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Archive-name: net-abuse-faq/spam-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 960708
URL: http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
Greetings and Salutations:
The three sections to this eight portion FAQ (With apologies to
Douglas Adams :-)) :
o Introduction
o Tracing an e-mail message
o MAILING LIST messages
o Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message
o What is an IP address and converting an IP address
o WWW IP Lookup URL's
o Converting that IP to a name
o A list of provider complaint addresses
o Filtering E-Mail using procmail or News with Gnus
o Misc. (Because I can't spell miscellaneous :-)) stuff
I couldn't think to put anywhere else.
o Origins of Spam
o The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts or any fraud on the
Internet
o Those annoying 1-900 & 1-800 Sex Phone Ads
o How To Respond to SPAM
o Revenge - What to do & not to do (mostly not)
o Telephoning someone
o Snail Mailing someone
Introduction
============================================
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
<jdfalk@cybernothing.org> :
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
Or :
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/NetAbuse.
html
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/BadISPs.h
tml
http://NCTUCCCA.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo/Other/EmailAbus
eLog.html
And Bill's WWW page "Everything You'd Rather Not Have To Know About
Net-Abuse" :
http://www.tezcat.com/~haz1/netabuse/netabuse.html
The latest & greatest version of this FAQ will be found at:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
Or the archive at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.spam/
Or with other abuse FAQ's at:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/misc/
Or *nicely* HTML'ed at:
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html
PLEASE email follow-ups, additions / changes to gandalf@digital.net
My news source is OK, but I sometimes miss items.
There are places in this FAQ with ALL CAPS. This is where I need some
help or input. 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.
First off, before trying to determine where the post or e-mail
originated from, you should realize that (just like the National
Inquirer, or a logical argument from C&S) 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).
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...
Tracing an e-mail message
============================================
Fight unsolicited e-mail and mailing list vendors :
http://host.ptbo.igs.net/~shawn/junkmail.html
First (and easiest) thing to forge is the e-mail return address. Most
personal computer posting software lets you type in just about any e-
mail address you want to (for example the software I am using to post
this message). Unless someone is a real idiot or they truly don't
know they will annoy tons of people, they will forge a fake e-mail
return or put in the e-mail of someone they don't like.
It seems that most machines will accept e-mail from any other machine,
so don't send e-mail to postmasters at "upstream" sites that are just
passing the message along.
You will need to take a look at the headers on the message (if you
can) In PINE (for example) hit "h" to get headers. Look for a line
like the following:
Message-ID: <Chameleon.951024110528.inetlis1@inetlis.wavenet.com>
You should look at the message ID first & see what site it appeared to
come from (the part after the "@" sign). If it is a bunch of numbers
(an IP address) then you should then do a "nslookup" (see further
below for a description of nslookup) to see what the site name is.
Furthermore all the message-ID lines should have a unique number. If
not then you have someone who is *very* familiar with the SMTP
protocol and is forging the e-mail to another site (like the Euphoria
Tape spammer). Sometimes this header will even tell you who the
message actually came from.
From the below, the only way we can tell the origin site is in the
Message-Id (which has an IP of 204.183.126.181) is to do a nslookup on
the IP address, and proceed from there.
>Received: from [199.3.242.38] (ppp007.free.org [199.3.242.38]) by
>sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id EAA16681; Sat, 11
Nov 1995
>04:50:30 -0500
>X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: [199.3.242.38] (ppp007.free.org
[199.3.242.38])
>X-Sender: yoshio@osak.ac.jp (Unverified)
>Message-Id: <v0153051facca0e1e11d6@[204.183.126.181]>
Sample fake e-mail message :
From A@b.c.d Sat Nov 11 13:16 EST 1995
Received: from wavenet.com (wavenet.com [198.147.118.131]) by
ddi.digital.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA04656 for
<gandalf@ddi.digital.net>; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:16:03 -0500
Received: from ddi.digital.net (ddi.digital.net [198.69.104.2]) by
wavenet.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id KAA27279 for
gandalf@ddi.digital.net; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 10:27:52 -0800
Received: from wavenet.com (wavenet.com [198.147.118.131]) by
ddi.digital.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) with ESMTP id OAA18017 for
<gandalf@ddi.digital.net>; Tue, 24 Oct 1995 14:09:46 -0400
Received: from inetlis.wavenet.com (port16.wavenet.com
[198.147.118.209]) by wavenet.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id LAA02685
for <gandalf@ddi.digital.net>; Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:21:12 -0700
This is a mail message I sent to myself just to use as an example. I
have cut out a bit of the other header information so that I could
take a look at just the important parts.
