Fight Back the Spam Attack

Some time ago I replied to a craigslist.org inquiry. The email said generically they were interested in purchasing what I was selling. So I replied. That was a really big mistake. It turned out to be a phishing scam where they are harvesting valid email addresses.

Now I receive about 20 emails per week advertising either "medzonline" or "viagra" type products. The From: address is always from a different domain so I didn't know how to tell these people to stop sending me email. But I searched on Google and found this link about how to fight email spam. In summary it says to do these steps:

1. Get the Received from IP address in the message header.
2. Query WhoIs to determine the real domain server and if there is an administrator.
3. Send polite email with your complaint to "abuse@domain.com" or whatever the domain is and paste in the original email of the spam, including the full view of the email headers.
   

So far I've sent 37 different email messages, one to each different email server that has been spamming my Inbox. Most have been from South American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Columbia. Some have been from Mexico and a couple from the US. A couple have been from France, one from England, one from Ireland.

The WhoIs tool queries different services and returns a report. Some reports actually have a "report abuse" email address. Most do not and so I just take the administrator's email address and replace the username with "abuse". I also try "postmaster" and I Cc: the real administrator.

So the lesson learned: If you get an inquiry about something you are selling, unless it is clear the email is legitimate do not reply to it.