What to do to solve Spam problems

If you are experiencing large amounts of Spam emails, and can't seem to find a way to stop it, follow these simple rules which can help.

Several steps to cut down Spam

Most common spam can be stopped by Spam filters offered by either ISP's or Hosting accounts. The most common used in Hosting companies is Spam Assassin. A setting in Spam Assassin allows you to add a line to the Subject line which is a great feature. This allows you to add something like **SPAM** to the Subject line. By doing this you can set rules in your Email application to either move the email to a folder if it contains **SPAM** in the Subject! If you use Outlook you can then set the Auto Archive to delete the message in X number of days which gives you a chance to look it over to be sure it's Spam. Most Spam filters allow you to delete the emails right away if they are checked by the filter to be spam but I do not suggest you do this because the filters may mistake important emails as spam. It's best to look them over once you have them in this separated folder to be sure they are junk.

Spam Filters are becoming less effective due to spammers turning to Free email services such as Hotmail and Email form Hijacking!

Do not ever reply to any Spam emails in any way at all. Most make the mistake of clicking on the Remove me link! This will have the opposite effect since you are confirming the email address is good to the spammer. If Spam gets through your Spam Filters send a complaint to the spammers Host! This can be found by checking the return path and seeing who sent it. In outlook you can right click on an email message and choose options. This will bring up a screen that shows all the email header stuff. Read through this and find a line that has From: The From: address is where the email was sent from! In most cases this will be free Hotmail addresses such as myway.com,  yahoo.com or hijacked email forms. Next send an email as follows:

Send an email to abuse@< senders address> and copy the contents of the screen shown in options along with a request to the email service to ask them to please put a stop to the spam. All websites should have an abuse address as should all hosting and email services companies. In some cases the return address will not be the real senders address. If this is the case then you may need help to locate the real senders address which is also within the header info shown in the options screen.

Spam is a growing problem and nothing the Government has done as of yet has helped to stop it. What is needed is to stop Spam is to ban the company, which is selling the product, from the internet since without a website an email to promote sales is useless!

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Vincent G.