Obvious faked piece is the "From" address. You read the headers from
the bottom to the top to trace which sites the message has gone thru.
Make sure that you do a nslookup on the IP address's (for example I
would verify 198.147.118.131 actually is wavenet.com). If the IP
doesn't jive with the name then you may have the IP address of the e-
mail faker. This message decodes to the following
port16.wavenet.com = 198.147.118.209
wavenet.com = 198.147.118.131
ddi.digital.net = 198.69.104.2
From site To site Date / Time (delta GMT)
Time in GMT hh:mm:ss
==============================================================
inetlis.wavenet.com wavenet.com Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:21:12 -0700
18:21:12
wavenet.com ddi.digital.net Tue, 24 Oct 1995 14:09:46 -400
18:09:46
ddi.digital.net wavenet.com Sat, 11 Nov 1995 10:27:52 -800
18:27:52
wavenet.com ddi.digital.net Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:16:03 -500
18:16:03
Wolfgang Schelongowski <ws@xivic.ruhr.de> reminds us :
The first is hh:mm.ss WULT (WULT == Widely Unknown Local Time :-))
with a delta from GMT, so you add in the delta to get a "zero" time.
The time is from the computer transmitting, so it is possible to have
the clocks several minutes apart.
GMT = Greenwich Mean Time. The "time" was kept at RGO (Royal
Greenwich Observatory?), Greenwich England at one time and is also
known as UTC (UTC = Coordinated Universal Time, or Universal
Coordinated Time) or "Zulu" or Zero time. It is kept by the UK
National Physical Laboratory, and is no longer at the RGO (Royal
Greenwich Observatory?).
I manually inserted the first two mail transfers myself (as you can
see from the date / times) to muddy the waters. It looks like this
message originated from inetlis.wavenet.com, when in reality it came
from ddi.digital.net. The date / time (in this case) tells you that
something is wrong, but sometimes a computer may be down along the way
which would hold up the mail.
You really need cooperation from other people & get multiple messages
to compare the headers. There will be a common "injection" point.
Whether it is the starting point or in the middle. Ask that
postmaster to look thru the logs & figure out who sent that e-mail.
Someone from the first common injection point "From" site spammed out
the e-mail.
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.
MAILING LIST messages
========================================
Stephanie kindly tells me :
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.
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 <XXXX@gol.com>;
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 <26706-38@dir.bham.ac.uk>; 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: Jeanchev@aol.com
Message-ID: <960504153553_287142426@emout09.mail.aol.com>
Subject: CRaZy Complimentary Offer........
This is a post from Kevin Lipsitz for his "===>> FREE 1 yr. USA
Magazine Subscriptions". Reports are that he doesn't provide very
good service after the sale of the subscription (that is if you even
get a magazine). In relation to the Internet he makes a slimy used
car salesman look like a saint. We won't even start to discuss the
fact the he likes to use female names for his messages...
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.
For more info about "Krazy Kevin" or the Magazine Spam , Tony tells us
the page "Stop Spam!" is available in html format at:
http://www.iac.co.jp/~issho/stop-spam.html
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.
Like :
http://com.primenet.com/spamking/
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
You might with to also direct the listserve owner to look at & ask
questions in news.admin.net-abuse.misc about how to keep spam off the
listserve. It probably won't be all that difficult of a thing to do.
Reporting Spam and tracing a posted message
============================================
The first thing to do is to post the ENTIRE message (PLEASE put the
header in) to the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.misc with the
suggested subject of one of the following:
Subject: EMP <Subject from the Spam message>
Subject: ECP <Subject from the Spam message>
Subject: MMF <Subject from the Spam message>
Please include the original Subject: from the original Spam so that it
can easily be spotted. Thank you.
