anti spam letters

Here are a couple of form letters I send to people that send me unsolicited commercial email. To discover the identity of the orginal sender, I use the incredible SpamCop.

Feel free to use these verbatim or in modified form if you like. The more people out there trying to put an end to spam the better.

To the sender

Subject: Your Junk Email (Was: )


Dear Net Abuser:

I received the above unsolicited commercial email from you.

I have to pay for my email, like most people. My private email facilities
are not your advertising medium. You abused my resources and wasted my
time, which is valuable to me.

You are shifting the cost of your advertisement to your recipients, without
their permission. That's like sending your junk postal mail postage-due, or
like telemarketing collect. Or sending a junk fax--ooops, those were made
illegal in the United States (under the Federal Telephone Consumer
Protection Act of 1991). Why? Because the congress and the courts felt that
forcing the recipient to pay the cost of advertising was wrong. I agree.

Therefore, I will never do business with you or anyone associated with you.

I will also be informing your Internet Service Provider of your abuse of
resources. All legitimate ISPs prohibit this sort of abuse.

Any further communication from you will be considered harassment, and will
be dealt with accordingly.

Graham Mitchell

To the originating host

Subject: Junk Email From Your Site: [original subject goes here]


Dear Postmaster,

A user on your system has sent me (and apparently many others) the
following unsolicited commercial email. You are being contacted either
because the message originated at your site, used your SMTP mailer, has
replies directed to your site, or solicited visits to a web page hosted by
your site.

The message originated at XXXX
using SMTP server XXXX
the sender claims to be XXXX
replies directed to XXXX
removal requests are directed to XXXX
the message solicits visits to the web site at XXXX

I have to pay for my email, like most people, and I don't appreciate being
forced to pay for unsolicited commercial messages such as this. My private
email facilities are not an advertising medium for your users. This abused
my resources and wasted my time, which is valuable to me.

Even if the sender purports to honor requests to remove my address
from their unwelcome mailing list, that does not make this cost-shifting
acceptable--I did not sign up to any sort of LISTSERV or majordomo list
in the first place, nor did I request any information from this user.
It is abuse and forgery to put someone's email address on a mailing
list without their permission nor knowledge.

Likewise, if the sender's message claims that I will receive no other
messages from them, it is still completely unacceptable that I (and other
recipients) have been forced to subsidize the cost of this advertisement.
I have received nothing of value in return for this unauthorized
commercial use of my email resources.

I have emailed the apparent sender to make it clear to this user that
I will consider any further communication harassment. I respectfully
request that you, as sysadmin, take whatever steps are necessary to prevent
this from happening to me or anyone else again. No legitimate Internet
providers allow this kind of abuse from their sites.

Thanks,

Graham Mitchell
Dept. of Computer Science
Leander High School

[complete original message goes here, including headers]