What Can You Do To Help?

"I am so sick and tired of getting x-rated e-mail I don't know where to put myself! I am trying to protect my 8 year old son from the pornography on the Internet. It's one thing to make the choice to visit one of these sites, but when they send e-mail with a link and all you have to do is click on it, they are invading my home. I have had enough!!! Please tell me how I can help stop this invasion of our lives and our children's lives."

Here are some suggestions that may be able to help you:

"Unsolicited commercial e-mail" (UCE) is informally know as "spam," and if it’s pornographic with links to pornographic Web sites—it’s called "porn spam."

"Spam" can be about anything, the suggestions here deal with all kinds unsolicited commercial e-mail, not just "porn spam." But first some basic tips:

1. If you’ been "spammed" by someone you don’t know, do not reply to the sender or follow any "removal instructions" which might be included. Why Not? Because if you " unsubscribe," you’re telling the sender that your e-mail address is working, and then they generally turn around and sell your address to other people who spam.

If you receive porn spam, complain to your United States Attorney. Don’t accuse anyone of a crime. However, ask your U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate the porn spam as a possible violation of the Federal Obscenity Laws that prohibit the use of computers to transmit obscene material (18 USC 1462 and 1465).

2. Be sure to Complain to your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

3. Complain to the sender’s Internet Service Provider. Most ISP administrators are responsible and don’t want their computers used for spamming. Most ISPs have policies prohibiting spamming. Once they are notified that a user has been abusing their account, many ISPs will shut down the offender.

How do you find out who to contact? In the body of the spam message, there are almost always instructions for how the sender wants you to respond to the message. Often they will want you to visit a web site or send mail to an email address. This address will almost always be phony. Look for the "domain name" in the phony address. This is the part after the @ sign of an email address or the last part of the server name in a URL (Internet address, "Uniform Resource Locator"). For example, in the URL of, http://www.phony.com/onepage.html, the domain is simple "phony.com" Then you need to track down the administrator of that domain. How? If the domain is in the ".com," ".org," ".net," or ".edu" domains, you can find the administrative contact through InterNIC, the official registrant of names in those top-level domains (TLDs). You can go directly to the Web site for the InterNIC Directory and look up the administrative contact there.

Once you’ve tracked down the administrator through the InterNIC Directory, e-mail the message in its entirety to the person listed as the administrative contact. Tell them that you’ve been "spammed." The administrator may have further requirements, but this is the person or group you want to be in contact with. An "entire message" must be complete with the "headers." How do you get the "headers?" They are typically hidden in e-mail messages, but your e-mail software can be switched to "view full headers." The procedure differs in different e-mail programs In Microsoft Outlook, for example, you open or highlight a message, pull down the "File" menu, go down to "Properties," then click the tab that says "Internet."