WebTV Help:
What To Do About Spam
[Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), "Junk Email"]
Updated May 27, 2003
Are you being overwhelmed by junk email solicitations for get-rich-quick schemes, "free" vacations, "hot" stocks, prizes or merchandise, "miracle" diets, products to enlarge various parts of your anatomy, Viagra, HGH, stop-smoking cures, phony diplomas, driver's licenses and ID cards, low-cost home, auto, or student loan financing, solicitations to visit pornographic websites, pyramid schemes ["Multi-Level Marketing] and an endless supply of other stupid, worthless drivel?
Why do you get these mailings when your email address isn't even shown in the To: header?
Do you wonder if you're getting someone else's mail by mistake?
Q: Why isn't my email addy shown in the To: header? A: Because it's being hidden by a feature of other email programs called "Blind Carbon Copy," Bcc:
A spammer can hide hundreds of email addresses in a Bcc: header and none of the recipients will see any of them.
Another email address, which may or may not be valid, will usually be in the To: header you can see.
The address shown in the From: header is 99.999999999% of the time a total fake -- a forgery. Computer users can forge any email address in the From: header.
Never click Reply in response to a spam.
Q: Why does the spam says I opted-in or asked to be on the mailing list? A: This is a trick to get you to Reply to or click on the "Remove me" instructions so that your email address may be noted and recorded for further spamming. A: As Adam A. Wanderer writes, Rule 1: Spammers Lie. Rule 2: When in doubt, see Rule 1.
Q: What about those notices at the bottom of some spam emails, that it's not spam because it conforms to a Federal law?
A few years ago there was proposed legislation to make mass emailings legal if a valid way to opt-out of future mailings was included. But it was never passed into law.
As explained, asking to be "removed" will confirm your status as a sucker and get you on many more spammers' lists.
Oh, and by the way, the number usually cited in the "Official Notice" is the original Congressional Bill numbering, long invalid, not the numbering used for Public Laws that have been passed and signed into law. In short, it's a LIE.
A: The only good defense against spam is a really strong offense:
Q: How can I stop getting these idiotic spam emailss?
- First of all, press Mail, click on Settings near the upper right hand corner of the Mail list page; then click on Junk Mail Filter. Check the box, then click Done. This process must be done for each username individually.
Doing so enables MSN TV to shut off email from known sources of spam. Their list of known sources is kept updated by people who Forward the spams to spam@webtv.net, as explained below.
This setting may revert to unchecked after the normal, weekly Wednesday morning maintenance or after you Upgrade or Retrograde. Verify it periodically to make sure the box remains checked.
- Never, ever click on or reply to a "Remove Me" address in the spam itself.
This is a trick to gather live email addresses, people who actually open and read the spam messages. Those addresses are collected and then sold to other spammers at a premium... and the number of spammers' lists you get on will increase dramatically.
- Next: Obtain a free, unique email address to forward your spam emails for reporting, by going to this page and submitting your email address: Anonymous Spamcop Signup . In a short while, Spamcop will email you a personalized email Forwarding address for beginning the reporting process.
- When Spamcop sends you the Anonymous
Signup message, read through it to find the unique email address for you to Forward all your spam emails to. Save this message for future reference.Then you'll set up a "group" mailing name in your email Addresses list (you just put all the following addresses in the box where you'd normally put a single one, separated by commas):
[Your Unique Spamcop Spam Forwarding Address], spam@webtv.net, uce@ftc.gov
[spam@webtv.net allows WebTV to update their spam filters; uce@ftc.gov reports it to the Federal government]...and give it a name, such as 0Spam (zero Spam).
- When you receive a spam, click on Forward, then on the To: in the header; your address list will show up vertically in a popup. The zero will cause the 0Spam group address to be at the top of the list.
- Just click on it, and all the email addresses in the group address will be added to the To: header automatically.
- Then click Send.
