How can I stop spam email coming from 123howdy@bellsouth.net?

Hi jcd,


   Good day. Spam is something which bothers us all. Its simple to
prevent email coming from an email address. You were not specific
enough in your question, so if the following is not applicable, then
please ask for a clarification with the email service you use, and
your email client (if you use one).


Blocking an e-mail address in Yahoo! Mail
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/read/read-22.html


Blocking an e-mail address in Hotmail
http://help.msn.com/EN_US/data/hotmailv2_2.its51/$content$/BlockMail.htm


Blocking an e-mail address in mail.com
http://www.mail.com/templates/help/us/login_level_2_3_5.htm


Normally, web-based email services have a facility to block the e-mail
address.

For Outlook express,
To add an email address to the list of blocked senders, open a message
from the person you want to block and select Message | Block Sender...
from the menu. Outlook Express automatically adds the sender to the
list of blocked senders
A pictoral representation can be found at
http://www.scc.net/techsupport/expspam/


MS Outlook 2000
http://www.witchvox.com/protection/outlook2kfilter.html


Netscape Messenger(4.x)
http://www.snip.net/help/netscapefilter.htm


Eudora Pro 4.2 and 5.0
http://www.witchvox.com/protection/eudorafilter.html


You can also check out the guide to spam
(http://www.witchvox.com/protection/spam2.html)

I hope this answers your question. If not, then please clarify your
e-mail provider and client. I'm not happy until you are.


Cheers,
aditya2k.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by jcd-ga on 18 Jun 2002 11:23 PDT

Hi, Nice people who answered and added comments --

Please let me tell you that I had already tried some of the things you
suggest before offering to pay $20.

1.  I tried to contact bellsouth's abuse dept, but -- because I was
unable to send a copy of the "header" -- they apparently ignored me.

2.  In desperation, I spent HOURS trying to find a way to telephone
BellSouth. You would think that should be simple, but it was not. 
Every office I was able to reach just told me, "If you are not a
customer of ours we can't give you any telephone number or address."

Finally, I got a name and an address.  Here is a copy of the letter I
sent:

April 24, 2002

Mr. Ray Smitts, President
BellSouth Internet Services
1100 Ashwood Park
Atlanta, GA  30338

Dear Mr. Smitts:

I hope I have addressed you correctly.  I have spent over four hours
trying to find a way to communicate with bellsouth.net about a
spam-perpetrator known as 123howdy@bellsouth.net.

The spam he sent is so large that it hung my 1.8 ghz Dell computer
running Win2000 each time I tried to copy it into an email to send to
abuse@bellsouth.net.

In fact it’s so large that my system never finishes loading the whole
email so I can’t even print it out to send it to you.  Instead, I am
enclosing several screen prints taken at various points in the huge
missive.

Please “silence” this spam-generator.

Thank you for any help you or your staff can render.

Sincerely,


John C. Davenport

Enclosure:  screen prints from a spam originating on bellsouth.net

For the interested parties concerning my question to Google Answers: 
I've had MANY emails from this obnoxious spammer -- 14 that I have
saved in a special file.  Most of these are over 700kb and one is over
800kb!  They have been coming once a week or MORE ever since April 18,
2002.  In fact, so far this month, we have gotten one on 6-2, 6-8,
6-10, 6-12, and 6-14!

When I sent an email to abuse@bellsouth.net I got an autoresponse
telling me they can't (won't) help me unless I send them the headers. 
I can't figure out how to copy the headers.

3.  If it helps any of you to help me, I'm using MS Outlook 2002
(10.3311.3131).

4.  Here's where I bare my soul to all of you.  I don't want to just
block this guy's email (why do we assume only a guy could be so
nasty?).  I WANT TO TAKE HIM OUT!  OK, OK...just kidding, but you know
what I mean.  I want BellSouth to take away his service, etc.

5.  Of course, if somebody can coach me on how to copy the header,
I'll try to send another letter to abuse dept.

6.  I deeply appreciate the eager and helpful responses from all of
you, but I won't be really satisfied until I truly STOP this
character.

Thanks!
jcd-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by aditya2k-ga on 19 Jun 2002 05:28 PDT

I guess your clarification has already been asnwered in the comments
part.

Carnegie Mellon University's FAQ on Outlook gives a step-by-step
procedure to view headers using outlook. It can be found at
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/documentation/faq_outlook/outlookfaq.html#spamoutlook

Thank You.

Cheers,
aditya2k

All of the above is very good advice but there is one more thing you
can do:

Contact BellSouth's abuse department at abuse@bellsouth.net and make
them aware of the problem.

It is possible that whoever is sending you this spam is faking the
return address (without seeing the full headers I can't tell you one
way or the other) but if they aren't, BellSouth will do something
about it. This is a TOS (Terms of Service) violation and they take it
very seriously.

Hi there!

One more tool to add to aditya's answer:

SpamCop
http://www.spamcop.net

They offer a free spam reporting service that traces headers and
automatically submits spam reports to the ISP's abuse department.

missy-ga

If you have pop3 access to the account you can bounce the message (to
make it seem as if your email address doesn't exist) using MailWasher,
a piece of free software found at http://www.mailwasher.net It's very
simple to use.

Hope this helps,

zc-ga.

Two things I'd suggest you do:

1. If attachments are included, do not open them. 

2. Run the spam through spamcop.net, as someone else suggested.

If this deluge started suddenly, odds are it's the Klez virus, which
will automatically spoof the From: line, so the virus looks like it's
coming from an innocent party. Most real spammers won't use the same
From: line over and over, but will spoof different addresses in order
to try to trick you into reading their spam.

I've gotten several onslaughts of the Klez virus myself lately. The
spamcop utility seems to recognize it, at least, so, when you get to
the reporting addresses at the bottom of the screen, it will read
"Address from which VIRUS originated" rather than "Address from which
SPAM originated," or something like that.

And if you're using MS Outlook, make sure your security settings don't
automatically open attachments. I'm not sure how to do this, as I
don't use it myself, but look for some sort of Security option.

Good luck,
Lisa.

Usually in Outlook, you can view the header information by
right-clicking on the message in the preview screen and selecting
"Properties" or with the message open by clicking "FILE" then
"PROPERTIES" or Alt-Enter.
You'll get a pop up box, select "DETAILS" from the available tabs at
the top. There you will find the header information which you can copy
and paste in an email to Bell-South.
However, as stated already, many spammers and viruses engage in
"spoofing". Here is an article explaining spoofing:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/answerstips/story/0,24330,2566233,00.html
I would suggest tracing the IP number in the "received from" portion
of the header, usually a number in square brackets such as
[123.12.1233.12], though the number of digits in each section and in
total can vary.
You can do an IP trace on a whois database:
http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html
This will tell you who the IP number is assigned to, but doesn't
identify the individual user, just the ISP.
If you are concerned about the KLEZ virus, there is a free search and
destroy removal tool at:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.klez.gen@mm.html

Hope this helps!

One thing to add here.
Outlook express doesn't offer anything to block the sender from
sending further mails. It just send the emails from that perticular
email address or domain to deleted folder automatically in future
unlike web based mail providers liket hotmail. In case of hotmail and
other web based email services the mails from the blocked person are
bounced back to him.