We've covered a bit of what not to do when you get spam previously--don't click the links. Today, let's talk about what you should do when you receive spam.

Most of the time, just deleting it is probably the best thing to do--don't let other people waste your time. But sometimes, you may want to strike back. I, when I receive a so-called "Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud" solicitation in particular, like to take action instead of just deleting. The email contains an email address at which you are requested to contact the sender, usually a Hotmail, Yahoo! or other free email account. One thing you can do is forward the email to abuse@hotmail.com, abuse@yahoo.com, etc. Send it to abuse@ the domain name of their email address. The administrators of their email host will look into it, and when they're convinced the address is used for scamming, close the account.

A few points worth noting if you're going to do this:

  • Forward the email as soon as you receive it--the quicker the better. Within a few days, it's likely that someone else will have taken care of it and the account will be closed. But by that time, another victim may already have been sucked in (and given a different email address with which to continue correspondence). Help others out by acting quickly.
  • Forward all of the email headers in the message you received. To do this, you may have to click forward, and then go back to the original message, select the "display all email headers" or similar command for your email client, and copy and paste them to the forwarded email. The more information you can give to the administrators of the mail server the better.
  • The message may have been sent from one email address, but ask you to respond to a different address. Be sure to report both addresses (which may be at different hosts).