Letter to the Editor on Header Forging

"In your newsletter on August 13, 2003, Angie Keating inquired how to combat spammers forging her email address for sending their spam.

"I encountered the same problem with an affiliate of [name of offending company]. I went directly to the website of the company, not the spammer but the company's home website. I sent a formal complaint to the owner copying the web address of the spamming affiliate. I explained what happened and expected them to discontinue the affiliation of the involved person and to post a notice to their affiliates that using a false e-mail address to send spam was against company policy.

"The spamming continued. I sent a second email to the owner as well as the marketing director and the person in charge of the website. Still no resolution. I then filed a complaint with the U.S. Attorney General's office. I wrote all three of the above people once more and told them that I had filed the complaint and that I was in the process of contacting all the large search engines to request that their website be dropped. Further that I would inform the search engine folks that [name of offending company] refused to reply to my complaint and refused to take any measure against the affiliate. I have not had a problem since. I never received a letter of apology from [name of offending company] but at least the spamming has ended. Angie might want to try this approach." -- Mary Findley, Mary Moppins Cleaning Systems