Open Door Networks
The Macintosh AFN Specialists
Spam and Related Issues
Dealing with spam effectively
No matter what you and we do, you're going to receive some quantity of spam. How you deal with the spam you get is important. Generally (but see the next paragraph), don't reply to spam. The return addresses are usually not valid addresses, but even if they are, replying to them lets the spammer know that your address is a valid, working email address. The less information you give them, directly or indirectly, the better.
Having said this, it's important to distinguish between spam and solicitations that you've signed up for, either deliberately (and possibly forgotten about) or unwittingly. Often, retailers will have a "Notify me of new products" check box on the page where you create your account, and often the checkbox will be checked by default. If you don't uncheck the box, you will receive notices from the retailer. These are not really spam, but may appear at first to be so. If you get email that you don't want, from a domain name or company you recognize as someone you may have done business with, look in the body of the message for information on how to unsubscribe.
If you want to take action against a spammer, there are a couple of things you can do. First, if the message has an 800 number, call it. This may be useful in several ways
Second, you can report spammers to various authorities. Because of the sheer volume of spam today, it's probably best to only report spams that are particularly indecent, disturbing, frequent, etc. Two large agencies are: