Anti-Spammer Tools

Here are some great tools to help you find the source of unsolicited e-mails. After you dig out IP addresses and web servers from the e-mail source, you can use these tools to find out who's behind them and send complaints to their ISP. Also included are various e-mail addresses for reporting to government agencies.

Note: Be very picky about to whom you send complaints! ISP's and agencies don't look kindly upon misdirected or irrelevant complaints.

Sam Spade has a lot of useful tools for tracing spam. There's even a JavaScript-safe browser to defeat some of the nastier spammer tricks.

Network Tools, run by consumer.net, allows you to get complete information on an Internet server. Enter a server name (like www.tripod.com) or an IP address (like 209.202.196.150) into the Network Tools box and hit the return key. First it will trace the route from your system to the server over the Internet. Then it will look up the DNS server location. Finally it will look up the registration information. This is useful for finding who owns a web site.

IP Lookup will tell Network Tools to simply look up who owns the IP address. If you get a general registry entry such as RIPE or APNIC, then change the "Whois Server" in the form to the appropriate registry, click the "Network Lookup" radio button, and try again. This is useful for finding out where an e-mail really came from.

The North American Numbering Plan Administration, or NANPA, manages telephone number assignments. You can find out which telephone company is responsible for serving any telephone number, and the state where that number resides. Some spam only provides a telephone number. You can use this information to complain to the telephone company involved.

Use the provided e-mail addresses to Report unsolicited advertisements to the respective government agencies. Illegal advertisements include fraudulent solicitations, pyramid schemes, illegal products and services, and child pornography.

This section is also set up as a spammer "honey pot" to attract their harvesting engines. Since these e-mail addresses are exposed publicly, the spammers may pick them up and start sending them their junk. These are not addresses to which the spammers want to send or even should send ads.