Ice)
seems to work fairly well IMHO, but again you will need to examine
each "attack" and see what it really is before complaining to a
provider.

Bottom line, if you are constantly connected to the Internet (or even
if you dial up for long periods of time) you should either have a
firewall in your network, or run software like the above.


  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 worldwide (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.

There are sites dedicated to revenge, just search in Google.  Jeff
mentions that some people cross enter 800 numbers, phone numbers and
addresses of spammers onto other spammers' sites.  He says the least
we can do is introduce like minded individuals to each other. Just
being neighborly. ;-)

You can ask the Attorney General of a state whether or not that
business is licensed in that state, and who runs the business. I
looked up a business out of Nevada and found :
http://www.naag.org/ - National Association of Attorney Generals
http://ag.state.nv.us/ - We welcome any comments or concerns from you
regarding Attorney General matters. If you would like a response from
this office, please provide your name, address and telephone number,
with your electronic inquiry and this office will respond to you by
mail.
Write to : [e-mail]

Look the business name / owner up on the WWW for Las Vegas NV :
http://sandgate.co.clark.nv.us:8498/businessLicense/blindex.htm
Which gave me the following info for the spammer "ROAD TO WEALTH INC":
http://sandgate.co.clark.nv.us:8498/servlet/BusinessLicense?instance=b
lotdetl&license_number=1000144-533
And see if they are paying the correct taxes:
http://tax.state.nv.us/
Nevada Department of Taxation
555 E. Washington Ave.
Suite 1300
Las Vegas, NV 89101
PH: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
City of Las Vegas
Department of Business Services
P.O. Box 1900
400 Stewart Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89125
[phone]

  Telephoning someone
======================

Calling someone once is fine.  If enough people are irritated 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' the caller id blocking code (may be *67 or *71 or some
other code) prevents your number from being displayed on their
telephone at home if they have caller ID, *57 will give the phone
company the number, *69 will dial back the phone number via automatic
call back.  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.
Of course calling from a pay phone takes care of all of these problems
:-) ...

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.anywho.com/tf.html
Other telephone search mechanisms:
http://www.infospace.com/info.zip/
http://www.bigbook.com/
http://www.switchboard.com/
http://decoder.americom.com/ - Look up location by area code.
http://www.nanpa.com/area_codes/index.html - North American Numbering
Area Code Lookup
http://www.aegisbooks.com/download.html - Map of the Area Codes


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.

Organizing a campaign against the spammer could lead to the spammer
trying to get a cease & desist police order against the organizers.
Likewise, FAXes that are inverse pages (black background on white
letters) to a spammer could probably give you problems.


1-900, 1-800, 888, 877 and 1-### may be expensive long distance phone
calls in the U.S.
==============================================================
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/tmarkg/nine.htm - 1-900 explained
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/services/cramming.htm - Mysterious
Phone charges
Be very careful when dialing a 1-800 or any "toll free" 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. Another reason to call from a pay phone
is so that the spammer cannot get your home phone number. Even if you
are "Unlisted" when you call a toll free number the spammer gets your
phone number.

All 1-800, 888 or 877 numbers are *not* free in the United States.
Ozzy tells us that in Canada, ALL 1-800, 866,877, & 888 numbers ARE
toll free.  In the U.S you may be charged for the phone call. You can
tell if the number charges by calling from a phone booth. If you
cannot get through then it charges. 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.

A phone scam can be read at http://www.scambusters.org/809Scam.html

Some area codes to look for (some may not be active for another year
or two):
(Also see http://docs.nanpa.com/cgi-
bin/npa_reports/nanpa?function=list_npa_geo_number )

242 Bahamas
246 Barbados
264 Anguilla
268 Antigua
284 British Virgin Islands
340 U.S. Virgin Islands
345 Cayman Islands
441 Bermuda
473 Grenada
649 Turks and Caicos
664 Monserrat
670 CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands?)
671 Guam
758 St. Lucia
767 Dominica
784 St. Vincent and Grenadines
787 Puerto Rico
868 Trinidad and Tobago
869 St. Kitts and Nevis
876 Jamaica

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/conline/edcams/telemarketing/index.html -
Telemarketing information / scams
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/telemarketing/fileacomplaint.htm
File a complaint


Junk Mail - The Law
===================

http://www.jmls.edu/cyber/index/spam.html - Collection of legal spam
items
http://www.lectlaw.com/ - 'Lectric Law Library
http://spamlaws.com

Kevyn tells us that : In many countries, forgers of headers can be
prosecuted. This is the equivalent of forging a postmark and
delivering it yourself. When someone sends out spam with forged
headers, he or she clearly:
a) knows that what they are doing is wrong, and that they can be
punished for it
b) is clearly attempting to evade detection and punishment.

