IP Header information

I thought I'd take a moment to forward along proof that trying to stop the spammers does work.

History: I (like many) receive spam (or unwanted email). The process to report these isn't very clear or published at places easily found. The way to do it is to merely look at the headers, determine the originating IP, resolve this IP via the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN.net), then depending on the originating geographical area (http://www.montney.com/nic.htm), you can resolve from there to RIPE, LACNIC, etc. Once you get to that level, you'll find an actual email to return the original email to (with a copy of the actual inbound header). An example would be to look at the original email (copied below) and you'll see that it originated from IP 12.223.147.232 which resolves via arin.net as the Insight Communications Company. When you click to that company name (because of the IP - http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=!%20NET-12-223-144-0-1), you'll see it resolves to AT&T. They have a specific address for abuse (abuse@att.net). I also sent it to abuse@tiscali.co.uk because the originator's email address was from that domain (well, it was actually from netscape.net but had a reply to address back to the tiscali.co.uk domain).

What I want to show here (other than the actual instructions) is that from their response, you'll see that this does work (yes, even across international boundaries). Is it a little work, yes, but not really in the bigger scheme of things (well, my opinion).

Bottom line: If we all do our part, I think we can eventually reduce the amount of garbage we all get. Especially these kinds of scams.

If this is helpful to you, please feel free to forward along to anyone else. As always, should you have any questions, please let me know at my Guestbook.

Original email


---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: abuse-various@uk.tiscali.com
To: montney.com
Sent: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:28:25 +0000
Subject: Your Support Ticket No 30511-0

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for bringing a 419 abuser to our attention.

We have tracked the user down and have flagged the mailbox for closure and rendered the account unusable.

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention and for helping us to stamp out these spammers.

Regards,
Tiscali AUP Team
abuse@uk.tiscali.com


-----Your Message----- What I sent

From: Frederick C. Montney III montney.com
To: SPAM, Recycle spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com
SPAM, Gov uce@ftc.gov
abuse@att.net
abuse@tiscali.co.uk
abuse@netscape.net
Subject: Fw: assist us
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:05:51 -0500


Header copied below

X-POP3-Rcpt: montney.com
Received: from bx525 (12-223-147-232.client.insightbb.com [12.223.147.232]) by host.christianwebhost.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i0OKjfDK002293 for montney.com; Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:45:42 -0500
Message-Id: <200401242045.i0OKjfDK002293@host.christianwebhost.com>
From: kenneth masuku (kennethmasuku7@netscape.net)
Subject: assist us
To: montney.com
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="US-ASCII"
Reply-To: kennethmasuku7@tiscali.co.uk
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:45:41 +0000
X-Priority: 3


----- Original Message ----- Original email

From: kenneth masuku kennethmasuku7@netscape.net
To: montney.com
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 3:45 PM
Subject: assist us

Dear friend,

I wish to begin by way of introduction. I am Kenneth Masuku, the first and only surviving son of late Marc Masuku one of the foremost and rich black farmers in Zimbabwe recently murdered in the land dispute in my country. Before the death of my father, he had given me the certificate of deposite he used to deposit the sum of US$30.5 million (Thirty Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) in one of the private security companies in Europe, as family valuables, when he realized the looming dangers in Zimbabwe.

This amount was meant for the purchase of new machineries and chemicals for the farms and also for the establishment of new farms in Swaziland.This land dispute started when President Robert Mugabe introduced a new land reform, which was particularly targeted at the rich white farmers and a few black farmers (my father included). This resulted in the gruesome killing of rich farmers (mainly whites) and the unlawful possession of their properties by Mugabe's war veterans, under the disguise of fighting for the interest of the country. It is against this background that I fled the country with my family, to the Netherlands where we are currently seeking asylum.

I have decided to seek foreign assistance, as the Netherlands law prohibits asylum seekers from operating bank accounts or involve in financial transaction of any kind, hence this letter to you. All I need is your trustworthiness to be able to entrust the above said amount and help me with investment opportunities. My family's survival depends on this money as we have virtually lost all our assets.

There are two options, firstly, you can choose to accept 15% of the total amount for your assistance or go into partnership for the proper investment of the money in your country.We shall discuss in detail the modalities involved if you can reach me via this telephone numbers:0031647988965 or via my confidential email account.

I await your reply through the above media, while I implore you to maintain the absolute secrecy required to ensure a safe and hitch free transaction.

I shall furnish you with more details on request.

Yours truly,
Kenneth Masuku

N.B.
My confidential email account: kennethmasuku7@tiscali.co.uk
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