ZERO Tolerance Spam Policy

1. In General
2. Definition of Spam and Types
3. How to Report Spam
4. Our Actions Under This Policy
5. Actions Required Under Our Policy for Companies, Groups, or Individuals, whose IP Ranges Have Been Blocked
6. References
   • Email Clients
     • Eudora
     • IncrediMail
     • Mozilla
     • Netscape 3
     • Netscape 4
     • Opera
     • Outlook 2007
     • Older versions of Outlook
     • Outlook Express
   • Links (Additional)

H.B. Plant High School Alumni Association is totally unwilling to accept any form of spam because it wastes time and consumes resources of our computing equipment in terms of processing, storage and network traffic; not to mention our human resources. Therefore, we reserve the right to take action against any company, group or individual who chooses to abuse our resources for commercial, unethical, or illegal purposes.

Specifically, this refers to any entity who:

• Sends or relays unsolicited commercial materials through our systems or to any of our customers/clients, and their customers/clients, or in any way causes unsolicited commercial materials to be passed into, thru or stored on our systems;
• Misappropriates, rents, trades or sells any contact information contained within the Site, including (but not limited to) email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, etc.

Spam is a term used to describe unsolicited electronic messages (e-mail, chat messages, usergroups posting, instant messaging, or even faxes) usually advertising a product or service. Spam is usually sent in bulk to multiple recipients, often thousands at a time. The name of Spam comes from both the processed meat product and a Monty Python reference. The concept of the name is that you are receiving fake meat that you don't want, and invariably, and unfortunately, is sent by individuals or businesses:.

• who do not know you personally
• and who your have not agreed or requested to receive their emails from
• or have not been provided your email address directly by yourself
• or an email sent to a recipient who would not have a reasonable expectation of receiving email from the sender.

Spam can be a single email or a bulk mailing. Posting messages to Usenet or News Group groups that explicitly forbid the posting of commercial solicitations or solicitations not pertaining to their content is Spam.

Types:

• UCE - Unwanted or unsolicited commercial e-mail message from someone you do not know or with whom you do not have an established business relationship. Spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail.
• Phishing (pronounced – ‘Fishing’) - The criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as person information (ex: phone numbers, SSAN, checking account number with routing number), usernames and passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

If you have an email account, chances are that at some point you've come across those bothersome unsolicited messages known as Spam. Whether it's an add imploring you to buy the latest "Hot" stock, purchase a years supply of sexual enhancement products, or buy prescription drugs without a prescription, spam is one of the seedier by-products of the Internet age. And while it may be easiest to simply delete those messages and move on to the important ones, the fact is that they will keep coming and keep wasting your time and energy. One of the many things that you can do to help reduce spam is to report spam activity to organizations that have the ability to do something about it. Here are some tips and tricks for how to do just that.

Why Report Spam?

While you shouldn't make it your life's work to track down and expose spammers (there are just too many!), reporting spam can have an effect. Here are a few reason why you should report spam:

1. Reporting spam can help cut down on the amount of spam you receive.
2. Reporting spam can help authorities find and prosecute illegal spammers.
3. Reporting spam can help your Internet Service Provider identify where spam is coming from.

Report Spam to the Federal Trade Commission:

One of the easiest ways to report spam is to forward the unsolicited email to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is a government agency that helps promote consumer protection and regulates businesses. By reporting spam to the FTC, you are helping to compile a database that can then be used by the authorities to find and prosecute spammers. Here's how:

1. Forward the offending email to spam@uce.gov.
2. Make sure that you include the Full Header of the email in your response. This will include information that can help the FTC determine where the spam came from and how it found its way into your inbox. The full header is not usually visible at first glance. Find your email client from this list and follow the directions for how to find the full header.

If you wish to submit a complaint about a specific company and their practices (or you have been the victim of a spam related scam), file a formal complaint with the FTC by filling out this form.

Report Spam to the ISP:

Another way to help combat spam is to report it to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) whose mail servers were used to send the message. Since spam is a violation of most ISP's user agreements, they will usually want to know when nefarious spammers are using their facilities to send spam. By altering the ISP to the spammers actions, they can then track them down and stop them. While this method is a bit more complicated (and technical) then the others, it can still be a useful tool in helping to stop spam.

The first thing that you will need to do is to identify the IP address of the ISP that was used to send the spam.

1. Find the Full Header of the spam email you want to report (see above for instructions on how to find the header).
2. Look through the header and identify the IP address. You can usually find this in the Received: section or in various other places throughout the header (see below). The IP address will usually be represented by 4 numbers separated by dots.
   
   

   Find the IP address of Internet Service Provider in the full email heading

   
   
   
3. Next, find out what ISP that address is linked to by going to SamSpade.org and pasting the IP address that you copied from the header into the "Whois" box.
   
   

   Screenshot from SamSpade.org

   
   
   
4. If the IP address is valid, you will be provided with a results screen that contains detailed information on the ISP that is currently using that address (including their name, location, address and phone number).
5. Find the email address of the ISP (usually something like abuse@ISPname.com or .net).
6. Forward the offending email to that address, including the Full Header and a description of the message.
7. While they will usually follow up on these reports of spam abuse, most ISPs will not reply to your email unless you specifically request them to do so (and even then sometimes not).

