Preventing spam (Unsolicited E-mail)

• Brightmail (spam-protection service) at Berkeley Lab
• Berkeley Lab Antispam Efforts
• How to Reduce the Amount of spam You Receive
• Reporting spam: ONLY for LBNL staff and guests
• Filtering out mail from specified people -- ONLY for LBNL staff and guests
• Other Resources for fighting spam
• worms that FORGE email:WORM_KLEZ, WORM_NIMDA, and WORM_YAHA
• "4-1-9" or "Advance Fee Fraud" schemes
• Pop-up Spam in Windows Systems? Here's How to Stop It
• spam: background information
• Registration Services

spam is unsolicited e-mail usually sent to a large number of people that usually tries to sell something or get people involved in some sort of scam. As the Internet grows, so does the problem of spam. More and more people are getting more of these spam e-mailings. For this reason, the Lab is taking steps to reduce the amount of spam we receive.

Berkeley Lab Antispam Efforts

The Lab's main email gateway is now running a version of sendmail that includes various spam control features. Further, our Lab email gateway uses the Brightmail spam-protection service to tag suspected spam.

sendmail anti-spam rules

How to report spam mail

• If you are an LBNL staff or guest, the spam reporting procedure has changed as of 2003-02-19.
  Please see our Brightmail anti-spam information


• If you are NOT an LBNL staff or guest, please contact your Internet service provider or local system administrator for further help.

How to Reduce the Amount of spam you receive

• Protect your e-mail address.
  To reduce or prevent spam to your email address, try not to give out your email address (via news postings for example) to anyone you don't know.
• Don't Comply with Instructions in Spam Messages
  Some spam messages include instructions for supposedly removing your address from mailing lists, thus by all appearances stopping spam from that spam source. However, if you follow the instructions, chances are you are only making matters worse. Many if not most spammers use the replies to confirm addresses and identities of people who will afterwards receive even more spam. If you get spam, your best bet is to follow the procedures described in this page.
• Note that spammers often send spam using blind-carbon-copies (bcc), a method to conceal the addressees by hiding the "To:" address.
• For LBNL users ONLY: Use your lab-standard email address EPO@lbl.gov
  Since LBNL lab-standard email addresses of the form EPO@lbl.gov are protected by the lab's spam-protection and virus-protection software, we recommend that you set your From: and Reply-To: addresses in your email client and any web pages to EPO@lbl.gov address if you have not already done so. LBNL employees are urged to request a lab-standard email address (EPO) via see New Email Accounts, IMAP4 Mail, Directory, etc.
• Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report (good tips for reducing influx of spam)

Filtering out mail from certain people