CIS Help
Request Form

Block That Spam — Here's How to Help Bar Junk Email from Outside the Lab

Unsolicited, unwanted email, usually called spam, can be annoying. And trying to get off spam lists can be tremendously frustrating, as a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle explained. One Bay Area man spent more than three months trying to remove his email address from a pop star's fan club list.

One of the recommendations in the article, which is also echoed by the Lab's email postmaster, is not to reply to unwanted email — and especially do not send a message asking to unsubscribe. Such messages merely confirm to the sender that your email address is valid. Instead, follow these recommendations for keeping the Lab on a low-spam diet:

• Don't respond directly to any spammers.
• If you get spam mail, replace the subject line with spam:block:<spammer's address> (inserting the spammer's address) and forward it to spam@lbl.gov
• When you forward the message for blocking, do not use the spammer's subject line — instead, please use the subject line spam:block:<spammer's address> Putting the rogue address in the subject line speeds up blocking as it makes such requests much easier to spot in the mailbox.
• Forward the entire message to spam@lbl.gov To block the address, the spam-stoppers need all the headers from the mail, including the "Return-Path:" and "From:" info from the mail. Then we can (usually) block mail from the "Return-Path" and "From:" address.

Spammer addresses are usually blocked within a working day. To learn more, click here.