Theft of Services

Spammers will use many tricks in their effort to "ply their
wares". One of the most common is to use someone else's email
address as their return address. Another is to link to images
contained in their email, which are on your web site, illegally
using your bandwidth.

Using a stolen email address as their return address, is becoming
quite common, as some Internet Service Providers are checking to
ensure that the sending address is valid before relaying the
message. They have started doing this due to the "raft of
complaints" received about mail going out with a phony return
address.

The consequences of this can be quite far reaching for the person
whose address has been stolen. This happened to me late last
year. It was a porno ad that was sent out bearing my return
address. I got over 7,000 requests to remove their name from my
mailing list in a 3 day period. Many were quite nasty,
threatening all sorts of things. I called "At Home", who provides
my cable service, to see if there was anything I could do about
it. Their advice was to use a different email address.

Fortunately it was an address that I don't use for business, and
if it was, it would have been far more serious. The real problem
here is not that your ISP will shut you down for spamming, as it
is fairly simple to find out that you didn't send it, regardless
of the return address.

There are three potential problems however, that you may have to
deal with.

The first is the number of "bounces" (bad email addresses that
cannot be delivered). Many ISP's program their servers to shut
down an email account that is getting a large number of bounces,
as it is one of the symptoms of a denial of service attack. If
your bounces exceed a certain number - usually around 500, your
web server may automatically go into a "self protect" mode and
shut down your email address.

If you start receiving many bounce notifications, immediately
notify your ISP of the problem, telling them that someone has
illegally used your return address. If it was an email address
that you use for business, the bad press that you get can be
devastating. You should write a short email explaining what had
happened, and send it to everyone who sends you a complaint.
While this sounds like a Herculean Task if you are getting
thousands, you can use an email package such as Eudora to do this
automatically. You can down load this software from our web site
at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/freebie.htm

Another problem is that you can be quite sure that someone will
report you to "Spam Cop", who in turn places a complaint with
your ISP. Spam Cop may not check the validity of a complaint
prior to notifying your ISP, which I feel is unconscionable on
their part. Unfortunately, if they do forward the complaint to
your ISP, you will have to defend yourself. That is why you
should immediately notify your ISP if this happens. If you have a
copy 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 an
image from your web site that they use in their email. If they
send their email in HTML format, and many do, they can actually
link to an image on your web site. They are in effect stealing
your bandwidth. Many web servers have bandwidth limits, which
limit the amount of information you can send and receive each
month. If you exceed that limit, you could be liable for
additional charges from your web space provider.

If they do this to you, your only recourse is to change the name
of the image, displayed on your web site that they are stealing.
Another effective step is to replace the original image that they
are using. Replace it with a notification that the sender of the
email has stolen the image from you, and advise anyone who
receives 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 out
emails with forged addresses are stealing. If you receive
hundreds of spam emails a day with no way to have your name
removed from their list, they are using your resources without
your permission. You then have to sort through all this "junk
mail" to find your legitimate email.

Theft of services is a serious problem. Unfortunately, it appears
that the only solution will be through legislation making it
illegal, and provide severe punishments for the guilty parties.