Unsolicited Email Reporting

1st Class Internet Solutions provides software to many businesses around the world for sending and receiving internet email. Our software is available for download for free via the web, and attaches our ad banner until the product is registered.

Occasionally, someone will download our product and use it to send unsolicited email to a list of users. We do not condone this behavior. It is not what our product is intended to be used for. Unfortunately, we can not control what users do on their own computers.

Most internet access providers have rules of conduct which forbid their users from sending unsolicited email. If you receive any unsolicited email you can report the email to the network provider of the person sending the email. This is the most productive way to have your complaint heard by someone who can stop further unsolicited email.

To determine the network provider from where the email came:

1. Open the unsolicited email in your email program.
2. View the full message including headers. Sometimes this can be found under File -> Properties. This will differ depending on your email client.

3. In the headers of the email, you should see one or more lines that begin with "Received:". These lines contain the trail throught the internet that the email has followed. Here is an example received line:

   Received: from xyzdomain.com (127.0.0.2) by gateway02 with SMTP; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:24:06 -0700

   Make a note of the ip address that the email was received from. In the example, this address is 127.0.0.2.

4. Go to www.arin.net ARIN maintains a list of all the owners of all of the ip addresses on the internet.
5. Click the WHOIS link.
6. Perform a WHOIS lookup for the address.
7. The results of the lookup should provide you with one or more companies or organizations that are responsible for the networks using the ip address. Clicking on the results should provide an email address to use when contacting the organization. Start by contacting the bottom organization. Email this person your complaint along with the full message headers of the unsolicited email. If this person does not respond or help you, contact the next person up on the list.

And that's it. It's now up to the network access provider to stop the unsolicited email from coming across their network.