Theft of Services

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Spammers will use many tricks in their effort to "ply ...
One of the most common is to use someone else's ... as their return address.
Another is to link to ... in their Spammers will use many tricks in their effort to "ply theirwares".
One of the most common is to use someone else's emailaddress as their return address. Another is to link to imagescontained in their email, which are on your web site, illegallyusing your bandwidth.Using a stolen email address as their return address, is becomingquite common, as some Internet Service Providers are checking toensure that the sending address is valid before relaying themessage.
They have started doing this due to the "raft ofcomplaints" received about mail going out with a phony returnaddress.The consequences of this can be quite far reaching for the personwhose address has been stolen. This happened to me late lastyear.
It was a porno ad that was sent out bearing my returnaddress. I got over 7,000 requests to remove their name from mymailing list in a 3 day period.
Many were quite nasty,threatening all sorts of things. I called "At Home", who providesmy cable service, to see if there was anything I could do aboutit.
Their advice was to use a different email address.Fortunately it was an address that I don't use for business, andif it was, it would have been far more serious. The real problemhere is not that your ISP will shut you down for spamming, as itis fairly simple to find out that you didn't send it, regardlessof the return address.There are three potential problems however, that you may have todeal with.The first is the number of "bounces" (bad email addresses thatcannot be delivered).
Many ISP's program their servers to shutdown an email account that is getting a large number of bounces,as it is one of the symptoms of a denial of service attack. Ifyour bounces exceed a certain number - usually around 500, yourweb server may automatically go into a "self protect" mode andshut down your email address.If you start receiving many bounce notifications, immediatelynotify your ISP of the problem, telling them that someone hasillegally used your return address.
If it was an email addressthat you use for business, the bad press that you get can bedevastating. You should write a short email explaining what hadhappened, and send it to everyone who sends you a complaint.While this sounds like a Herculean Task if you are gettingthousands, you can use an email package such as Eudora to do thisautomatically.
You can down load this software from our web siteat: http://adv-marketing.com/business/freebie.htmAnother problem is that you can be quite sure that someone willreport you to "Spam Cop", who in turn places a complaint withyour ISP. Spam Cop may not check the validity of a complaintprior to notifying your ISP, which I feel is unconscionable ontheir part.
Unfortunately, if they do forward the complaint toyour ISP, you will have to defend yourself. That is why youshould immediately notify your ISP if this happens.
If you have acopy of the spam, be sure to send it along with your notification, and also save a copy in case it is needed later.The second major problem a spammer can cause, is to steal animage from your web site that they use in their email. If theysend their email in HTML format, and many do, they can actuallylink to an image on your web site.
They are in effect stealingyour bandwidth. Many web servers have bandwidth limits, whichlimit the amount of information you can send and receive eachmonth.
If you exceed that limit, you could be liable foradditional charges from your web space provider.If they do this to you, your only recourse is to change the nameof the image, displayed on your web site that they are stealing.Another effective step is to replace the original image that theyare using. Replace it with a notification that the sender of theemail has stolen the image from you, and advise anyone whoreceives it not to do business with them.
Once you do this,anyone who receives their spam will receive your warning.When you get down to the bottom line, even people who send outemails with forged addresses are stealing. If you receivehundreds of spam emails a day with no way to have your nameremoved from their list, they are using your resources withoutyour permission.
You then have to sort through all this "junkmail" to find your legitimate email.Theft of services is a serious problem. Unfortunately, it appearsthat the only solution will be through legislation making itillegal, and provide severe punishments for the guilty parties.
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