A Fight Back Against Spam
With Washington State Law

***** Table Of Contents On This Page ***** [-001-] About geneb2@genesbmx.com [-002-] What Is Spam? [-003-] What Should I Not Do With Spam? [-004-] Washington State Spam Laws & WAISP Registry [-005-] URL`s/Links To Spam Help On the Web [-006-] MailWasher Spam Elimination Email Tool [-006.1-] Email Virus - Mass-Mailing Spam Flooding Worms. [-007-] Yahoo! Mail Spam Abuse Help? [-008-] Yahoo! Groups Spam Email Help? [-009-] Tips For Using The Usenet Newsgroups [-010-] News Clips About Spam Email - Wa. ___________________________________________________________________ [-001-] About geneb2@genesbmx.com E-MAIL ADDRESS ( geneb2@genesbmx.com ) Is registered as belonging to a Washington State e-mail address holder via on the waisp.org and Is a Washington State - USA Resident. Being on the internet alot I get spam ( junk email ) messages. I am a active contributor to alot of BMX/Bicycling email forums of various sorts. It gets me lots of spam junk email because of the spammers harvesting my email address from newsgroups, e-mail lists, chat groups, etc. This is a big problem in the US. and around the world. So here listed is some "Help Tips To Stomp Out Spam". A Highlighted Question? That is asked alot. Does spam emails increase over the holiday periods? Yes!, Over Christmas from 2001 - 2006 spam was said to have increased by 650%. ___________________________________________________________________ [-002-] What Is Spam? Spam is any message or posting, regardless of its content, that is sent to multiple recipients who have not specifically requested it. It can also be multiple postings of the same message to newsgroups or live chat rooms and list servers that aren't related to the topic of the message. Other common terms for spam include: UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) and UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email). ___________________________________________________________________ [-003-] What Should I Not Do With Spam? Never respond to unsolicited email/spam. To the individuals who send spam, one "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice. Never respond to the spam email's instructions to reply with the word "remove." This is a ploy to get you to react to the email and alerts the sender that your email address is open and available to receive mail, which greatly increases its value. If you reply, your address may be placed on more lists, resulting in more spam. Never click on a URL or web site address listed within a spam. This could alert the site to the validity of your email address, potentially resulting in more spam. Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam lists. Although some of these sites may be legitimate, more often than not, they are address collectors. The legitimate sites are ignored (or exploited) by the spammers; the address collection sites are owned by them. In both cases, your address is recorded and valued more highly because you have just identified that your address is active. ___________________________________________________________________ [-004-] Washington State Spam Laws & WAISP Registry Washington State US Residents can Fight Back Against Spam with Washington State Law Chapter 19.190 RCW Commercial Electronic Mail RCW 19.190.010 http://www.wa-state-resident.com/walaw.htm ( info ) On the Web: • http://www.wa-state-resident.com • http://www.spamlaws.com/state/wa.shtml Washington Association of Internet Service Providers WAISP Registry BEFORE you receive unsolicited e-mail, - PROTECT YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS CONTACT YOUR ISP; don't wait for your ISP to contact you about the protections under Washington's law. 1.Authorize your ISP to disclose you have a Washington e-mail address 2.Encourage your ISP to provide this disclosure service if they don't have it • http://registry.waisp.org. • http://www.waisp.org As long as the location of a Washington e-mail address is available to the would-be spammer, whether or not they actually check all possible sources of this information, they are prohibited from sending unsolicited e-mail in violation of the law to a Washington resident. AFTER you've received unsolicited e-mail BLOCK FUTURE E-MAILS FROM SENDER! Once you've been “spammed” ask your ISP to block all future e-mail from the sender. This is an important step that can help you and thousands of other subscribers. Once an ISP has reason to believe their network is being used to send unlawful unsolicited commercial e-mail, they can block all further e-mail sent to you from the address or domain name of the sender. Bennet Hasselton's Site - What you can do, Washington residents ( Suing a spammer using the current state of the Washington law ) Washington State Attorney General Information Junk Email Page ___________________________________________________________________ [-005-] URL`s/Links To Spam Help On the Web • http://spam.abuse.net • http://spamcop.net • http://www.peacefire.org • Unsolicited Mail, Telemarketing and Email: ( ftc.gov ) • U.S. Targets Spam-Based Scams ( newsfactor.com ) • Information on the petition filed to the FTC • Opt-out of Direct Marketing Association e-mail • FTC's response to the anti-spam petition • IRTF Home Page promote research of the future Internet • Fake Checks.org Alliance for Consumer Fraud Awareness • Google.com = Washington State Spam Search There are several utilities available on the web to run a search. Here's one web site where the utility will try to determine the actual computer that uses the IP address: • http://www.wcwcw.com/lookup • http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html Other good info from a biking web site about spam email at: • http://sheldonbrown.com/spam.html ___________________________________________________________________ [-006-] MailWasher Spam Elimination Email Tool http://www.mailwasher.net ( spam elimination tool ) This is a way to check and manage your emails before you download them. MailWasher is a powerful email checker with effective spam elimination. Discover the safe way to stop unwanted viruses and emails before they get to your computer. Finding it hard to be removed from mailing lists? Getting harassed by someone on your email? Tired of getting junk email from unknown sources? Why not make them think you no longer exist by bouncing back their email so it looks like your address has been closed down. Not only this you can Blacklist junk email senders. Mailwasher.net Is Free and it works the best to get rid of junk email senders AKA Spamm! Gene`s BMX News: - 09/21/2007 To all of the people in the North Central Washington area that are having problems with the spam elimination tool, MailWasher. It has been found in the last few days that people using the ISP NWI Northwest Internet, that you can not bounce back spam email We have got a hold of NWI asking why and they have told us that they will not support the MailWasher spam elimination tool. That is all we know. It is strange that NWI is the only place on the globe over the last few days has blacked out people from using this tool. So if your ISP is NWI please note that you can NOT now bounce back spam emails using the MailWasher tool. -- How nice of (NWI) to black people out so now the people will have to get all the spam emails and take a BIG risk of getting unwanted viruses from spam. I do not know much more on why they have blacked people out so Im going to say if your ISP is NWI, give them a phone call and ask them why.......... ___________________________________________________________________ [-006.1-] Email Virus - Mass-Mailing Spam Flooding Worms. *** Symantec Security Response Bug Threats - Category 3 and up *** ~~~ HELP INFORMATION ~~~ Threat Assessments, Technical Details, Recommendations, Removal Instructions [ Name of Threat ] - [ Date Discovered ] See: http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/index.jsp *** Reward to Stop Viruses, & Mimail Virus Spreads *** WASHINGTON (AP) -- 11/05/2003 Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday it is creating a $5 million reward program to help law enforcement identify and convict those who illegally release worms, viruses and other types of malicious programs on the Internet. ( More ) ___________________________________________________________________ [-007-] Yahoo! Mail Spam Abuse Help? Spamming from a Yahoo! Mail account is not acceptable. http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/#spam If the spam or abusive email is being sent from a Yahoo! Mail account, please forward an unedited copy of the message with the full headers to abuse@yahoo.com. Yahoo will evaluate the situation and take action as per Yahoo`s Terms of Service. ___________________________________________________________________ [-008-] Yahoo! Groups Spam Email Help? Yahoo! Groups has a very strict policy about spam: Members may not use yahoo service to send unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, spam, chain letters, multilevel/pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation. Yahoo! Groups reacts quickly to any complaints of spam and may remove any member who violates Yahoo! Terms of Service. http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/groups-05.html Some tips for Yahoo! Groups if spam emails happen. I have found that in Yahoo! Groups if the owner of the Yahoo! Group takes the spammers email address and adds that address to the BAN" list even if the spammer is not a member of your Yahoo! Group, It helps so the spammer can not post messages in your group. Also "Delete" all the spam post~s from in your group archives. Trying to help keep are BMX-Bicycling Yahoo! Groups of communications Via the internet clean and spam free! Here is some usefull tips that has been found to help out. Yahoo! Groups Tips For Owners, Moderator and Members ___________________________________________________________________ [-009-] Tips For Using The Usenet Newsgroups Information about Usenet spam http://www.killfile.org/faqs/spam.html There is tuns of spam posts listed in just about any Usenet newsgroup. Spammers do harvest email adderss from them big time. A good way to not have your email address get harvested by spammer is to fool them. Most spammers are robots (bots) picking out your email address. So if the robot gets a dummey email address, who care about it. The spam will go to no one but out to cyber space and float about. A good tip and a good way to fool them bots is like this, Your email address is something like ( Im_me@internet.com ) add in "Remove No Spam" to your address so it will look like this ( Im_me@REMOVE-NOSPAMinternet.com ) this is a pain to do evey time you post to the Usenet Newsgroups. It does help from