An Excessive Multiple Post may exceed the spam threshold and may be
canceled. An Excessive Cross Post may not be canceled because it
hasn't reached the threshold. A Make Money Fast message is
immediately cancelable.
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.
Once again, start by looking at the Message-ID, and ask yourself if
that site makes sense. Again, look at the number after the Message-ID
and see if it is identical for several *different* posts (i.e. posts
to different groups). Message-ID's are unique for each *different*
post. If the Message-ID is the same, then it is faked. If you
- really* want to see some fake posts, look in alt.test or in the
alt.binaries.wares.* groups.
A fake post:
Path:
..!news.sprintlink.net!in2.uu.net!news.net99.net!news!s46.phxslip4.in
direct.com!vac
From: XXX@indirect.com(Female User)
Subject: Femdom In Search of Naughty Boys
Message-ID: <DHLMvE.24H@goodnet.com>
Sender: XXX@indirect.com(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: XXX@indirect.com
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.
E-Mail return is probably the easiest to fake and is * always *
suspect. The NNTP-Posting-Host and / or Message-ID are harder to fake
(but not *much* harder...) and probably deserve a closer look at those
sites.
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 <DHLMvE.24H@goodnet.com>
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://www.reference.com/
What is an IP address and converting an IP address
============================================
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).
WWW IP Lookup URL's
=============================
A whole *host* of WWW IP utils is thoughtfully provided by Mike at :
http://sh1.ro.com/~mprevost/netutils/netutils.html
Or for a WWW Traceroute you can try the URL :
http://webware-inc.com/wtr.html
For a WWW version of Dig :
http://sh1.ro.com/~mprevost/netutils/dig.html )
WWW Nslookup : http://thor.clr.com/nslookup.html
SWITCH WHOIS Gateway:
http://www.switch.ch/switch/info/whois_form.html
TIG Internet Domain-Name Database :
http://home.tig.com/cgi-bin/genobject/domaindb
IP to Lat - Lon (For those times when only a Tactical Nuke will do ;-
)) :
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2ll/
http://www-pablo.cs.uiuc.edu/~slamm/ip2ll/links.html
Yet Another IP to name:
http://cello.cs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/slamm/ip2name
Yet another Domain Name lookup:
http://www.imperative.com/cgi-bin/genobject/index2 then click on the
domain database lookup
Converting that IP to a name
=============================
If the site is a IP address like "127.0.0.0", 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
And you get :
Name: RS.INTERNIC.NET
Addresses: 198.41.0.5, 198.41.0.6
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 :
telnet rs.internic.net
whois 198.41.0.5
If that doesn't provide anything, try chopping off the last digits and
you might get:
Whois: 204.162.179
BBN BARRNET, Inc. (NETBLK-NETBLK-BARRNET4) NETBLK-BARRNET4
204.160.0.0 - 204.163.255.0
Slip.Net (NETBLK-NETBLK-SLIP) NETBLK-SLIP 204.162.160.0 -
204.162.191.0
Success! BARRNet has the blocks of the IP's.
John tells us :
Um yes, but that particular sub-block belongs to slip.net... barrnet
is obviously slip.net's provider, the barrnet block looks like 4 class
B's (or 256 THOUSAND IP's..), while the slip.net block is a mere 32
class C's (or 8 thousand IP's)...
So a whois NETBLK-SLIP gives us (among other information) :
Slip.Net (NETBLK-NETBLK-SLIP)
Netname: NETBLK-SLIP
Netblock: 204.162.160.0 - 204.162.191.0
To see who the upstream provider is, try :
multinet 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 * * *
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 postmaster@indirect.com.
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' (or one of its derivatives), it is used to search DNS
records :
(For the software : http://www.rediris.es/ftp/infoiris/red/ip/dns/dig-
2.0/
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
A list of provider complaint addresses
============================================
O.K... So you have a common site that you can complain to. Good.
