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We discovered this piece on Phil's web site, and were so impressed that we wrote and asked his permission to bring it to the UGN. He has graciously allowed us to reprint it, in its entirity, here for you.

How to Complain About Spam, or,
Put a Spammer in the Slammer

by Phil Agre
http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/

Table of contents:

  1. Introduction (this page)
  2. Fraud and related consumer issues
  3. Issues relating to paper mail
  4. Complaining to the police
  5. Complaining to your legislator
  6. Complaining to the service provider
  7. Complaining to the spammers themselves
  8. Questionable strategies
  9. Other resources
  10. Conclusion

Introduction

Unsolicited bulk e-mail, commonly called "spam", has lately become an extraordinary nuisance. Spam as such is not illegal (yet). The contents of some actual spam messages, however, may violate a state or federal law. Other spam messages may violate the spammer's contract with his or her Internet Service Provider, or else cause enough harm to a third party to warrant a civil lawsuit. No legal action will be taken against a spammer, however, unless someone reports the problem.

This article does not provide legal advice, nor does it make legal allegations against any particular spammer or any particular class of spam messages. It does, however, provide instructions for reporting those messages that, in your judgement, deserve further investigation by appropriate authorities. Reporting spam does take some effort at first, but once you get a little practice, it can easily become a regular part of reading e-mail. Let me emphasize: even though this article provides a whole menu of methods for complaining about spam, you'll be doing a tremendous public service if you simply pick ONE of these methods and do it on a regular basis. Pick the one that you find most convenient, or that gives you the most delicious feeling of revenge. There's no need to get overwhelmed or burned out. Follow the instructions a few times, just to see how it feels. Maybe try something else and see how *it* feels. Then slowly work your favorite spam-reporting measures into your daily and weekly routine.

The contact information that I provide here is incomplete, and at present includes only the United States. Those with contact information for other jurisdictions are encouraged to send it along for inclusion in future editions. This article only contains information for those wishing to complain about spam; those seeking deeper explanations of the problem, or who are curious about other topics, will find URLs for several encyclopedic Web sites toward the end of this article. Most of the information in this article, particularly on technical topics, has previously been described in other forms by these existing sites.

Index _|_ Next Section



Publication Restrictions:
Nonprofit user group publications may reprint this article provided that you print it in its entirety, verbatim, without any additions, deletions, or modifications, and so long as you include the following copyright statement:

"(c) 1997 by Phil Agre. All rights reserved.
Phil Agre is an associate professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego. He edits an Internet mailing list called the Red Rock Eater News Service, on which this article was originally distributed. Details on the Web at http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html . "

You'll also need to send Phil a hardcopy of the issue when it appears.

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