you getting tuns of spam email sent to your email address. Most people that post to the Usenet Newsgroups do know this trick and if your wanting a reply back from your post, some people post a note at the bottom for there post saying to remove the (remove no spam) from ther email and to please reply back to them. Some People deal with this by setting up their software to give a false return address whenever they post or mail a message. This is commonly done by inserting the words "NOSPAM" or other conspicuous characters into the middle of the return address specified in the "settings" or "preferences" menu of the software involved. The hope is that your readers will notice this when they click "reply" and will delete the extra characters. The problem with this approach is that while you make it harder for spammers to reach you, you also make it harder for legitimate correspondents to respond to you. But it does works some so you don`t get junk emails. To all the contributors on the ( alt.bmx ) Usenet Newsgroup, Please Note to take out the NO SPAM or in some cases the REMOVE-NOSPAM to Reply back to someone. ~~~~~ Usenet Newsgroups and Trolls ~~~~~ Do Not Feed The Trolls! - http://www.genesbmx.com/trolls.jpg ( Photo ) On Usenet, a Troll is someone who posts messages in newsgroups with the deliberate intent of provoking flames or heated discussion or, in the case of a destructive troll, an attempt to destroy the group. A troll can also be know as Spammer. IE: flooding, mass cross-posts. Also See: - http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/antitrollfaqhtm.htm ___________________________________________________________________ [-010-] News Clips About Spam Email - Wa. 07/22/2008 - Spammer Sentenced Nearly Four Years 05/01/2008 - Man Gets Prison Thousands Of Spam E-mails 03/18/2008 - The King Of Spam Soloway Pleads Guilty 12/01/2007 - Teenager Arrested Over Computer Crimes 11/02/2007 - US Spammer Gets Two Years In Jail 08/19/2007 - Spammers Find New Ways To Slip Through 08/03/2007 - Storm E-mail Worm Evolves As It Wreaks Havoc On Net 06/20/2007 - US 'Spam King' New Slick Face Of Cyber Crime 06/14/2007 - FBI Pulls Plug On Several Botnet Hacker Spammers 06/06/2007 - E-mail Senders Can Pay To Bypass Filters 05/30/2007 - Feds Indict Seattle Man Accused Of Spamming 05/28/2007 - Hong Kong Cracks Down On Spam 05/23/2007 - Study: More Spam But Fewer Complaints 05/03/2007 - Spammers Use New Technique To Evade Filters 05/01/2007 - Billion-Dollar Lawsuit Targets Big Spammers 04/28/2007 - New Image Spam Scheme Hits Photo-Sharing Sites **************************************************** *** Man To Pay $7 Million To Settle Microsoft Spamming Lawsuit *** Redmond, Washington -- 08/09/2005 A man once accused of being one of the world's top three spammers has agreed to pay $7 million in a settlement with Microsoft Corp., the software maker announced Tuesday. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Spammer Sentenced To Seven Years In Prison *** BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- 05/30/2004 A man who sent 850 million junk e-mails through accounts he opened with stolen identities was sentenced to up to seven years in prison on Thursday. Atlanta-based Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. said it hoped the sentence and an earlier $16.4 million civil judgment against Howard Carmack will deter other spammers. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Man Takes On Spammers And Wins *** Redmond, Washington (AP) -- 05/08/2004 They raked in nearly $100,000 a month sending illegal spam to your computer. Now a local man just helped put them out of business. It's the first arrest since the new anti-spam law took effect this year. He has information you need to get more spammers behind bars. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Internet Companies Sue Spammers *** WASHINGTON, D.C. - 03/11/2004 Setting aside their rivalries to fight unwanted e-mail choking cyberspace, leading Internet companies announced Wednesday they have sued hundreds of people suspected of sending unsolicited junk messages known as spam. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Microsoft Creates Group To Fight Junk E-Mail *** Seattle Washington (AP) -- 06/25/2003 A week after filing 15 lawsuits against alleged junk e-mailers, Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it has created a specialized group of researchers and programmers to develop new technological tools to fight spam. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Microsoft Files 15 Anti-Spam Lawsuits *** REDMOND WASHINGTON (AP) -- 06/18/2003 Sometimes it's a phone number, a Web site address or a company name, but somewhere, every piece of junk e-mail, or spam, includes one or two pieces of real information. Those clues helped Microsoft trace e-mails across 34 countries, identify the senders and file lawsuits against 15 people and businesses accused of sending more than 2 billion deceptive e-mails that flooded Microsoft's computer systems and customers' inboxes. ( More ) **************************************************** *** Spammers Lose In Small-Claims Court *** March 25, 2002 Free-speech group Peacefire.org has won a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, by invoking Washington state's anti-spam law. ( More ) ___________________________________________________________________