Products!
We All Hate Spam
The patron goddess of this site, Etyries, is the pre-eminent Gloranthan deity of clear and honest communication.
The owner of this site, Nick Brooke, has had an online presence for more than a decade, and has seen spam grow from a drip to a tsunami.
And you, Dear Reader, are paying
more than you should to your service provider, and being forced to
waste your own time and effort, because of selfish, greedy, criminal, stupid spammers.
Spammers are Scum
You may have been referred to this page after making a complaint about spam apparently sent from an email address looking like this: [garble]@etyries.com. Let me assure you: it wasn't sent by etyries.com.
Spammers routinely forge the Sender/From details in the emails they send, just as they routinely treat Unsubscribe requests as confirmation that an email address is live (and therefore "worth spamming").
Etyries.com is a non-commercial "vanity domain," owned by Nick Brooke, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the spam email you received. I hope the anti-spam resources I've listed below will help you work out who spammed you, and what you can do about it.
Anti-Spam Resources
The links below will take you to some useful anti-spam resources. I've collected them here to make it easier for my friends and family, and fellow spam victims, to find them:
| SpamCop.net offers an excellent suite of email filtering and spam reporting tools. Any email message sent to an etyries.com address will be filtered via SpamCop, and all spammers are automatically reported to their connectivity providers. (Their details also feed the SCBL SpamCop Block List, which prevents their messages getting to other recipients). Warning: steer clear of spamcop.com, who are trying to cash in on spamcop.net's excellent reputation. |
| Sam Spade is perhaps for the more advanced spam-fighter: the site provides an online set of tools for identifying and tracking down spammers from their email headers, IP addresses and the like. There's also a set of tools Windows users can download, and a "safe" web browsing mode. |
| Spamhaus is the home of the ROKSO Register of Known Spam Operations, a "three strikes and you're out" list of unrepentant spammers thrown off three or more ISPs for their abusive behaviour. This is now, in effect, a target list for law enforcement agencies. |
| SPEWS is the Great Beast of the spam blocklists. Their tactics (preemptive blocking of ISPs who allow abusers to flourish on their networks) are controversial, but they definitely work. Etyries is a big fan of SPEWS, especially given their professed origins. |
| SpamCon runs a Legal Fund which provides monetary assistance to parties involved in spam-related litigation. Essentially, they help pay the legal costs of spammer lawsuit victims. Spammers (such as convicted felon Scott Richter) and their slimy associates (like Mark Felstein of 'EMarketersAmerica.org') aren't above filing frivolous court cases and then running away when discovery comes due. (Much like another bunch of litigious bastards who've been in the news lately). |
Non-Spam Related Downloads
I can recommend all of the following free software products (although not in any liability-inducing way):
| AdAware - anti-spyware program, scans your computer and identifies spyware for removal. Works well with SpyBot. |
| SpyBot - another anti-spyware program, this one innoculates your computer so it doesn't even try to download known spyware. Works well with AdAware. |
| Avast! - free anti-virus program which regularly updates itself and scans incoming email for viruses. |
| Desktop Sidebar - this program's about productivity, not spam/privacy/viruses, but I like to keep it running on my desktop - it displays incoming news feeds, email messages, etc. as they arrive. |
Reporting Spammers
Here are some useful spam reporting addresses. Many of them are based in the United States of America, which is (as everyone knows) the home of most spammers:
| spam@uce.gov for reporting any spam with any US connection (sender, connectivity, beneficiary) to the US Federal Trade Commission. This feeds their banks of evidence that get used to hammer spammers in the courts. In practice, you might as well send them everything. |
| webcomplaints@ora.fda.gov for reporting any spams offering drugs (under their US names) to the US Food and Drug Administration, regardless of whether you or the supplier is based in the USA. |
| enforcement@sec.gov for reporting stock pump scams (insider tips, hot recommendations, etc.) to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. |
| contact@pointdecontact.net - a bit of international flavour here - PointDeContact is the reporting address for child porn/racist sites hosted in France. I used this to report the voila.fr / wanadoo.fr "Young Teens" dialler spams hosted by France Telecom. |
| piracy@microsoft.com, piracy@corel.com, piracy@adobe.com, piracy@borland.com to report spammers punting some of the most commonly pirated software products. |
In the United Kingdom, you can report spammers to the following bodies:
| The Office of the Information Commissioner, which is ineffectual, overworked and under-resourced; |
| The Advertising Standards Authority, who will just tell you to cooperate with UK-based list-washers (NB: list-washing is bad) |
| The Direct Marketing Agency "do-not-contact" lists (NB: although the US DMA appears to be malignly opposed to consumer interests, the UK DMA's mailing preference service (junk mail) and Telephone Preference Service (telemarketing) actually work... for me) |
| ICSTIS, the regulator for premium rate phone lines - including their promotion, whether that's by print media, spam, spyware/dialler/virus, or even SMS text messages. |
Personal experience: I've had good results from complaining to ICSTIS and registering with the DMA's non-spam-related preference services. Complaining to the Office of the Information Commissioner or the Advertising Standards Authority appears to be a waste of time for everyone involved.
Don't expect any instant gratification from reporting spam, though; hope that in the long run, some or all of these services may help get the spammers fined and jailed. We can hope the Memorandum of Understanding on mutual enforcement assistance in commercial email matters (between the US, UK and Australia) will be useful, in the long run.
Note to Spammers
Oh, and a few notes to any spammers reading this. (You must really hate yourself to have got this far).First, please crawl back into the hole you live in and die.
Second, if you're sending spam to any address at etyries.com, you're wasting your time (it just feeds abuse desks and blocklists).
Finally, if you're sending spam to more than one address at etyries.com, you've been cheated by whoever sold you that list. This is a personal vanity domain - all email sent to etyries.com goes to Nick Brooke: there's nobody else here! (Sending me multiple copies of your spams just makes them even easier to identify, block and report).
(But don't forget to die. That would solve everybody's problems, your own included).
Awards!
The 'Gregged' Rune was nominated for the Spirit of Glorantha 2003 award.
HeroQuest Voices was nominated for several Best of Glorantha 2003 awards.
Etyries.com was nominated for the Best Gloranthan Website 2002 award.
Etyries.com won the Best Gloranthan Website 2001 award.
Greg Stafford selected Etyries.com as
the Best of the
Best of Glorantha 2001.
Life of Moonson won the Spirit of Glorantha 2001 award.
Etyries.com was joint 2nd among the Top
20 Glorantha Web Sites.
John Hughes' picture of Etyries was nominated as the Best Gloranthan Visual Art 2001.
The Gloranthan Songbook won the Spirit of Glorantha 2000 award.
Thanks for voting!
Issaries, Inc have created Fan Material Required Statements and statements on Granting Credit Properly. This site accepts both. Etyries.com is owned by Nick Brooke, who has moral rights.