Unsolicited Bulk Email

Everyone receives unsolicited email, better known as spam or UBE (Unsolictied Bulk Email).

Spammers are adept at frequently changing ISPs and forging email From addresses to cover their tracks. There are many techniques spammers use to gather email addresses — from monitoring newsgroup activity, Internet chat spaces, and web forms to mining code — that find mail to addresses on web pages. If you are an active Internet user, there is no sure way to decrease UBE.

ITS can do very little to track UBE to its source and take action against the senders because of the complexity which forged email issues create. ITS lacks the resources to investigate or otherwise track down UBE sources.
ITS — as a matter of policy and for technical reasons — does not block or filter incoming email for content.
UBE is not the same as harassing, abusive and threatening email and is handled with separate guidelines.

UBE or spam includes:

Legitimate commecial spam from major online retailers, banks, utillites, etc. These senders usually get email addresses from orders, surveys, contests and warranty registrations. These companies will also purchase from, sell to, or share email lists with other companies that gather email addresses. A recent study noted that most legitimate companies will stop sending spam if you follow the remove instructions.
419 Scam. 419 refers to the fraud section of the Nigerian legal code. These spam messages offer the recipient a percentage of a large sum of money for helping the sender transfer funds out of a west African country. Sample text of a 419 e-mail. For additional information about the 419 Scam, please see The 419 Coalition Website.
Sexually explicit spam.
Miscellaneous advertising and other spam.

What you can do about spam:

Delete.
Be discrete when using your email address online, e.g., forms, surveys, contests, chat spaces, newgroups, etc. Or, consider a free-email account with Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, etc. for online use.
Filter your INBOX. Email programs like Mulberry 2.2 feature a filter process that will automatically move and delete spam from the INBOX. This function relies on a configuration you set up, based on the sender's email address or a subject line. See the sample instructions for setting up a filter that flags specific email for deletion.
See the following UNM UBE and NON-UNM UBE sections for additional information.

UBE is unfoturnately an inescapable feature of the Internet. Following the suggestions here can greatly reduce the amount of spam you receive. ITS understands that most people find unsolictited email annoying and offensive and appreciates your understanding while we work on methods to avoid spam without limiting email content.

UNM UBE

UNM generates bulk email to distribute information to the University community via lists of students, staff and faculty.

If you want to unsubscribe from a UNM mailing list you did not subscribe to, send an email to the listserv, leave the Subject line blank, and type signoff listservname (where listservname is the name of the list, e.g., UNM-CONSTRUCTION-ALERTS-L) as the message.

Be aware that in some cases, a listserv subscription is mandatory. Some departments or classes may require subscription to a particular listserv, and many mandatory listservs don't allow one to unsubscribe.

If your attempt to signoff a non-mandatory UNM listserv is unsuccessful, contact the ITS Support Center, 277-4848.

NON-UNM UBE

Spammers will often remove names of people who have filed a complaint with the originating organization's postmaster. DO NOT correspond directly with the spammer, and DO NOT respond to remove instructions in spam -mail. Following remove instructions simply confirms that the (your) email address is valid and active.

While ITS consultants cannot help you with NON-UNM UBE, the consultants do recommend using an automated service provided by Spamcop.

Go to spamcop.net. Follow the Reporting and Filtering Options link, then click Reporting only. You will need to register with spamcop to use their service. Read the information at the Reporting only page and follow any links as necessary for additional information.

If you would rather not use the service provided by spamcop, you can attempt to resolve your UBE problem by filing a complaint with the oganization(s) the UBE was routed through.

To determine the organization(s) the email was routed through, expand the email header.

To expand the e-mail header in Mulberry, click the icon just right of the Parts box while viewing the message.

To expand the header in PINE, press the <H> key while viewing the message.

The following example is from the top of an expanded header to the From line (from the top of the header to the line preceeding the Subject line). Look for multiple Received lines, in those lines look for organizations (the mail was routed through these).
Politely notify the organization(s) that you did not subscribe to the list and do not wish to receive further email, by forwarding the spam email to the organizations found in the header via postmaster@ and abuse@. Remember to copy (CC) the message to yourself.

In the above example, the spam would be forwarded to the four highlighted organizations, e.g., postmaster@pinon.com, abuse@pinon.com, postmaster@mail-now.com, abuse@mail-now.com, etc.