unsolicited emails -- what to do?

[Heinrich C. Kuhn]

On Fri, Jun 27, 1997 4:06 PM -0700 "Laura Guy" <guy at ssc.wisc.edu> wrote: 
[...]
> > lately we've been getting deluged with tens of emails a day
> > from people who've evidently found this address and are using
> > it for all sorts of obnoxious things.
> > 
> > anybody have any ideas what to do?  do i just have to put up with
> > it?

I've not yet found a way to avoid being sent junk. But I
try to avoid receiving it more than once from the same
address. I normally check with "nslookup" for the institution
doing the nameservice for the offender's site, and then I
send a standard reply both to the offender and to *all*
"relevant" postmasters. Up to now I have received some
apologies, some "we made our services unavailiable to
the offender"-messages by postmasters, and up to now no
second try from anybody. My standard text runs:

<QUOTE>
Dear Madam, dear Sir,

   the text quoted below arrived in my mailbox.
It is UNSOLLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL. It arrived
in my mailbox via the German WiN (research net-
work). Using this network for sending unsollicited
commercial email is to all my knowledge contrary
to the rules of this network. And: sending un- 
sollicited commercial email is probably illegal
according to German law. Please refrain
in future from any such missuse of our ressources. 
In case you should repeat such an infringement of 
rules we will have to consider legal and/or 
technical action.

It may be, that you are innocent, that somebody
else did send fakemale in your name. In that
case you might want to consider acting against
the faker. To facilitate this I enclude a copy
of the headers of the mail arrived here.

<HEADERS>

</HEADERS>

I'm Cc-ing this mail to all approopriate postmasters,
so that they can take action as well.

Regards

Heinrich C. Kuhn
</QUOTE>

HTH

Heinrich C. Kuhn
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