For Norwegians, these pages may be interesting:
http://www.datatilsynet.no/
(Datatilsynet is a government controlled organization, made to
protect people's right to privacy. This page explains that if someone
wants to advertise by email or SMS messages, they need prior consent
from the victims)

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 http://groups.google.com/ 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

In Washington (State) (for example) fax laws (RCW 80.36.540 -
Telefacsimile messages) define "telefacsimile message" in such a way
that could be interpreted to include E-mail. It was not originally
written to cover E-Mail, but that is for the courts to decide :-).
California regulates it thru Section 17538(d) of the Business and
Professions Code.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/11103.html - Washington State's
highest court upholds anti-spam law.

Spammers that have actually been prosecuted. See:
http://www.bibliotech.net/spammer.html

In California (Quoted from http://Spam.abuse.net ): Spamming to or
from California e-mail service providers against their policy is now a
civil offense under California Business and Professions Code Section
17538.45. If you run a California-based e-mail service provider, you
need to notify your customers of the law and your anti-spam policy in
order to be eligible to collect damages of $50 per message.

Jeff tells us the California Code referring to spam (CA Bus. Prof.
Code Sections 17538.4 and 17538.45) may be found through clicking
"All" and entering "17538" into:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html (A pretty authoritative source)
then click on "BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE"
 Also see:
http://www.netatty.com/spam.html - Sue a California spammer
The Virginia law : http://www.spamlaws.com/state/va.html
The Washington State Law : http://www.wa.gov/ago/junkemail/
Spammers successfully sued -
http://www.woodyswatch.com/windows/archtemplate.asp?4-13#watchdog
The Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act :
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html


Additional Resources - Lots Of Links and a *really* good book
=============================================================

The latest & greatest version of the Spam FAQ is found at:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
(or http://home.digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html )
Or *nicely* HTML'ed at:
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html
http://fuzzo.com/spam_faq.htm
or
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq/
Or the archive at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.spam/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/misc/
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
http://samspade.org/d/nanaefaq.html - news.admin.net-abuse.email FAQ
http://www.abuse.net/books.html - Spam Books
A most excellent book for novices and System Admin's alike, much more
in depth than this FAQ. A full 191 pages of how to fight Spam.
Hopefully if they sell enough then this book will stay updated :
Stopping Spam - Alan Schwartz and Simson Garfinkel ISBN : 1-56592-388-
X - $19.95
O'Reilly & Associates - 90 Sherman St., Cambridge MA 02140 707-829-
0515