Post the FULL HEADERS (this is *very* important for tracing) to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc (see the section entitled Reporting Spam and
tracing a posted message) and send complaint with FULL HEADERS in e-
mail to any or all of the below :
postmaster@spammer.site.net
admin@spammer.site.net
abuse@spammer.site.net
Note : abuse@site.net and admin@site.net are not "standard" complaint
e-mail addresses, but I have seen those listed more and more
frequently.
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
There is a list of admins to contact at (and a way to add to the
list):
http://www.gil.net/~infoline/abusebox.html
Chris tells us :
If you see MMFs or other gross abuses from AOL, MSN, MCI
(_not_internetmci), Primenet, Panix, please do not report them to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc. Just wastes bandwidth. Email your report
directly to the provider:
abuse@aol.com
postmaster@msn.com
postmaster@mci.com
postmaster@primenet.com
postmaster@panix.com
By "gross abuses", please try to ensure that it really is likely to be
spam. Not one article cross-posted lots, but lots of articles that
you see yourself. In AOL or MCI's case, the definition of abuse is
somewhat stricter (AOL bans commercial use. MCI's tolerance
thresholds is lower)
For the following providers the correct e-mail address is:
ABSnet - abs-admin@abs.net
AOL - abuse@aol.com. Emergency - send complete copies to
atropos@aol.net
AT&T Worldnet sources- wnettech@attmail.com
earthlink.net - abuse@earthlink.net
GNN.Com - For help regarding a problem with a GNN member -
GNNadvisor@gnn.com.
Hongkong's ISPs - send an email to hkinet@glink.net.hk with anything
in the subject/body. You'll get a most recent version of the list
contacts by email within minutes.
IBM Net - Postmaster@ibm.net - Also see
http://www.ibm.net/helpdesk.html
InterRamp.Com - abuse@interramp.com
interserve.com.hk - Mr. K H Lee - khlee@interserve.com.hk.
MCI Net - postmaster@internetMCI.COM . Per Joel ( Postmaster@mci.net
) 800-977-iNOC is staffed 24 hours a day. Complaints regarding
Internet abuse are taken seriously at MCI.
MCI spam alert to MCI.NET: spamcomplaints@mci.net
Note : If the Spam crosses MCI lines, Contact security@mci.com if
the headers in a Usenet or Email spam indicate that it had something
to do with MCI or its lines.
MCSNet - support@mcs.net
Netcom- abuse@netcom.com for standard SPAM junk. security@netcom.com
is for instances of forgery, cracking etc.
PSI Net - schoff@PSI.COM - From announce@support.psi.com PSI Net
policies - http://www.pipeline.com, http://www.usa.pipeline.com,
http://www.interramp.com
Slip Net - hellman@slip.net - Tech Support
Teleport System Administration - teleport.com - admin@teleport.com
UUNET Customer Liaison - help@uunet.uu.net
From : David Jackson (djackson@aol.net) (and this applies to *any*
abuse) :
To report an instance of USENET abuse send mail to postmaster@aol.com
- 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.
If you don't get a proper response from the postmaster, remember,
Whois - rs.internic.net is your friend. You can get information on /
about a site by:
telnet rs.internic.net
whois spammer.site.net
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.
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 multinet traceroute should show you the upstream provider, and
from there you can try contacting the postmasters of *that* site.
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 .
Thanx to Leslie, whom to contact about domains that have invalid
contact information :
Internic Registration Services should be contacted by phone:
703/742-4777
or email:
hostmaster@rs.internic.net
If you think you know a machine close to the spammer, you can change
your default DNS lookup server (and get *lots* more info ;-)) by :
$ nslookup
> server wb3ffv.abs.net
Default Server: wb3ffv.abs.net
Address: 206.42.80.130
> ls -d kjl.com
[wb3ffv.abs.net]
kjl.com. SOA kjl.com dns-admin.abs.net. (10
21600 3600604800 86400)
kjl.com. NS ns1.abs.net
kjl.com. NS ns2.abs.net
kjl.com. MX 10 abs.net
kjl.com. SOA kjl.com dns-admin.abs.net. (10
21600 3600604800 86400)
If you are quick enough, you can see if the spammer is still on by :
multinet RUSERS rust.nmt.edu
And you might get :
kuller ray timbers jweinman timbers john timbers rayzer
Assuming that the spammer is from ingress.com you can expand the
Spammers UserID (some sites have expn / vrfy turned off) by:
> telnet ingress.com smtp
Trying 199.171.57.2 ...
