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GreatAuPair UCE - Anti-Spam Policy

GreatAuPair does not send out unsolicited commercial emails or any form of spam. You must be a registered guest or member of GreatAuPair's service to receive emails related to your account. Guests and members of GreatAuPair can elect not to receive emails at any time by changing their email preferences under My Account or by canceling their account entirely.

Spammers forge headers

If you received a spam email or an email containing a virus, claiming to be from someone at GreatAuPair.com, it was forged and did not come from GreatAuPair. Let us explain. If you received an email that does not relate to our services and you are not a member of GreatAuPair, then you have received an email that has "forged headers" and did not actually originate from GreatAuPair. In other words it was a "spoofed" email message.

Forging email headers is unfortunately very common and it is called email spoofing. Spammers use email spoofing for a variety of malicious and nefarious purposes.

Spammers also use automated programs to send out spam mail using a list of harvested email address as their targets. By forging the "Reply-To" and "From" email addresses in their email program to show a legitimate company such as GreatAuPair.com, the spammers hope that recipients of the spam (you) will read it, then complain to the legitimate company (GreatAuPair) that had nothing to do with the spam email you received. That way the spammer gets his message sent out to his spam list and fraudulently directs all complaints to a legitimate company that was in no way involved.

View your email headers to reveal the spammer

Check the email headers of the spam you received to reveal the true identity of the spam sender. This process will reveal the spammer's true email and show you which networks they use to send out their spam.

AOL Version 7.0+ Under the New Mail tab, select the spam message, then click the button "Report Spam" near the bottom. AOL will handle the inquiry from there. No headers are actually visible. See AOL Keyword "Spam" for more information.

AOL Version 6.0 and lower Select the unwanted mail message and open it. Check the "forward" button and address it to AOL screen name TOSREPORTS. Click the send button. See AOL Keyword "Spam" for more information.

Elm, Pine, and Mutt Press "h" from the message selection menu to view the full headers of the currently selected message.

Entourage for Macintosh Press View the spam message, pull down the "View" tab and selected "Internet Headers".

Eudora Open the message. Under the title bar are four options. The second from the left is a box which says "Blah, Blah, Blah." Click on that to display the full headers.

Hotmail Go into "Options", "Preferences", and choose "Message headers". You'll want to choose the "Full" option to display Received: headers. "Advanced" will display that as well as MIME headers. Do note, however, that sometimes Hotmail uses older mailservers that won't show any headers no matter what.

Lotus Notes 4.6.x Open the offending mail. Click on "Actions", then "Delivery information". Cut and paste the text from the bottom box, marked "Delivery information:".

Netscape Mail Choose "OPTIONS" from the options menu bar. Listed as an option is "Show Headers". Choose full headers

Outlook Express Open the message. Choose "File" from the options menu bar. Listed as an option is "properties". Another window will open, showing two tabs. You want to choose the one titled "Details". Then cut and paste the headers into the message you want to forward.

Outlook 2000 Double click on the message to open itup, click on "View, Options", and you will see the message headers in a box at the bottom of the window. You can copy/paste them from that window.

Pegasus Choose "READER" from the options menu bar. Listed as an option is: "Show all Headers". This does not work for HTML messages, however. A workaround is to select the message properties, and de-selecting "Contains HTML data".

Take action against the real spammer

Take action against unwanted emails that you receive. The authorities cannot respond to spammers without complaints about spammers' activities. Reporting spam to the appropriate authorities can get the spammer's current account closed. It will also help prevent others from being victimized by the spammer. The authorities may also choose to prosecute for fraudulent or deceptive emails.

Report to The Federal Trade Commission The FTC wants your unwanted email messages and reports of any email unsubscribe link that is deceptive. The FTC wants copies of your unwanted emails and emails that have deceptive unsubscribe links. They use the unsolicited emails stored in their database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email.

To report any unwanted emails you receive, simply forward the messages to [email protected]. Make sure that you include the header information in the email. See above to obtain the header information.

The FTC wants to know if you find an email with an unsubscribe link that is not active, does not unsubscribe you or results in more spam. You can fill out a complaint form at www.ftc.gov/spam.

Contact the Internet Service Provider (ISP) You can either contact your ISP or the spammer's ISP to report unwanted emails. As noted above, the "Reply-To: and "From:" fields of an email message is very easily forged. Be sure you verify the header information in the spam message so you are sure to complain about the actual spammer. See above to obtain the header information.

Help ISPs remove spammers from their system The address to send your complaint to is usually [email protected]. So if the spammer is a customer of HotMail.com, you should send the complaint to [email protected]. You can lookup the official address for most domains at Abuse.net.

Contact Law Enforcement Authorities Threatening, inappropriate and unwanted emails can also be reported to law enforcement authorities.

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