What to do against Spam email

1. Protect your email address from web bots

This means, don't put any mailto: links on you home page, and don't write
your email in a machine readable format. If you still want people to be able
to get your email, you could do something like what I do at the bottom of my
own home page.

2. To reply or not to reply?

Good question. A reply to spam email may be used by some outfits as a
verification that your address is indeed "alive". After which they can
your address to others as a verified account-which is a lot more valuable
to spammers than harvested addresses. For this reason, my policy nowadays
is to NOT send a reply.

If you really *want* to send a reply, you can always...

Send a "Notification and Offer":

Notification and Offer

I do not want to receive uninvited solicitations by email (``Junk Email''). 
I am unwilling to receive Junk Email freely because it costs me time
and money. If you send me any Junk Email other than on the terms of the
offer set out in the following nine points, I will take this to mean
that you plan to use what I offered you without paying for it. If you
ever try to do this I reserve my right to take any action available to me
without further reference to you. Actions available to me include taking
proceedings against you for negligence or breach of contract, which may
result in substantial damages being awarded against you by a court. The
unauthorized use of my computing facilities may even be a crime.

   1.I offer to receive all further email from you on the terms set out
     below. If you send me any solicitation by email without my
     express prior written consent this will be taken as your
     acceptance of this offer. 

   2.For the purposes of points 3 and 4, you will be taken to have sent
     any email sent by any entity apparently associated with you for
     the purpose of sending email solicitations. 

   3.You must pay me ten US dollars for each such item of email that
     you send me. 

   4.You must pay me ten US dollars for each copy of each email
     solicitation that you send to anybody or any email address
     referred to below, even if you don't send a copy to me. You may
     also have to pay other persons as well if they have sent you a
     similar offer. 

   5.I may join with any of those persons for the purpose of efficiently
     collecting your payments. 

   6.You must mail payment by certified check to me within five
     working days of the transmission of the email. If you do not know
     where to send payment, you must state this in the email and give
     me an easy way to tell you. 

   7.Each email item must be uniquely identified, and each payment
     must clearly identify the relevant item or items. 

   8.You must tell me your name and full business and residential
     addresses in each email message. 

   9.I may vary the terms of or terminate this offer at any time (even
     after you have accepted it). Any new terms will apply to all email
     you send after you have been notified of a variation.

Identification

2. Send a complaint to root, postmaster and abuse

   I just received the following spam email. Please take the appropriate
   steps to make sure this does not happen again.


   Patrik D'haeseleer

3. For Ponzi, pyramid schemes, or other scams, contact:

• The Federal trade Commission (FTC): uce@ftc.gov
• The National Fraud Information Center
• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): enforcement@sec.gov