Connected to ingress.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ingress.com Sendmail 4.1/SMI-4.1 ready at Sun, 22 Oct 95 15:13:39
EDT
expn krazykev
250 Lipsitz Kevin <krazykev@kjl.com>
We connect to port 25 (smtp) and issues an expn command. Looks like
krazykev@kjl.com is being used as a maildrop for this user. I'll
would send my complaint to postmaster@kjl.com as well (not that it
would do any good in Krazy Kevin's case... but the reply to your e-
mail might be amusing).
To find out the Mail Exchange records, do a nslookup for the MX
records only. You can then look up the expansion of the postmaster or
root to see who they really are. For example :
% nslookup
> set type=mx
> gnn.com
gnn.com preference = 20, mail exchanger = mail-e1a.gnn.com
gnn.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail-e1b.gnn.com
% telnet mail-e1a.gnn.com smtp
220 mail-e1a.gnn.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.7.1/8.6.9 ready at Thu, 11 Jan
1996 12:54:26 -0500 (EST)
expn postmaster
250-<wross@ans.net>
250 <gnnadvisor@mail-e1a.gnn.com>
expn root
250-<mitch@ans.net>
250 <gnn-monitor@ans.net>
You can use the 'host' command. It's really simple:
% host -t any domain.name
This will give you anything your name server can find out.
% host -t ns domain.name
This tells you the name servers. Not all systems have host, but it's a
small program which should be easy to compile (like whois).
The command "last" will tell where the spammer logged on from last,
but it has to be done by a user from that site. For example :
last imrket4u
Would produce :
imrket4u ttypf ip30.abq-dialin.hollyberry.com Fri Sep 15 00:27
- 00:34 (00:06)
imrket4u ttyq8 ip30.abq-dialin.hollyberry.com Fri Sep 15 00:19
- 00:20 (00:01)
imrket4u ttyqc abq-ts1 Thu Sep 14 20:42 - 22:21
(01:39)
imrket4u ttyqc rust.nmt.edu Thu Sep 14 18:39 - 18:41
(00:01)
imrket4u ttypb abq-ts1 Thu Sep 14 17:55 - 17:57
(00:02)
Filtering E-Mail using procmail or News with Gnus
==================================================
Get the procmail FAQ :
http://www.jazzie.com/ii/faqs/archive/mail/filtering-faq/
http://www.jazzie.com/ii/internet/mailbots.html
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/filtering-
faq/faq.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
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.
Misc.
=================================
Origins of Spam
======================
The history of calling inappropriate postings in great numbers "Spam"
is from a Monty Python skit (yes, it is very silly...) where a couple
go into a restaurant, and try 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.
Black listed Internet Advertisers :
http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/ (Europe)
or
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/BL/ (USA)
First off, the only CORRECT way to "Spam" the net :
Show SPAM Gifts http://wolf.co.net/spamgift/index.html
A collection of Spam links :
http://www.io.org/~spamily/Spam.html
http://wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us/~sean/spam/spam-faq.html
http://semantic.rsi.com/spam/
The Church of Spam :
http://www.goodnet.com/~swiggy/
Come visit Beiner's SPAM-O-RAMA at:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6274
The MMF (Make Money Fast) Posts or any fraud on the Internet
================================================================
Rolf has created a page dedicated to making fun of MMF losers :
http://www.clark.net/pub/rolf/mmf/home.html
There is a WWW site dedicated to *any* kind of fraud. It is :
A partnership of the National Association of Attorneys General, the
Federal Trade Commission and The National Consumers League
http://www.fraud.org/
Wolfgang Schelongowski <ws@xivic.ruhr.de> sez :IMHO MMF is associated
with "Hello, my name is Dave Rhodes. In 198...".
There was also a forged article purporting to tell how MMF is illegal
:
From: purvis@hoover.fbi.gov (Melvin Purvis)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^ he arrested / shot John
Dillinger.
