What is spam you ask?  SPAM is generally unsolicited commercial email.  That's a pretty wide swath to paint, but I consider xxx, buy this, make money fast, etc, spam email.  If I didn't ask for information to be sent to me, it's spam and will be dealt with as such. 

What can you do about SPAM?  Well, you can do what I did to begin with and just delete it and ignore it, or you can take action.  The first action you never want to take is to follow the instructions in spam email and use the "remove" option.  That let's the spammer know they have reached a valid email and they will continue to use it.

You want to view the email with full headers.  You will have to look at your particular email clients information/instructions to find out how to do that.  When you report email abuse you must forward the email with the full headers.  That proves to whomever you forward the email to where it originated from.   Sometimes really crafty spammers can fake the headers.  There is a way to find out where the mail originated from anyway.  This does take time and you must be committed to follow through.  That was one of my New Years Resolutions.  I'm gonna fight SPAM with a vengence this year and forever forward.

When you see the full headers there are several things you can do to be sure you are forwarding your mail to the correct reporting authority.   The first thing I do is go here:

http://www.cse.bris.ac.uk/comms/ccrjh/nlu.html

The above url is a Name Server Lookup.  In the mail header you will see IP address and a from email address.  The first thing I type in and search is the email address, everything that comes after the @ sign.  For instance if the email says it came from   joespam@spammercentral.com , I would type spammercentral.com into the search box and click on the "ANY" option in the options box below the search box.  The page that returns the results will either tell you the main server or no results.  If it returns a server, I will visit that server and find out the proper reporting authority to forward the mail to.  If however, the results come back with a can't find message I have to go visit another page and find a reporting authority. 

Generally in the mail header that you are looking at from the email you received, there will also be IP #'s.  They have a series of four groups of numbers separated by a "."  If you look right after the "Received:From" section in the full header you will see one and maybe two of these numbers.  If you have a program link Ping Plotter (15.00) or TJ Ping (free) you can trace the route of the email and find out where it originates from.

Type in one of those IP numbers and see what results you get.  The last one I did gave these results:

The very last listing is where I want to visit to find out who to report to.  As you can see at the top of the report, this email address went through a lot of hops to get to me.  When I used the Name Server Lookup for this particular email, I got a no such server return.  That is what makes the above Trace utility so valuable.  If the header is faked, you can still find the culprits at the source.  So, I visited popsite.net and found who spam email or abuse reports were to be sent and I forwarded that mail there.  I generally have very good luck with ISP's and reports made about abuse.  If I don't feel I got satisfactory results, meaning I get more spam from the same person, then I will move up the list until I get to the very top.

When reporting spam, you want to compose your email in a responsible manner.  Don't flame or have an angry tone in your email.   The person receiving your report is "generally" not the person who spammed you.  In that case that you send an abuse report to the spammer, because they used their own domain email to mail you, don't expect wonderful results.  However, using the above trace, if that happens you can get to their provider and will probably get satisfactory results.  Most responsible servers/ISP's have strong rules against spam, and handle complaints quickly.  Don't expect to get much more than an auto-repsonse to your complaint.  With all the spam going on these days, I am sure those poor people are busier than they should be fielding complaints.

If after complaining you still get email from the offender, do the trace again and use the next server up the line.  Don't give up.

I'm sure you've got the spam that says something to the effect that the email is legal and not in violation of any laws, etc, etc, etc.  Well, they are probably correct about that since I am not aware and can find no law that prohibits spam.  However, it is usually a violation of ISP policies and should be reported.  There are also spams going around saying that someone put you on their list, naming the person, of course someone you have never heard of.   They are trying to legitimate their spam.  Don't fall for that either.   Report it.  To be sure that you are not forgetting a list you did sign up for, keep a text file of all the lists that you have signed up for.

If you just don't feel up to going to the work to report the spam email you receive, most mail programs have filters in them that will filter the spam email directly to your deleted mail folder.  You will have to read your email client documentation to learn how to do that.

There are many places on the internet that have information about spam, what it is, what you can do about it, etc.  Going to http://www.infoseek.com and typing "spam" in the search box will bring up many sites that cover the topic.  Any major search engine will have listings for this.

If you enjoy newsgroups, you can go here:

news.admin.net-abuse.email
news.answers

You can read the FAQ for these newsgroups here:

http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html

I have seen some sites that have posted the email addresses and sometimes the messages of the spam email.  I am not sure about what the copyright law is concerning this type of action.  Contrary to popular belief, email is copyrighted automatically by the writer as soon as it is written.  I can see there might be a problem with copyright infringement and privacy laws here, even though the spammer is invading your privacy.  I guess it really is a matter of two wrongs don't make a right.  The best policy is the report the spam.  The next best policy is to filter it out of your mail.

How do you get spammed?  Where do these people get your email address anyway?  Well, if you have a web site with your email address on it, if you post to Usenet, if you participate in message boards, or sign guestbooks, you leave your email address to be harvested by whatever spider comes along to pick it up.  There are several ways to combat this too.  When filling our your email address, add a little teaser to it.  For instance, my email address is vikki@web-helper.net .  To foil the spider I would fill in my email address as vikkigotcha@web-helper.net .  When an email program encounters that email address, of course it is undeliverable and you won't receive spam from it.  That essentially will stop your email address from being harvested successfully that way.  It won't however stop previous instances where you posted your real email address.