More often than not, offers made through spam messages are not legitimate.
They are really just an attempt to get your information—especially your
purchasing information. Before you decide to purchase something from any
message, consider the source and the offer. Would Norton Antivirus actually
offer their product at drastically reduced prices through
3edcid39r@ghurmeno.com?
Even if the offer is legitimate, purchasing the product through spammers
only encourages more spamming. That’s why people still send out spam—somewhere,
someone is buying what they’re selling. If no one ever bought anything offered
in spam, spam would soon die out.
If You’re Going to Complain, Make Sure the Complaint Is Heard
If you think about it, sending a complaint to the source of a spam message
really does little good. First, the sender address is probably completely
fabricated. Most likely your message will bounce back with an error message.
Second, think about who you’re sending your complaint to in the first place.
Spammers don’t care how much they may be bothering you; if they did, they
wouldn’t have sent the message without your permission in the first place.
Sending a complaint only tells the spammer that your email is a valid one.
Additionally, many spammers hide their tracks so well that the originator of
the message cannot be found. Or, worse, they don someone else’s identity to
send out the message, thus directing your wrath on an innocent bystander.
Rather than sending complaints to the spammer, send them to their service
providers. Many service providers take complaints of this nature very seriously—especially
if they receive large quantities of them. Once you have the ISP (Internet
Service Provider), forward the spam to them with a message stating that you no
longer wish to receive mass emailings like the one you’re reporting. Most ISP’s
use a ABUSE@[domain name] email address for such complaints. You may have to go
to the individual ISP pages to find the specific email if this doesn’t work.
Many ISPs also offer an automated complaint program. You can use these, but
it is advisable to send a manually entered complaint. Manually entering a
complaint makes it harder to ignore, and shows how adamantly you feel about not
receiving mass emailings anymore.
To find out who the ISP is, you’ll need to learn how to “reveal full
headers” on your email. Just because a message says that it came from
joeschmoe@AOL.com doesn’t mean that it actually came from AOL. Revealing full
or extended headers will show which servers a message was routed through. Pick
the first servers on the list and send the message to them.
If revealing the full headers doesn’t work, and if the spam prompts you to
go to a webpage, you can always try complaining to the webpage host. Hosts,
even free ones like Geocities, will shut down web pages if enough complaints
are registered against them. This is something akin to the paper shredder with
paper letters. Having a spammer’s web page shut down gives you a nice feeling
of retribution.