Spam is not merely annoying: it is also a serious drain on the resources of ISPs and Internet users. Sending Spam mail may seem like a cheap and convenient way to propagate marketing efforts, yet successful businesses almost never employ this method of marketing. Firstly, nobody wishes to receive junk mail, and it is considered both an annoyance and an intrusion into privacy. Secondly, each sent email message does not normally reach its recipient instantaneously. Instead, it is relayed by numerous systems until it reaches its final destination. Spam mail is often sent out in hundreds of thousands of copies, to huge numbers of unwitting recipients. This huge overload of messages often causes network problems (as a river in flood may burst its banks and smash bridges). This means that third parties as well as message recipients are suffering because some person who hopes to get rich quick has pumped half a million messages out on to the Internet, and because there are many such worthless members of society who are all doing the same thing.

For more information read through CAUCE's excellent review of the problem at http://www.cauce.org/problem.html

This is a very difficult issue. Spammers rarely use their own private email address for the following reasons, among others:

1. Their ISP will realize what they are doing, and prevent any future Spam (by, for example, deleting their email accounts)
   
   
2. They could become the victims of mail-bombing, as thousands of irate Spam recipients strike back

Spammers therefore rely on anonymous or fake (from a free email provider, for example) email addresses. Make no mistake: each Spammer is almost certainly a fraud and a thief as well as an annoying person. Many Spammers have developed strategies of Spamming in order to avoid responsibility for their reckless actions, or to avoid mail blocking and filtering:

1. They relay Spam messages off the mail server of an innocent third party (in which case even more damage is incurred by the on-line population in general)
   
   
2. They use the "drop box" strategy. This consists of sending mail out from an account that allows Spam, but putting another address in the "Reply to:" message header, so that anyone replying to the message is actually sending mail to an account that did not originate the Spam. Many Spammers want to send out a message or sales info and do not expect a reply. By drop boxing they are forging their e-mail addresses and relieving themselves of accountability
   
   
3. Spoofing. This consists of making a message appear as if it is coming from a certain address, whereas in fact it is not. Spammers do this for the same reason given in the above point
   
   
4. Including a paragraph claiming that the law sanctions Spam as long as there is a "remove from list" address in the Spam email (or similar obtuse argument). Do not fall for this trick, as the "remove from list" address is inevitably a sham and you will simply generate useless traffic if you try to remove yourself from all these "lists". Spammers are dishonest people employing dishonest tactics.
   
   

For example, user annoyingperson@unitedspam.com could be sending out half a million messages a day in order to advertise his miserable pyramid scheme. His Spam messages, however, look as if they are coming from innocentfellow@outblaze-site.com, because the message headers were spoofed.

Any individuals that are suspected of Spamming from an Outblaze site, or of using an Outblaze site for drop boxing or spoofing, should be reported immediately. We will investigate the user and take action if we determine that he/she is guilty. Please report Spammers using this form.

Spoofing and drop boxing are usually beyond the absolute control of Outblaze! Outblaze will do whatever it can to prevent Spam, but we ask the victims of Spam to understand that very often Outblaze and its partners are not in fact the originators of Spam, but the victims! The solutions to spoofing and drop boxing are complex and involve co-operation between a number of web sites. We therefore ask victims of such Spam to be patient with us, and to consider us as much victims as themselves.

Please do not forget to visit the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email at http://www.cauce.org/ and lend your support to their worthy cause!