Hello. Want to complain about a spam email?
Snipurl did not send you that email. Some spammer sent that
junk mail and "phished" our website. Please report the spam to
us in one of the following ways:
You are not a part of any mailing list with us, so please understand that
we cannot unsubscribe you from anything. There are things you can do to
help guard yourself against such spam, and also help us fight it. If you would
like to receive help, please read our notes below and write to us accordingly.
We cannot do much with emails that seek help without understanding what
we have said below.
Details of what happened and what you can do
Snipurl did NOT send that spam.
Please check the FROM and TO addresses in the spam email. It will confirm that it was not from Snipurl. Snipurl is a popular, dignified service used by some of the top newsletters around the world. We operate under very strict terms of use, and we are not shy to adhere to them.
So what happened?
You received a junk mail from some spammer with nothing better to do. He misleadingly included a Snipurl.com URL in it -- often masquerading as an "Unsubscribe" link or something of that nature, but actually pointing to some click-rewarding site that he wanted you to visit.
This is the way spam works -- it tries to mislead. Wikipedia has an excellent page on "Phishing" if you are interested in understanding more about this scourge that is equally annoying to all of us.
So how can you help us fight spam?
We would appreciate if you could forward that email to us with full headers. Click on the "Post Spam Email Here" on the right to post the full text of the spam email, or forward the spam mail to us at abuse [at] snipurl [dot] com. We will do the following:
- We will disable the abused Snipurl.com URL. This makes the spammer's effort practically useless. If you have come to this page from clicking on some Unsubscribe link, it means we have already disabled the misleading Snipurl.com URL based on complaints from users before you.
- We will report their actions to their ISP. This is not as straightforward as it seems, because spammers will often fake their FROM address. This is why we request that you send us the full headers of that spam, so we can determine its actual origin.
- We will report the spam to your ISP or email provider. For instance, if you use Yahoo, then we will report it to abuse@yahoo.com. This may help Yahoo's abuse management team to block that particular spammer.
What can you do to protect yourself against such spam in the future:
Basically, spam fighting is a collective endeavor. Here are some tips:
- Do not communicate with the spammers even to request them to take you off their list. They will do no such thing. Writing to them will only confirm your valid address and they will cheerfully subscribe you to several other spam lists.
- Use an ISP that offers decent spam protection. Several of our spam reporters use Yahoo. Their spam filters seem to be about 80% functional. Please report spam to your ISP or email provider such as Yahoo. If they are any good, they will do what's necessary to block spam before it reaches your Inbox.
- Use a good anti-spam product for the email client you use. For example, for Outlook on Windows we recommend Cloudmark. Among web based emails, Google Mail offers excellent spam protection, significantly more on-the-ball than Yahoo's or Hotmail's. If you wish to switch, Google Mail offers one-click transfer of your Yahoo or Hotmail address book and other features.
- If possible, read all your email in plain text. Spammers will often send an image, because the image is downloaded from their website. If you can see the image in your spam mail, it usually means the image has been successfully downloaded. This tells them that your email addresss is quite likely valid, and they will cheerfully mark it as "OK" for "Send more Spam". It is therefore advisable to read your email in plain text, which is probably useful anyway if you have kids and fear that they might inadvertently view unsuitable content. Our recommendation: view emails in "rich text" or HTML only if sent by a user in your contact list or someone you have explicitly marked as "trusted". Most email programs allow this as a setting in their Options. This is the default setting in Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Gmail.
Thank you for your cooperation!
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