Spam has become an ever-increasing problem in recent years, costing legitimate businesses a great deal in both time and money.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the United States agency for consumer protection, was granted the authority to enforce the act and the DOJ, or Department of Justice is additionally charged with the enforcement of the CAN SPAM act. It also provides that Internet Service Providers who are hurt by the spam may in fact sue the violators of the legislation to recoup losses to their own business.

One major provision of the law - The recipient must be fore-warned of any sexually explicit information the email may contain. This warning must be displayed in the email's subject line.

Protect yourself from inbox spam

Friend or Foe? Just because an email has been sent to you by a friend, do not assume that it safe for you to open any attachment that comes with it. Contact your friend and verify that they did indeed send it. Very often, spammers will attach a virus to their spam, which, if opened, will hijack your email program and mail itself out to every email address in your address book. This fraudulent email will appear to the recipients to have been sent by you. If they in turn, open this email attachment, the same malicious cycle is repeated.

Chain letters. The spam email directs you to send a small amount of money to each of 4 or 5 names on a list, add your name to the top of the list and remove the last name on it, and then forward the updated list via bulk mail. Typically, the letter will claim the scheme is legal, and may refer to sections of US law as supporting proof of this. Not true. These chain letters are almost always illegal, and nearly all those who participate in them lose their money.

How to Report Spam Abuse

Saving and sending the entire email header is an important step in reporting spam. The header of every email you receive will contain information on the full chain of computers through which the email passed in order to get to you. Generally, most email will pass through at least four computers: The spammer's computer, the spammer's ISP, your ISP and finally your computer. This is the most reliable way for an anti-spam service to track down the spammer's ISP because the spammer will camouflage the "from" address.

As the email passes through each computer, information is added to the header indicating who the mail came from, as well as where they are sending it. While this header information will seem complicated, you just need to make note of the originating ISP, which will be easy to recognize. For example, if you receive your mail through AOL and you note "yahoo" in the string of information, then you will know to report the spam to yahoo.

For reporting report to www.spamcop.net. This is a third party agency which will report spam on your behalf to the relevant anti-spam agency.