http://www.spamfaq.net/terminology.shtml - spam terminology
http://www.cm.org for info on NoCeM
http://www.killfile.org/faqs/spam.html
Net abuse jargon:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/freenet/subs/complaints/spam/jargon.txt
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6tk5th%24497%40freenet-
news.carleton.ca
Software to track the headers / eliminate Spam for you :
http://www.antispam-software.net/ - Anti-Spam software for Outlook and
AOL
http://allmacintosh.forthnet.gr/macintosh.html - Mac software
http://samspade.org/t/ - Sam Spade WWW Spam tools - Excellent!
http://www.spamulor.net/ - Software to identify / classify and funnel
spam to a location out of your way
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/cleanfeed.html
http://www.julianhaight.com/spamcop.shtml - Spam Cop - Does the header
analysis for you.
http://www.netdemon.net/ - 30+ spam tools ...
http://www.spamhippo.com/
http://www.spammerslammer.com - Works with windows e-mail programs
that uses pop mail
http://www.vicomsoft.com/knowledge/reference/spam.html - Vicomsoft
document to raise awareness about Spam and offer practical solutions
to email users
http://www.vipul.net/ricochet/ - automated spam tracing and reporting
agent
http://andrew.triumf.ca/pub/security/ - UNIX Tools
http://andrew.triumf.ca/pub/security/reporter/ - Report wide scans
To FTP spamhl.exe Send the following E-Mail:
TO: [e-mail]
BODY: open ftp.compulink.co.uk
cd /pub/net-services
get spamhl.exe
quit
Your Daily Spam News:
http://www.spam-news.com
or - [e-mail]
http://www.newsadmin.com/cgi-bin/newsspam1 - Top Spam Hosts
http://www.newsadmin.com/cgi-bin/newsspam2 - Top Spam Sites
Spammers and how to stop them :
http://abuse.sourceforge.net/ http://spam.sourceforge.net/ - Anti-spam
support site
http://livinginternet.com/e/et_spam.htm - a discussion on the origins
of spam
http://spamhaus.org - spam havens listing
http://lumbercartel.freeyellow.com/  - http://www.cafeshops.com/tinlc
- TINLC - There Is No Lumber Cartel - CafeShops has the TINLC Tee-
Shirt.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Communications_and_Network
ing/Email/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Communications_and_Network
ing/Email/Spam/
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/groupware/story/0
,10801,75737,00.html - Spam wars
http://home.att.net/~marjie1/ - Spam killer central
http://home.att.net/~marjie1/faq.htm - FAQ and gives how to view
headers (about half way down)
http://home.att.net/~marjie1/Glossary.htm - Glossary of terms
http://www.jahitchcock.com/cyberstalked/ - Maryland Anti-Harassment
bill
http://morehouse.org/hin - Internet Security
http://persona.www.media.mit.edu/judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.htm
l
http://www.cromwell-intl.com/security/ - Internet Security
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08/02/129213.shtml - ISP sues spammer
http://spam.abuse.net/spam/
http://viper.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/oceanf.htm Regulation of
Computing and Information Technology
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/1557541 - AOL wins against
Spammers
http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml - Complaint lookup
http://www.antionline.com/ - Internet Security
http://www.cabal.net/jason/index.html - A spammer tries to sue the
Cabal (TINC)
http://www.cabal.net/ - The Cabal (TINC)
http://www.cauce.org - Trying to legislate against
http://www.ecofuture.org/ecofuture/jnkmail.html - How to Get Rid of
Junk Mail, and Telemarketers
http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/ - Improve your spam-fighting
skills
http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/tracking.html
http://www.coachnet.com/soho__21.htm - Small Office / Home Office
Newsletters Anti-Spam Articles for business
http://www.coachnet.com/soho__22.htm
http://www.coachnet.com/soho__29.htm
http://eioMAIL.com/ Spam free web- and POP3-based e-mail account for
individual users
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/by-newsgroup/news/news.admin.net-
abuse.email.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/
http://www.hostedscripts.com/scripts/antispam.html - A script to
generate e-mail addresses
http://www.internetwk.com/columns/frezz020199.htm - A good article on
why the Internet should be self governing WRT Spam
http://www.junkemail.org/scamspam/ - "Help stop Scam Spammers!"
http://www.kclink.com/spam/ - A fight to bill Spammers
http://www.looksmart.com/eus1/eus53832/eus53833/eus225492/eus282819/eu
s278700/r?l&igv& - Spam link list
http://www.nags.org/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-spam/join - Anti-Spam mailing list
http://www.petemoss.com/
http://fravia.anticrack.de/enemy.htm - Stalking the spammer Enemy
http://www.robertgraham.com/ - Infosec / computer security page
http://spamsites.org - Where spammers get their software
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990226 - A computer
contemplates spam (see http://www.userfriendly.org/static )
http://www.spamcon.org/ - Resources to help Recipients, Marketers,
Sysadmins and Legal pros
http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers/headers.html - More Reading
Headers
http://www.usenet2.org/ - A Usenet with no Spam
http://www4.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_index_19970819.html -
Special Spam Fighting Edition
http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~bryanc/ - Mac WhatRoute
http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/~tburgess/local/spam.html
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/resource-list.html
http://www.private.org.il/yanig.html - Also yet another newbie guide
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=36811bc9.1386301459%40news.alt.ne
t - Forgery FAQ
http://www.private.org.il/harvest.html - How spammers get your E-Mail
address
http://www.elsop.com/wrc/nospam.htm
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/antispam.html - Spam Software
http://donotcall.gov/ - or call 1-888-382-1222 - Put yourself on the
national "Do Not Call" list
http://www.rahul.net/falk/index.html#howtos
http://www.river.com/users/share/cluetrain/ - My mailbox. My property.
My personal space. My rules. Deal with it.
http://www.spam-archive.org/ - A collection of email-Spams.
http://www.webfoot.com/advice/email.biblio.html - General E-Mail info
http://www.winsite.com/win3/winsock/page6.html - Windows Internet
Utilities
http://www.winsite.com/win95/netutil/index.html - Win 95 Net Utils
http://www.winsite.com/win95/netutil/page11.html - netcop /
netlab95.zip
Spam Info in other languages:
http://cwisdb.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/pisa/nl/spam.htm - Netherlands
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/usr/negi/news.html - Japan
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/usr/negi/newsgroup0.html - Japan
http://perso.magic.fr/roumazeilles/spamantf.htm - Spam Anti! French