Use Spam Reporting Services:

If you don't have the time, energy, or technical savvy to manually report spammers to the proper organizations yourself, you can take advantage of some of the independent spam reporting services that have popped up in the past few years. By signing up for an account with these services, users can quickly and easily forward spam messages to them. Those messages are then analyzed by the services and the proper actions are taken to stop the spammers. Here are a couple of the most popular spam reporting services:

1. SpamCop: Probably the most used spam reporting service, SpamCop is a great resource for people who want to help fight spam. While signing up for a basic account and reporting spam is free, SpamCop also offers premium email accounts that make use of their extensive databases to provide users with spam-free email.
2. Spamhaus: Spamhaus is an International non-profit organization that works to battle spam around the globe by compiling lists of known spammers and their IP addresses. They also provide anti-spam services for large organizations and businesses.

Do Not Spam List: Fact or Fiction?

While you may have heard rumors of a National "Do Not Email Registry" (similar to the Do Not Call Registry), the truth is that such a list does not exist. In fact, in a report to congress, the Federal Trade Commission actually decided that such a list would not work in combating spam and might actually contribute to the proliferation of spam. Their reasoning was that any list that is a compilation of email addresses and accounts can be accessed by spammers and used as a "Do-Call List". Sorry.

We reserve the right to block all email originating an IP Range located in a foreign country upon the first occurrence of a spam from that IP Range, and to continue this block indefinitely, with no process of appeal.

We reserve the right to take any and all actions as necessary to protect our systems and our customers/clients, and their customers/clients, information, including but not limited to blocking all future email from IP Ranges of ISPs that have allowed spam to be relayed thru their services and who have not taken action to correct the problem or terminate companies, groups or individuals directly responsible for the spam.

Example of Spam Relaying:

In the above example IP 58.242.42.91 (an IP located in China and assigned to CNCGroup AnHui Province Network) is the originating IP of the spam. It was received by a mail server at ucla.edu, and then relayed thru other servers at ucla.edu before finally being relayed from 169.232.46.175 (out-77.smtp.ucla.edu) to the mail server at DeWaldSr.com.

The biggest company, group, or individual directly responsible for this spam is: University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA Communications Technology Services and the University of California, Office of the President, Information Resources and Communications.

Once we have determined that a company, group, or individual is responsible for allowing spam to be relayed thru or sent from their services, we will place a email rejection block against the company’s, group’s, or individual’s IP Range that the offending IP is registered in.

The company, group, or individual will be notified by Email of our action and will be informed of our action, with a demand for their immediate action on this matter.

Example of Our Email Notice of Action:

Companies, groups or individuals who abuse our services, whether one of our customers/clients, and their customers/clients, or not, will be pursued for compensation under the laws pursuant to theft of service. We also reserve the right, at our discretion, to notify connectivity and hosting providers of such abuses in order to suspend or disconnect service of the offending parties.

We also reserve the right to reject all future email from the identifiable connectivity and hosting providers who allow spam to be forwarded thru their services.

Offenders will be tracked down using any available information as well as proprietary spam-tracking and security tools; ex. SpamCop.com and Sam Spade.

For the time and expenses incurred in dealing with such offenders, the fee of $500.00US per offense will be charged in addition to any compensation provided under the laws pursuant to theft of service. Any entity refusing to pay the fees they have incurred will be turned over to collection agencies and we will take any legal actions needed to collect the fees. We will report any late or non-payment to all major credit agencies.

It is our contention, and that of the courts of the United States, to include but not limited to the US Supreme Court, that spamming companies, groups or individuals who violated their ISP’s Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) or Terms of Service (TOS), and Anti-Spam Policies have forfeited their rights to privacy protection under their ISP’s Privacy Protection Policies, and therefore the ISP can not and may not enforce that policy to protect the offender’s rights to privacy.

Therefore we require and demand total and full disclosure of all information pertaining to the offending companies, groups or individuals, to include but not limited to names, addresses and phone numbers of the offending companies, groups or individuals, to properly identify them so that we can take such legal action against them as we deem necessary.

This required information may be relayed to us via a reply to our Email Notice of Action.

For Eudora:

1. Open Eudora.
2. Open the message you'd like to view headers for.
3. Click the Blah Blah Blah button next to the Subject field.

The full headers will appear in the window below.

For IncrediMail:

1. Open IncrediMail.
2. From your inbox, locate the message you'd like to view headers for.
3. Right-click the message, and select Properties.
4. Open the Details tab in the dialogue box.

The full headers will appear in the dialogue box.

For Mozilla:

1. Open Mozilla.
2. Open the message you'd like to view headers for.
3. Click the View menu, and select Message Source.

The full headers will appear in a new window.

For Netscape 3:

1. Open Netscape 3.
2. Click the Options menu, and select Show Headers.
3. Select All.

For Netscape 4:

1. Open Netscape 4.
2. Click the View menu, and select Headers.
3. Select All.

The full headers will appear in the window below your inbox.

For Opera:

1. Open Opera.
2. Click the message you'd like to view headers for so it displays in the window below your inbox.
3. Click Display all headers, across from the To field.

The full headers will appear in the window below.

For Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Open a message.
3. On the Message tab, in the Options group, click the Dialog Box Launcher icon image.
4. In the Message Options dialog box, the headers appear in the Internet headers box.

For older versions of Outlook:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Open the message you'd like to view headers for.
3. Click the View menu, and select Options....

The full headers will appear in a new window.

For Outlook Express:

1. Open Outlook Express.
2. From your inbox, locate the message you'd like to view headers for.
3. Right-click the message, and select Properties.
4. Open the Details tab in the dialogue box.

The full headers will appear in the dialogue box.