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ISPs and Spam Enforcement...

Posted by Cliff on from the protecting-your-inbox dept.

mathowie asks: "I've been getting spams from "Benchmark Printing Supplies" for over two years, and I see an Atlanta-based PSInet dialup in the headers every single time. My messages to PSInet's abuse team asking why have gone unanswered every time. How can we stop spammers if ISPs don't take strong steps to hinder these guys from profitability?" Where CAN you go next if your ISP refuses to do something about the growing amount of SPAM in your inbox?

3 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Choices... by Hall · · Score: 2
    1) Contact this company and tell them to stop sending them. Try and word it similarly to how you can deal with telemarketers. Tell them to put you on their "Do not contact" list. As far as telephone goes, once you do that, and they contact you again, it's considered harassment.

    This may or may not work. As usual, do not reply to the "unsubscribe" address that may be given in the e-mail.

    2) Contact *your* ISP. Mine has a simple address to send spam to: spam@erinet.com

    They ask that you forward the message with full headers. What do they do ? I don't know... Block all e-mail from that address or higher up the chain ? Send an automatic message to the "other" ISP ?

    3) This doesn't solve your problem, but at least you won't see the messages anymore. But, use your e-mail program to filter messages from this company and send them straight to your deleted mail. I know you can do this with Netscape's mail program. I only recently started using Mutt, but I'm willing to bet you can do it with it, too.

  2. Convince your ISP to join MAPS by schon · · Score: 2

    If these jokers are "spam-friendly", then they're surely on the MAPS RBL already; convince your ISP to join the RBL (words to the effect of "I'm really pissed off at this spam, and if you don't do something to stop it, I'll be forced to switch providers; the MAPS RBL is the best way to protect your customers from being harrassed like this.")

    It's important to be as polite as possible.. try to present it as a solution that would help their customer base, as opposed to hurt it (most ISP's cringe at the though that one of their customers might not be able to send/receive email to a particular domain; for whatever reason.)

  3. Unsolicited or solicited? by renbear · · Score: 2

    Are you absolutely, TOTALLY certain that you don't have a prior business relationship with these people? If you gave them your email address at some point in the past, and (probably inadvertently) checked one of those annoying "please send me news about our product" checkboxes, then they will feel justified in sending you commercial mail. Furthermore, their ISP will not do anything about it, because it is not UCE, or UNsolicited commercial email.

    If this is the case (and ONLY if this is the case!) I would recommend that you use the removal address they provide. Otherwise, the business won't know to remove you and the ISP will laugh off any complaints they receive. If you ask to be removed and aren't, THEN you will have some ammo for the ISP.

    Just please remember: commercial email, no matter how unwanted, does not equal spam. It's got to be unsolicited.

    Hm, one additional point: Make ABSOLUTELY sure you know which email address the spam is being sent to. A lot of us have acquired countless old email addresses, and it's easy to forget that everything is getting forwarded to your current address. If you ask for the wrong address to be removed, it (obviously) won't work.

    And if they're really spammers? Heh. Draw some blood for me, would you?