IMPORTANT: You must follow these last steps to actually make the spam reports!:
After your Forward a spam to Spamcop, In a short while, they will send a return email; in it, click on the reporting link and you may be taken to an intermediate page, then finally to a page where you can see the results of tracing the real domains the spam passed through [spammers always "forge" the From: headers as a matter of course, to try to avoid being tracked down].NOTE: On any intermediate page, ignore any notice to the effect, "If this page does not refresh automatically in XX seconds, reload this page" -- DO NOT RELOAD.
With WebTV, reloading may cause an error which Spamcop interprets as an attempt to make multiple reports on the same spam. Instead, simply wait and the process will proceed as it should.
- Scroll down on the reports page or click on "Skip to Reports," then find and click on "Send Spam Reports Now" and automatically-generated reports will be sent to the authorities of the actual domains the spammers are using and who can shut down email accounts and spammers' websites.
Reality Check:At times, WebTV/MSN TV has sometimes "held" email from Spamcop for up to 12 hours or more.
To be most efective, you must report spam promptly... sometimes domains can actually catch them "in the act" because of your quick report
If WebTV/MSN TV email delays become a problem, refer to the section below about learning to reveal full headers; then you will be able to cut and paste the headers spam message into a form box at Spamcop and still be able to report the spammer. The special URL of your personalized spam reporting page is in the initial response to verifying your email address at Spamcop, another reason to Save the message.
Once you've set up your group spam reporting address and practiced sending spams a few times, the explanation above takes much more time to read than the time it will take you to do all the steps.
By using these techniques, I went from getting [about three years ago] almost 100 spams per day!!! to two or three per week at present.
Reporting does work, but you have to be consistent, persistent, and follow through on each and every spam.
If you wish to receive notices from the domains about what actions have been taken in response to your complaint, you can copy and paste the reporting addresses Spamcop indicates on its "Send Reports Now" page, then Forward the original spam to those domains.
Doing so may result in getting "auto acks," automatic acknowledgements only, but you also may get specific, additional information about what action(s) have been taken.
If you get a notice that an email address or website has been shut down, it's called a "kill."
It can be great sport to see how many spammers' email accounts and websites you can "kill" by reporting them!
Q: How long before I see results?A: It typically will take a few weeks for current spammers to start purging their "Sucker list" of your address. When they do, you will notice a sharp falloff in the number of spams you receive.
Q: I've noticed that spam sometimes seems to come in "waves," periods in which I get many more spams each day. Why?
A: There can be several reasons:
- Spammers get addresses by visiting newsgroups, web sites, Guest Book entries, chat rooms, eBay listings and auction bid histories and other "public" sources and collecting email addreses
To avoid spam from these public sources, create a secondary WebTV/MSN TV username just for those purposes; you can then turn email and newsgroup posting on and off for that username from the Primary user's Settings, Extra users page; click on the secondary username to access the On and Off settings.]
If that address starts to receive too much, you can also simply delete that username and create another, brand-new one to take its place.
- Spammers collect addresses from emails with jokes and stories Forwarded by unsuspecting friends to all their friends ["multiple forwards"]; politely but firmly ask friends not to include your address on such multiple forwards. Here's a URL [website address] to send them to explain why:
- New spammers, especially high-school and college kids, spam when they have free time -- such as during vacation periods
- Periodically, spammers sell CDs with millions of collected email addresses to other spammers, and each time a new version comes out, another new group of idiots who actually think they'll make money by annoying people with their stupid spams buy the CDs and start sending out their junk email.
Just keep reporting each and every spam and you'll be able to shut them down and take control of your mailbox again.
For those of you who are really interested in becoming "spam terrorists" as spammers call spam fighters, here's an excellent newsgroup run by SkyKing140 [Jim Martin]:
If you're interested in becoming a really proficient spam-fighter and want to learn how to see full headers [which are hidden by WebTV's email program], click here.
Spamcop is a free service, open to all, which is paid for by its subscribing members, including myself.
"I love the smell of NO SPAM in the morning!"
---Robert Doemall in "A Pox on Your Lips, POW, Spammers!"
Directed by Francis Ford Spamcoppola
(Los Angeles, CA):
Visitors Since October 3, 2000:
<