Spamming and Hacking
- What is spam/hacking?
- Can I stop spam/hacking?
- What can I do if I am being spammed/hacked?
- How do I find the spammer/hacker's ISP?
- Tracking spam?
- How do I complain to the spammer/hacker's ISP?
What is spam/hacking?
Also known as UCE (unsolicited commercial email), spam is unsolicited email. Often, spam will relate to dishonest get-rich-quick schemes, bogus products, or invitations to pornography sites. Sometimes, spam mail contains viruses as attachments.
Hacking is an attempt to gain access to your system. Hackers may be looking for personal information, such as passwords or credit card numbers, or they may be trying to make use of your Internet connection to transmit their own material. They could also be searching at random to see what they can find.
Can I stop spam/hacking?
Prevention is better than cure. Be careful about giving your email address when filling in forms online. You could also consider using a separate email address for some public activities, such as chat rooms, in order to protect your main address from spammers.
What can I do if I am being spammed/hacked?
Do not write back to the spammer. Often, spammers will try to guess email addresses. If they get a reply from you it simply confirms that they have found a valid email address. Although many spam mails include a link for removal from their list, this is normally a trick.
If you wish to do something about spam you may have received, you should report it to the spammer's ISP. Most ISPs realize it is bad for their reputation to have this activity on their networks and should be able to take action against the spammer.
If you have been hacked, the first step is to report the activity to the hacker's ISP. Most ISPs realize it is bad for their reputation to have this activity on their networks and should be able to take action against the hacker. If the ISP does not respond to your complaint, you may need to contact law enforcement agencies either in your jurisdiction or the jurisdiction where the problem originated.
How do I find the spammer's ISP?
You need to open up the email header and find the spammer's IP address.
How do I complain to the spammer/hacker's ISP?
You can forward a copy of the spam to the spammer's ISP, being sure to include the full header (although if the spam contained a virus you should not include the attachment). Although spam can be extremely frustrating or offensive, be polite when telling the network contact about spam coming from their network. The network may be an intermediate party unaware that a spammer is using their network to send messages.
Use the APNIC Whois Database to obtain the email addresses for the Incident Response Team (IRT) of the ISP. Email your complaint to this contact so they can investigate.
Remember, the people you are writing to at this stage are unlikely to be involved on the attacks on your system. Be firm, but polite. In your complaint, include as much relevant information as possible to make it easier for the ISP to locate and deal with the abuser. If your firewall software has generated a log file of the attack, you should include that.
Try to include the following information:
- IP address that attempted the network intrusion
- Date and time
- Time zone
Want to know more about spam?
For more detailed advice on how best to deal with spam, visit the:
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUSE)