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The purpose of this website is to help AOL'ers learn how to seek out spammers and cancel their accounts. I refuse to be chased off of AOL by spammers. I'd rather chase THEM off of THEIR ISPs instead. ¬¿¬

IMPORTANT If you've recently received a spam advertising this website trying to look like a porno ad, please click here to find out what is going on.

So, why can't you e-mail me? The reason is quite simple: I fly right in the faces of these spammers. Most times, the address will be some kind of auto-bot putting me on more and more mailing lists. Rather than try to fight self-generated spam, I simply whitelist my account. Also, I WANT spammers to do their complaining about me in public. I also whitelist this account and let spammers know it, so they don't bother listing me with phony subscriptions, as I've found out they sometimes do.

A copy of each complaint is posted in news.admin.net-abuse.sightings. Responding to that copy will result in that response being posted in n.a.n-a.email. This is also done in case I get an analysis of a header reading incorrect. I feel it's important to get boths sides of a story. Unfortunately, I can only put 100 entries into my whitelist (AOL's limitation, not mine). If it were possible to put more in there, I would, since there are a lot of "white hats" that SHOULD be included in that list.

I handle spam complaints for 4 other screen names under me. Those addresses belong to family and friends. One of those family members dared to complain to a spammer directly. Next day, he got mailbombed. My landlady and parents are not as computer-savvy as I am, so they forward their spam to me, and I do the bitching.

For those of you who wish to contact me, I practically live in the newsgroup called news.admin.net-abuse.email. Ask a question there, and I'll see it, and probably be one of the people answering you. I also hang out in the internal forums where you first saw my postings, and I read those groups daily. It's also a great newsgroup to learn from, since most of the people there 1) are ISP admins and know the system well, and 2) are anti-spam with a vengeance. Post a request for help regarding a spam, where it came from, who to complain to, with full headers, and they'll help you figure it out. They're always glad to have a new spam-fighter come on board.

Over the past couple of months, I've come up with a few good counter-arguments to use when spammers shoot back what they think is a pretty good argument. Feel free to click on the links below and use them freely.

Anti-spam counter-arguments - use these when spammers give you "so what's the big deal?" type of counter-argument:

IF they don't understand the advertising thing, go here.
If they don't understand why it's bad for the internet, go here.
If they equate spam with commercial advertising, go here.

With thousands of companies in the USA alone, how long would the net last if spamming were legal? For a possible scenerio of would could actually happen, click here.

Click HERE for some instructions on how to read AOL headers.

Lots of times, spams will point to a site on free hosting sites such as xoom.com, angelfire.com, freeyellow.com, etc. That's not actually the target. Most of those sites are set up with a banner (or multiple banners) that they want you to click on. While they might take you to a porno website, clicking on the banner wins the spammer around 3 to 5¢ which is what they're after. Other times, the page is set up so that the actual target site is hidden behind the "front page". This is referred to as a "click-through". Just click here for some instructions on how to track them right to the source, in most cases!