Subject: 'Make Money Fast' Scam
Jon said : "Hermann" appears to have spammed at least 27 Bitnet
mailing lists, including TANGO-L, where I saw it, with a standard MMF.
I checked at the US Post Office web site and verified that chain
letters are federal crimes under Title 18, United State Code, Section
1302. This does apply to email as well as paper; quoting from URL
From http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm :
"Recently, high-tech chain letters have begun surfacing. They may be
disseminated over the Internet, or may require the copying and mailing
of computer disks rather than paper. Regardless of what technology is
used to advance the scheme, if the mail is used at any step along the
way, it is still illegal."
To find your nearest postal inspector in the USA, see URL
http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/locators/find-is.html
I believe that the applicable Canadian description can be found at :
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/html/commerc.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
DOES ANYBODY HAVE POSTAL INSPECTOR ADDRESSES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES THAT
PONZI / MMF SCHEMES ARE ILLEGAL IN?
Those annoying 1-900 & 1-800 Sex Phone Ads
============================================
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/telemark/telesale.htm Telemarketing Sales Rule
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/scams01.htm Online Scams
(from the "Online Scams page)
For More Information
If you have a question or complaint about a suspect online ad or
promotion, contact your commercial service provider. In addition, you
can file complaints with your state attorney general, consumer
protection office or with the Federal Trade Commission (write to:
Correspondence Branch, Federal Trade Commission, 6th St. &
Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20580). Also, contact the
National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business
Bureaus, 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.
Questions about whether or not an investment sales person is licensed,
or if an offered security is registered, should be directed to the
Office of Consumer Affairs, Securities and Exchange Commission, 202-
942-7040.
The National Fraud Information Center maintains a toll-free Consumer
Assistance Service, 1-800-876-7060, to provide consumers with answers
to questions about telephone or mail solicitations and online scams.
They also offer information about how and where to report fraud and
give help in filing complaints.
The Better Business Bureau has a web site at:
http://www.bbb.org
To give feedback, go directly to:
http://www.bbb.org/council/feedback/index.html
How To Respond to SPAM
===========================
Howard reminds us :
Note to all: NEVER followup to a spam. NEVER. Express your
indignation in mail to the poster and/or the
postmaster@offending.site, 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 followup 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 followup that X's out the contact
information , severely trims the contents and identifies the post as a
scam is exempt from Howard's law.
Comments?
Bill's and Wolfgang's addition :
4) Follow-ups should be cross posted to n.a.n-a.m _and_ the groups
of the spam, but Followup-To: *MUST* be set to n.a.n-a.m *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
n.a.n-a.m if it's already been reported. If not, start a thread with
Subject: SPAM (was Re: <original Subject>) in n.a.n-a.m. Include all
of the headers and as much of the body of one article as you see fit.
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 (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.
Telephoning someone
======================
Calling someone once is fine. If enough people are pissed 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' *67 prevents your number from being displayed on their
telephone at home if they have caller ID, *57 will give the phone
company the number. 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.
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.tollfree.att.net/dir800/
or
http://www.tollfree.att.net/cgi-bin/taos_mf.pl?unix (advanced search
options).
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.
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
Dejanews to read the USC 47 thread on n.a.n-a.m. to make up your own
mind (it invariably comes up) or you can look at :
http://www.cybernothing.org/docs/code47.5.II.txt
Organizing a campaign against the spammer in a news group could lead
to the spammer trying to get a cease & desist police order against the
organizers. On the upside note, the spammer will have to try to
figure out where these "anonymous" cards were coming from (especially
hard to do in a big city).
Of course if someone (every once in a while) reminded the newsgroup of
the spammers address by posting a message (for informational purposes
only, and not to encourage mail bombing), I don't see how that could
be considered harassment ;-).
I am not a lawyer, and all of the above could be wrong. 80% of the
Internet is bull... Free advice is worth every penny you paid for it
:-).
------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are easily angered.
E-Mail - gandalf@digital.net - Gandalf The White O- Ken Hollis
WWW Page - http://digital.net/~gandalf/
WWW Trace E-Mail forgery - http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
WWW Trolls crossposts - http://digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html