Beginners Step by Step Guide to dealing with Spam and Abusive Emails
Steve Blake
November 2008
Contact for assistance:
smb@digitalscotland.co.ukReaders of this tutorial will agree that the leak and publication, on the Internet, of a recent BNP membership list can only be described as one of the most disgraceful acts perpetrated against a legitimate political party in recent times.
That one act has placed at risk the jobs, livelihoods and physical well-being of many on that list. The leak can only serve the interests of the State – the Labour regime which would, if it could, round up every single BNP member, supporter and voter and pack us off to re-education camps to purge the supposed “racism” that lurks in every one of us, in the same way millions of dissidents were packed off to Siberian gulags during the terrors of Stalin’s regime.
I am shocked but not surprised that to learn that BNP HQ has not lifted a finger to help the ordinary activist and member who finds himself/herself on the receiving end of abusive telephone calls or now finds oneself the recipient of large amounts of spam. The current leadership seems wallowing in how much money and publicity has been generated from the national coverage of the debacle. This fact sheet is designed to help address the shortcomings from Central Office and to provide some help to those on the list who are now receiving both abusive emails and spam.
Don’t panic
There are others in the movement who are better prepared and far more knowledgeable in giving advice about one’s own personal security; most security measures boil down to plain commonsense. Seek advice from your local crime prevention panel. Senior citizens should ask for help from Help the Aged and Age Concern who can supply and fit additional security locks and chains to doors.
Don’t spend time worrying needlessly. Hundreds, if not thousands of people on that list have stood as candidates and election agents in recent years; reprisals have been rare. In addition the BNP has a number of councillors who represent wards existing cheek by jowl with wards populated largely by Muslims. I am not aware of any incidents where BNP councillors, who are very much in the public domain in these areas, have been attacked or harmed.
Purpose
This fact sheet is designed to help members and others on that list deal with email communications, threats and spam.
Threatening emails
A. If you receive an email which makes a direct or indirect threat or contains material you consider to be offensive and racist abuse (“white trash” etc) you should keep the message. Emails are traceable and if anyone is stupid enough to make a threat via email they should be punished for their stupidity as well as their criminality.
1. Do not delete the message.
2. Print a copy of the message.
3. Have a look at the email address used to send the message. Some people are stupid enough to use their own work account or school/college account. This is a dead giveaway and easily dealt
with.
4. Access what is known as the header and when you have that print a copy of the header. It is this header which contains the vital clues about the origin of the email message.
5. To view the header in Outlook Express (Windows Mail in Vista) take the following steps:
a. Double –click on the offending message which is in your inbox.
b. A new window opens, click on File on drop down menu, then click on Properties.
c. Click on the tab marked “Details”. In the window you will see what might appear to be gobble-de-gook but is in fact a list of information which allows a trained eye to determine the source of the message. In many cases it doesn’t point directly to an individual person but will give information on the network which was used to send the threatening message – it may be a school, university, government agency or an Internet Service Provider (ISP).
d. Next click on Message Source button. A separate window opens which should have something like “Return-Path:
as the top line.
e. You want to copy all this information by pressing Ctrl key (lower left on keyboard) and the A key at the same time. Crtl-A highlights all the characters in that window. Next press Ctrl-C (that’s the Control key and the letter C) to copy the text to the computer’s memory.
f. Then open up your word processing application – MS Word for example. Paste this by pressing Ctrl-V and the text will be pasted into that document.
g. Print and save the document to your hard drive.
6. You can now do one of two things. First if you can see that the message comes from a recognisable institution such as a university (in the UK almost all colleges and universities will have email addresses in a format john.public@xyz.ac.uk or student123@psychology.xyz.ac.uk). Find the university’s web site which will be www.xyz.ac.uk and find the details of the Head of the
IT dept or just the main switchboard number and ask to speak to Head of IT. Although he may not be responsible for discipline he/she is the first port of call and will be able to identify the individual responsible. Likewise if it is a local council which will have the format john.public@xyz.gov.uk find the agency/department or local authority website.
7. If you cannot locate an obvious source or the message comes from a Hotmail account or Yahoo account and you are worried/offended by its contents take the message and the printed header to your local police and ask to make a complaint. In addition each ISP has its own abuse procedure, look it up and submit a complaint in the format described.
Dealing with Spam
B. If you are getting floods of messages from banks inviting you to verify your online bank accounts, buy pharmaceuticals, letters claiming to be the lawyers acting on behalf of Nigerian millionaires or African princes in exile you could just delete them. If however you are receiving many more than usual and it is wasting your time, here is how to fight back.
1. Some basic rules in dealing with Spam – NEVER EVER REPLY!
Spam emails will almost always invite you to unsubscribe from their mailing list. This is a way for the senders to confirm your email address is real. It will offer a link, or it will say something like 'Reply to this email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject', never do it.
2. Make sure you have a spam filter – users of Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and the other larger on line email systems have some inbuilt protection from the worst spam. If you are using Outlook Express (Windows Mail in Vista) you can set up “message rules” to help deal with Spam and this gives you a good degree of control.
3. Message Rules are located under Tools. Click on it and now select Message Rules and Mail – see image below if you are having difficulties.
4. Assuming you don't have any rules already defined, you should see the New Mail Rule window (see image below). This window consists of four boxes, the first is for Conditions, the second for Actions, the third for Description and the fourth for the Name. This is where you would be selecting one or more conditions and actions and specifying details for creating a message rule.
5. Message Rule Conditions - There are a total of 12 Conditions and you need to select one or more to create a message rule in Outlook Express. They are as follows and most of them are pretty straightforward. The most useful ones for dealing with spam are as follows:
• Where the Subject line contains specific words Filter email on the if certain words are found in the email subject line.
• Where the message body contains specific words Similar to above but scans the entire email message - email contents
6. Different Actions you can set up when creating message rules. Just like Conditions, you can select one or more of the Actions when creating your message rule. The most powerful action in dealing with spam is the following:
• Delete it from server
This prevents spam from reaching your computer... the email is deleted at the server.
7. Email message Rule Description - When creating message rules, the details of your conditions and actions are defined in the Rule Description box. Click on the hyperlink (in blue) e.g. contains
specific words. Here you enter the words you want to filter. Let’s say you are getting Spam which says “Online Security Notification” in the subject heading. Add the phrase in the dialogue box and then click Add. You will see it in the box below the dialogue box headed “Words”. Add another word or phrase – “Viagra” Add and continue the process. A lot of spam is about online
pharmaceuticals; “blue pill”, “levitra”, “cialis” are three other words you might wish to add.
8. Editing messages rules is easy. If after a few days you have successfully filtered out those emails but are getting spam messages which have the word “porn” in the subject heading you
can edit your message rule. Here’s how. Tools/Message Rules. If you just have the one message rule you will see that you can edit it by clicking on the blue text (hyperlink) in the box headed Rule description. Type in a specific word or phrase and click on Add.
Continue adding individual words and phrases. Click on OK to close the message rule window.
Worst case scenario
As a final measure if the spam filter provided by your ISP and your own message rules are not effective, a simple and often free step is to change your public email address. Let everyone you know and trust in your address book you have changed address and keep both addresses going for say a fortnight and then cease using the address which continues to receive the flood of spam.
How to Report SPAM emails in the United Kingdom
In the UK you have the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2003/20032426.htm
To report SPAM emails that have originated from the UK you can fill out a complaint form, this is a Microsoft Word document which you can find here:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/privacy_and_electronic/forms/pecr_complaints_form.doc
For more on SPAM emails in the UK visit the Information Commissioner's website.:
http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=5801
