How To Complain

Who do I complain to?

OK, so you have been following the last section and you now have the name of the spammer's ISP. What now?

Firstly, when you do a whois search on the IP address or domain that has been found, it will often show an "abuse" address, usually simply "abuse@" followed by their domain.
If none are shown then it is pretty safe to send a complaint to that address anyway. The other addresses that are usually used for complaints are "postmaster@" followed by their domain name, and "webmaster@" followed by their domain name.

The "postmaster" address is a special one according to internet standards. Any service should provide a "postmaster" address. This means that even if "abuse" and "webmaster" lead nowhere, "postmaster" should actually reach somebody!

Remember, that you are complaining to the spammer's service provider and not the spammer themselves. Your complaint should be worded accordingly.
I would personally not recommend complaining to the spammer themselves as it will just confirm your address works and I wouldn't give them the pleasure of knowing it has got to you. You are far better off working behind the scenes getting them in trouble and having their service cancelled by their ISP.
My experience has been that a lot of ISPs take complaints of abuse seriously and will take action against the person responsible - at the very least closing their account.

As a guide, here is an example of a typical complaint to an ISP. One thing is very important here:
Include the complete headers and message of the spam that you received!
Without this, there is little that the abuse investigators can do and, as you can imagine, they are extremely busy people.

I have received an unsolicited commercial e-mail from someone using, or stealing, your services.
I do not wish to receive such messages in the future. Please take all possible action against the culprit within your terms of service and within the law.

Original message follows:

---------

[Copy the complete message here, starting with the headers]

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"Spamvertised" Web Sites

So, we have "abuse@SpammersISP", "postmaster@SpammersISP", and potentially the same at the spammer's "upstream" provider (see TraceRoute in Tools for Analysing Headers).

There is one more area for investigation: Spam messages are no good for the spammer unless there is a way for you to buy from them. Because they know they are doing business immorally and probably illegally, they will invariably hide behind a web site with no contact information.

This web site has to be hosted by somebody though, and this gives us another line of attack. Find the provider of that web hosting and complain to them. The site will often be shut down.

This can be simply done using the same tools we have for tracing the source of the message (see Tools for Analysing Headers). Performing a "Whois" search on the domain name will reveal some information about the registrant of the domain - often with address, phone number and an "abuse" e-mail address.

Remember, this will just be the information for the "Registrant" of the domain name, usually the spammer. We also need to complain to the company providing hosting of the web site. For this, just do a NSLookup on the web site address, which will reveal the IP address, then do a Whois search on that IP address. This will reveal the details of the web site host - complain to them.

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Final Notes

If you have been following this, and the preceding section on Understanding Headers, you should be pretty "spam savvy" by now and ready to "fight the good fight".
As you can see, properly tracing and complaining about spam can be quite involved and requires a sound understanding of the internet and processes of email delivery.

Continuing the fight against spam in this way can be quite time-consuming, although it becomes easier and quicker with practice.

It is good that there are people out there taking the time to trace, and deal with spam in this pro-active way and the internet community as a whole should thank them - they are working on your behalf.
For the rest of us, it becomes a question of how much time we really should, or can, give to this annoying blight on our e-mail system.
If you don't feel you can give the time and effort required to put all the preceding into practice - that is fine. You can do your bit by doing a couple of simple things that will make your life easier anyway:

1. Find, and use, a good spam filter. Take a look at our Spam Filters and reviews section.
2. Never buy anything that you know is in any way promoted via spam. Remember, that is the surest way to stop spam forever!

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