Pest e-mail I need to nail - "jdf007@163.com" - can you trace the
sender ???? I am being inundated by rubbish from this person (I
believe I know who it is) and if I can "nail" them, I can inform them
I know "their game".

---

Request for Question Clarification by sycophant-ga on 18 Jan 2003 17:53 PST

The domain name 163.com is registered to a Chinese address, you can
find out more details yourself by using a service like <a
href="http://www.allwhois.com/">Allwhois.com</a>. However, actually
locating the individual behind the address is more or less impossible
given the nature of email. It is quite likely the address is forged.
If you post the headers to one or more of these nuisance emails, I can
help you find details of who you may want to lay complaints with.

Regards, sycophant-ga

Hi tupelo,

You're not the only one being pestered by mail originating from
163.com.  A quick search reveals that 163.com is a known spam
transmitter.

They are on domain blacklists as a major source of spam:

Domain Blacklist - Ultradesign Xtreme Network
http://www.ultradesign.com/support/antispam.html

Van Rameselaar Info Tech Domain Blacklist
http://www.vr-it.com/emailpolicy.php

WhispersOnline Blacklist
http://www.cyberpathway.com/whispers/spam.htm

Dragnet's Spammer Database
http://abuse.dragnet.com.au/spam_database.php

...are displayed on a Chinese "Spam Exhibit" (viewed through Google's
cache):

we_hate_spammers
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2EF32523

...and are displayed as junk mailers in the hopes that they spam
themselves:

All About Spam
http://www.2fords.net/2fordsnfo/spam.html

Spamerang - Spam The Spammers Back!
http://www.spamerang.net/thelist/

As sycophant-ga noted, you're not going to have a lot of luck tracing
the mail back to a single individual.  Though it is entirely possible
that the mail is forged, the more likely answer is that you're being
hounded by a known spamhaus.  No fun.

You can fight back, though.  In addition to the most excellent
resource cited by highroute-ga in his comment below, SpamCop:

Julian Haight's Spam Cop
http://spamcop.net

...which allows you to trace spam mail to its source *and* have spam
complaints automatically sent to the relevant abuse departments on
your behalf, there are a number of other anti-spam resources available
to you:

Reading E-Mail Headers 
http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers/headers.html 

UXN Spam Combat 
http://combat.uxn.com/tracing.html 

Mail Abuse Prevention Systems 
http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/notifyfaq.html 
 
Fight Spam On The Internet 
http://spam.abuse.net/ 
 
The Email Abuse FAQ 
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html 
 
SpamLinks 
http://www.geocities.com/spamresources/spamlinks.htm 

To spare yourself the inconvenience of further spam from this domain,
you'll likely want to set filters in your e-mail client to trash any
mail from 163.com.  You don't specify which e-mail client you use, so
it's rather difficult to help you with that right at the moment.  If
you'll tell me which client you're using, I'll be happy to explain how
to set filters.

I hope this information is helpful to you.  If you require further
assistance, please don't hesitate to ask for clarification.  I'll be
glad to help you.

--Missy

Search terms: [ "163.com" spam ], [ "163.com" spam blacklists ], and
bookmarked anti-spam resources.

Could not hope for a more thorough research and promptness !!!! Thanks
x 1,000. I will return !!!!

sycophant-ga is correct in that the sender email address on such a
message often belongs to no person but rather to a commercial
operation that sends out millions of commercial email messages at a
time, with meaningless or even forged return addresses. If the
"rubbish" you are receiving is indeed "spam", unsolicited commercial
email, you can report it using SpamCop, a service that I use and find
useful:
  http://spamcop.net/

That service requires you to register, and asks you to subscribe for a
fee, but you can use its spam-reporting services at no charge. It will
use the message headers to track down carefully what CAN be known
about those responsible for the message and send a complaint to the
responsible parties. Most often this has no effect other than to make
you feel a little better, but sometimes it results in an offender
being identified and having its account canceled. (The offender then
moves to a more compliant provider and is back in business.)

In addition, you may be able to set a control in your email software
or at your mail service provider to block all future email from a
given email address.