…but I’m starting to hate users who complain to the wrong people about spam more.

Apparently, some scum is (badly) forging a Received: header field with the www.lofcom.com address. The forgery seems to be malformed (in the few examples I’ve seen, anyway), looking like:

Received: from www.lofcom.com (HELO lofcom.com [27

The examples I’ve seen appear to be coming out of China and Hong Kong-based machines, but it’s possible they’re coming from zombies all over the world. I don’t know what they’re advertising, because with all the complaints I’ve received, no one has bothered sending me an accurate copy of the mail including complete header fields and body. I do know the To: header field contains, “undisclosed-recipients: ;” which is unusual in spam. Regardless, I am getting seriously tired of people seeing a web address in the headers and complaining to me about the spam. I mean seriously tired.

Look, people, forget that I’m more anti-spam than you can ever hope to be. Ignore that I’ve properly complained about more spam in my carreer than you will ever hope to get. Don’t pay any attention to the clear anti-spam graphics on the lofcom.com website.

Buy a friggin’ clue that header fields can be forged, and learn how the blazes to complain to the proper originator!

Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. Seriously; there’s a wealth of tutorials on the Internet to explain how to “chain” Received: header fields. There’s my personal favorite, SpamCop, who will actually do this for you so you don’t have to worry about making the mistake. It’s really easy to tell from what machine any given spam came from, really it is. And although I should note this is only an anecdotal observation, most of the misdirected cursing and complaining seems to be coming from Canadians. I make no judgement here, only note the observation.

But please stop swearing at me simply because some spammer scum badly forged a Received: header field, huh?