http://portale.web.de/Internet/Spam/ - German Anti-Spam
http://www.despaml.interrob.de/ - German Anti-Spam Mailing List
http://www.euro.cauce.org/ - Many languages
http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/index.html - English
http://www.nextel.no/kundesenter/hjelp/guider/901645506.5885.html -
Norway
http://www.online-recht.de/vorent.html?LGBerlin980514 - German Anti-
Spam and costs
http://www.snafu.de/~laura/de.admin.net-abuse.mail.txt - German net
abuse FAQ
Translate from/to English French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
(etc.)
http://babel.altavista.com/translate.dyn
or
English to French:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fr&sl=en&u=http://digital.net
/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
English to German:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=en&u=http://digital.net
/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
English to Italian:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&sl=en&u=http://digital.net
/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
English to Spanish:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=es&sl=en&u=http://digital.net
/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
Or why Netabuse is bad :
http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9808/10/tastyspam.idg/
http://www.csoonline.com/alarmed/06192003.html - Is someone watching
everything you type?
http://www.fraudbureau.com/articles/consumer/article14.html - The cost
of spam
http://www.honet.com/Nadine/permission.htm - Why permission is needed
to send e-mail
http://www.honet.com/Nadine/default.htm - Someone types in a bad e-
mail address and an innocent party starts getting spam
http://www.honet.com/Nadine/Unsubscribe.htm - Why Unsubscribe doesn't
work
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/03/14/11winman_1.html - Microsoft
Update --> Watch what your computer sends out
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/15/HNaolspammers_1.html - AOL
takes spammers to court
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/10/hnspamgov_1.html - US
Government "Can spam" bill.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0104spamspam.html - Time and cost of
SPAM
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0104spambust.html - Two busted for
Spam fraud / envelope stuffing
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2001/0416gibbs.html - ?Logic? of a
spammer and why (if everybody did it) you would get 1,370 e-mails per
hour
http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2002/0513spam.html - How spam brings
down servers
http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2002/0513spamside4.html - How
spammers get your e-mail address
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2002/01331360.html - Scumware,
unauthorized software additions to your computer
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2002/01366115.html - Scumware
prevention and removal
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0224spammers.html?net - Spammers
using students to send spam
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0224spammerside.html - Spam driving
- Why wireless is bad
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0227spamspam.html?net  - Corporate
spam tools
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2003/0303sec2.html - Security
for those that aren't computer security geeks
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2003/0630backspin.html - What spam
really costs Part I
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2003/0707backspin.html - What spam
really costs Part II
http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/content.cfm?articleID=1369 -
The cost of Spam (at bottom of article) and how spammers are trying to
fight back
Protecting your reputation in Cyberspace - How To / How Not To
communicate on the Internet:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00322091.html - Part 1
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00380626.html - Part 2
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00408507.html - Part 3 -
Why not to spam
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00408551.html - Part 4
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00450966.html - Part 5
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00477475.html - Part 6
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00519056.html - Part 7
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/sec/2001/00477474.html - How Not
To Send Out An "Alert"
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0415aolwield.html?net - AOL wields
legal, technical weapons in spam war
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4217 - Spammers sending out Trojan
Programs to turn home computers into spamming machines
Listen to The Spam Avenger abuse spammers -
http://www.thespamavenger.com/
Equal time, The spammer's viewpoint (Why Spam is good):
http://www.juicycerebellum.com/spam.htm
http://listen.to/spammers - Spammers Speak
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=7iviu5%2475g%241%40bgtnsc03.world
net.att.net - Gerald Kohler ( [e-mail] ) argues for
spam, with some good rebuttals. Click on "Thread" then click on
message 8 then click on next in thread to follow the conversation.
Opinions from one spammer (I wouldn't trust much of what is said in
these pages if anything at all ...):
http://www.marketing-2000.net/
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20021206.htm - Spammers don't
like spam :-)
http://www.marketing-2000.net/legal.htm - Bulk E-Mail - Is It Legal?
This page *used* to say "Many of these anti-spammer extremists do not
have regular jobs" (Hmm ... I guess my 50+ hour a week high tech job
doesn't count?)
http://www.marketing-2000.net/survpage.htm - Bulk E-Mail Marketing
guide
http://www.marketing-2000.net/testimonials.htm - Testimonies
Of course feel free to send your comments to escalate@marketing-
2000.net [e-mail] or [e-mail]
What the alt.binaries.slack Organization has done to fight Spam :
http://www.sputum.com/spit/Main.htm
And the Alt.Gothic Special Forces:
http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/agsf/
http://www.izzy.net/~jfron/agsf/tools/
AGSF FAQ:
http://www.legendsmagazine.net/pan/panstuff/agsffaq.htm


Disclaimer :
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. For legal advice,
consult an attorney with appropriate expertise in this area of the law
who is licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.

80% of the Internet is bull, free advice is worth every penny you paid
for it :-).  Brought to you via News since November 1995.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and
quick to anger.
Ken Hollis - Gandalf The White - [e-mail] - O- TINLC
WWW Page - http://gandalf.home.digital.net/
Trace E-Mail forgery - http://gandalf.home.digital.net/spamfaq.html
Trolls crossposts  - http://gandalf.home.digital.net/trollfaq.html