How to Deal with Junk Email

If you are reading this page, it is probably already too late. You are most likely already a victim of junk mail or "spamming". Here are some suggestions and resources to help you with your, and our, campaign against spam.

If you want to know about QSL and QTH.NET's policies on spam you can read all about them on our web pages.

What Not To Do

• Do not delete the offending message. In order to help you fight junk mail, we need some critical information that is contained in the mail headers of this message.

• Do not reply back to the sender. If you do this, you may just be confirming your email address for the offender. Often, this is just bot (a program that automatically responds to messages), which will reward you for your efforts with even more junk mail.

• Do not send an abusive message to QSL or QTH.NET or to the offender's postmaster. If you truly want to be off the junk mailing lists, it is always best to remain on good terms with people.

• Do not use a web page form that supposedly unsubscribes you from unwanted mail lists.

What Will Help

• Take a look at the mail message's full headers. This will contain information about where the unwanted mail message is coming from. Find out what the domain (e.g. anydomain.net, aol.com) that the message came from.

• Forward the full headers to abuse.net . They will then keep the complaint on file for future reference. For more information look at their web page.

  Compose a polite message to the postmaster of the site from which the unwanted message came from. The address will look something like this.

  abuse@host.domain

  In this message, explain politely that you are receiving unwanted, unsolicited mail from that system. Be sure to include the full text of the unwanted message with full headers of the message so that the postmaster has all the necessary information. The really important part here is that the message which you forward has the full headers of the the message you received. Without the full headers there is very little that anyone can do to help.

  Almost all Internet Service Providers are helpful to the cause. No one likes the wastefulness of spam and more and more ISP's are adding spamming to the list of reason to terminate service to individuals and businesses.

• If you decide that you would like help from QSL or QTH.NET with the junk mail message, please forward the message with the full headers to k3tkj@qsl.net. Remember that without those full headers, there is nothing that we can do to help you.

How to Avoid Getting Junk Mail

• Under no circumstances should you ever fill out a form online that asks for your email address, unless you are willing to accept the consequences. The only exceptions for this are large known reputable sites, (e.g. QSL or QTH.NET, CNET, CNN, MSNBC).

• If you are a news poster, put in a spam spoiler in your reply to address (e.g. nobodySPAMBLOWS@qsl.net) with a note in your .signature explaining, to those who do not notice, that it needs to be removed. If you choose to do this, remember that any email you send out will have an invalid return address in it.

• Configure your web browser to tell you before accepting a cookie. A large quantity of email addresses are grabbed by cookies, and it's a simple enough thing to do. When you are asked to accept a cookie, refuse.

• Do not use your email address as your anonymous FTP password.

• Use the Anonymizer . If you still do not trust that you are not giving out information about yourself as you surf the net, try using it. This service allows you to view web pages without giving out any information about yourself. Keep in mind that this does slow you down, since the sites you access will be going through a third party before they reach your computer.

• If all else fails, you can always just delete the offending message and pretend that you never received it. Or, you could change your email address and start over, hoping that this does not start happening to you again.

Resources

QSL and QTH.NET's Spam Policies

What our spam policies are for mail and list servers and what to do if they are causing you problems. There is also a list of the domains that we are currently blocking kept here.

Stop Junk Email

Lots of ideas and information about how to help combat spam.

The Anonymizer

A public service to help you remain anonymous as you surf the web.