The PIC guide to dealing with spam

Here are some guidelines for dealing with spam in your inbox.

1. Do not buy anything advertised in spam. The most effective way to combat spam is to eliminate it as a viable "business tool", the only way to do this is to avoid the stuff they advertise.
2. Never use the "unsubscribe" or "remove me" feature the spammers often include, thse things more often than not just serve to confirm that your email address works. Using the unsubscribe thing usually leads to a big increase in spam. A nice little mantra to remember: "I refuse to unsubscribe from something I did not subscribe to in the first place"
3. If the spam arrives at your workplace and you have an IT department, find out from them if they want spam reported to them. Many companies run their own mail servers and have the ability to block or filter spam at the server level before it can arrive in your inbox. Some corporate IT policies also prohibit point 4 blow, always find out first.
4. Consider reporting spam so the world at large may benefit from your actions and reduce the general damage these spammers are doing. There are numerous places to report spam, some are listed below
   • If the spam is from a USA company, consider passing it on to uce[AT]ftc.gov (replace [AT] with @)
   • Consider reporting the spam at http://www.spamcop.net/. If enough people report a spam source to them the source IP address is added to the bl.spamcop.net blocking list, which is used by many organisations to block spam
   • Consider posting a message to the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.sightings, which is basically a public archive of lots of spam. Note: Be careful about this avenue and do some research before posting, spammers will troll this group and launch revenge attacks on people who report them, so look for guidelines on how to post to this newsgroup without exposing your personal information
   • Find out what the attitude and policies of your ISP are with regard to spam directed at their users. Many ISPs and mail providers want spam reported to them so they can block or filter future similar spam
   • If the spam is of a criminal nature, see this page
5. Do not fight abuse with abuse. There is always the temptation to find details of the people behind the spam and do something silly like subscribe them to porn spam lists to get revenge. This adds to the damage that spam is doing to the Internet