• Do NOT respond to the email in any fashion to include a request to unsubscribe. Responding simply confirms that your e-mail address is valid for inclusion in other unsolicited e-mail.
  
• Send your complaint to the "abuse" account of the originating mail server. You can get this information by turning on verbose (complete) headers. If you need assistance to do this, please contact technical support. Without the detailed header information, the problem cannot be tracked. An exception -- some disreputable companies will use abuse complaints to log valid e-mail addresses.
  
• Most e-mail software provides the option to filter messages. Create filters based upon what you do not want to see and transfer that mail automatically to the trash. This is the preferred solution!
  

ShawneeLink subscribes to a national database that looks up the originating address of the sending server. If that server's address is in the database, the incoming e-mail is refused. Much of that database is made up of known locations that widely distribute unsolicited e-mail.

In addition, we perform a small check of certain domains known to send bulk e-mail for which we refuse the e-mail.

With spammers regularly changing providers and companies to send their mail, catching all unsolicited e-mail is not possible. We also have to take caution that we are not blocking valid e-mail in an effort to block junk e-mail.

Below is a sample of a verbose header with valid entries from a known unsolicited bulk e-mail company and what the information means. We read the information from bottom to top. Reviewing header information can be difficult when there are forged entries. In this example etracks.com is the originating mail server and if we were to file a complaint, the requests would be sent to abuse@etracks.com. In this case, the recipient chose to ignore it because of the concern that it would only validate the e-mail address.:

This tells the mail server where to return any undeliverable messages.
Return-Path: bounce@bounce1.etracks.com

The Etracks server transmitting the email to ShawneeLink's server.
Received: from howdy.etracks.com (howdy.etracks.com [216.216.0.130]) by ns.shawneelink.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id f9G7hqB15101 for (recipient suppressed); Tue, 16 Oct 2001 02:43:52 -0500 (CDT)

This e-mail appears to be sent from the server itself. Had it been sent from another location to the etracks server, we would have seen that information first with another "Received:" line.
Received: (from broadcaster@etracks.com) by howdy.etracks.com (1.0/1.0) id 4h1j7K-R4n2nAToeoa1Pv74 for (recipient suppressed); Tue, 16 Oct 2001 00:42:53 -0800 (PDT)

The date, time and timezone the message was sent.
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 00:42:53 -0800 (PDT)

The originating mail server tracking ID number
Message-ID: <4h1j7K-R4n2nAToeoa1Pv74@howdy.etracks.com>

The address to whom the email was sent. May be blank and usually does not list your email address. A common method is to blind carbon copy the recipients which gets removed by mail servers.
To: (recipient suppressed)

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