In computer news this week:

Lead: Fighting back against spam

Probably the most maddening thing about using the internet is receiving spam, or unwanted email. A few weeks ago I talked about spam, and I said:

"When you receive spam, the best thing to do is to just delete it and forget about it."

But there are some days when I get so much spam that it makes me mad and I do spend time tracking the spammers and trying to shut them down.

Ok, physician, heal thyself, but there are things you can do about spammers.

When I decide to tilt internet spam windmills, I don't waste anytime trying to figure out where the spam email came from. Most spam uses forged email address and places of origin. Instead, I go right to the spam website, which is the website that the spam email directs you to.

Then when I'm there, I use internet resources to find out who is the owner of the spam website, because this is obviously the person who sent out the spam, or who paid some spam mailing outfit to send the forged spam for them. Then I try to report them to the proper authorities.

When you get to the spam website, or any website for that matter, you can find out who the website is registered to - or who is the owner - by using the whois function of the internet. If you go to any search engine - say google - and search for whois - it will show you a list of websites you can go to to see who is someone. I usually use www.netsol.com or spamspade.org for best results

Let me give you an example of an actual spam I traced this week. I went directly to the website the spam took me to; www.cinpling.com. I then did a whois search and found out that the owner of this spam website is:

Domain Name: CINPLING.COM

Registrant:

 Amazing Internet Products, LLC

 PO Box 64

 Manchester, NH 03101

US

 603-627-3055

 Administrative Contact:

 Baldwan, George aaru107@yahoo.com

The owner of this spam website has a yahoo email address. I then forwarded the original spam email - with the email headers - and this whois information showing who the spammer actually is - to abuse@yahoo.com, pointing out specifically that this spammer has a registered yahoo email address, which is in violation of their terms of service.

I received a reply back a few days later that they had dealt with it, but they cannot disclose the disposition of this event.

Today I notice that this spam website is down. I'm not sure if this is a victory, but I do feel better, and I have had other similar victories.

But let me point out the problems with fighting spam. Spammers can get free email addresses from yahoo, hotmail, and hundreds of other places. They can also find places to host their spam websites for free, and even get free registration. And when they get caught or shut down, they just get another free email address, and free website, and they spam again.

My biggest frustration has been with microsoft's hotmail abuse people, and I no longer waste my time reporting to them as they do not seem to be intellectually capable of understanding the difference between a forged email using a hotmail address and an actual spam website registered to a hotmail address.

Fortunately there are many other ISP's who do take action against spammers.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230