I don't know about you but I'm getting more and more spam nowadays. Practically every time I download e-mail I receive unsolicited advertisements and they're getting larger and have embedded graphics that takes longer to download. I now recognize spam from the subject or the sender's name and instead of opening the message I transfer it to a special spam folder I've created where it can be reviewed later to determine who I might complain to.

But whom can you complain to about spam? Practically everybody has heard not to complain to the sender's address in the message. Often you can't complain to it anyway because it’s a fake return address. If the message says "click here" to remove your name from the mailing list watch out because it may only confirm that you’re alive and well and have a valid address to receive more spam. What you need to do is try to determine who actually sent the spam and politely ask them to remove you from their list.

Some people send complaints to Spamcop at http://www.spamcop.com who in turn supposedly contacts the offender. I've seen mixed reviews on whether this is effective. It may be that some ISPs simply delete all messages from Spamcop without reading them, in part because Spamcop hides your identity and many ISPs don’t accept anonymous complaints.

What I try to do is decode the sender’s fake address and contact a tech rep at the company or complain to the ISPs that relayed the spam along the way. To do this you've got to have your e-mail program display a detailed message header that shows how the message was routed. Ordinarily one only sees a simple message header but each mail program usually has an option to expand it to a full header. You need to learn how to do this.

Here's how I currently handle spam. I can't really tell you yet whether it's effective yet since I haven't had enough time to gather statistics and determine whether repeat offenders are showing up. By the way I use the latest Eudora Version 5.1 mail program:

1. A spam message arrives in my inbox. I transfer it to my spam folder. For the month of January I received a total of 150 spam messages, about 5 per day.

2. When time permits I go to my spam folder and open up a message with a detailed message header. I look at all addresses shown in the message and copy only the last two parts of an address. For example if the address is "Victorsbingo.com" <valuemail@intervolved.net> I copy only the last part "intervolved.net" and then enter it in the search block of the "Who-is" web site at http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois/

3. The Who-is web site tells me that the company is Giant Rewards.com in Paramus NJ and the Administrative/Technician contact is Mark Erickson at markerickson@intervolved.net. I send a "Dear Mark" message with a copy of the detailed message header and politely ask to be removed from their mailing list. About an hour later Mark replied that I was removed.

That may seem like a lot of effort to eliminate spam from one location but here's the surprise. I searched my spam folder for the text "intervolved.net" and discovered 5 other messages from such places like "Valentine Ideas", "Wireless", "Netflix", etc. Apparently the Giant Rewards company was pumping out all sorts of commercial ads under different names. One company had about 20 messages in my spam box that appeared to be coming from separate companies but in reality came from only one.

Other specific addresses that you can complain to are postmaster@domain and abuse@domain if you can't get a specific address. For example, if you see that a spam message was routed through datatec.com send your message including the full header of the message to both postmaster@datec.com and abuse@datec.com. If the latter address bounces you’ll know that they don’t have an abuse address.

Most spam messages want to sell you something. To do so they want you to visit their web page and fill out an order blank. By going there you can often find out who hosts the site and complain. If it happens to be a free service like Geocities you're in luck. Send the full message header to them. If they get 5000 such complains about one of their clients sending spam they'll drop him like a hot potato. Believe me, it works.