unsubscribe.com - Who are they, are they for real? Anti spam organistaion?

PeteLong> Some spammers think they can safely hide behind an IP address (an address in the form of 123.123.123.123). Not so!

Not so! (not necessarily so) You are missing the point of a spat of worms, that permit first the harvesting of addresses to make up mailing lists for both the from and the to, the ability to spoof, relays, with the ability of even taking over a part of user machine, such that the true origin of a spam is an individual who is likely ignorant of the process.

centore,
You might have done better to post Q in the eMail or Security TA. As I read the newsies, the privacy organizations are vehemently opposed to having anti-spam lists, similar to lists of phone #'s to not call, as being ineffectual, a distraction leading to undue presumption of additional protection, misue of effort, and even counterproductive.

Consider how easily, for example, people seem to be consistently able to mass-collect address lists, credit card numbers, and more from "secured servers". Lately in news, someone posted the social security numbers of high US gov't officials. I don't have it handy, but I think it included head of justice "privacy-protector" Ashcroft, chief spook of CIA, national security, and key security advisors to US President, including their home address in case you want to physically leave a spam note upon their very door.

Anywhere there is a list of addresses will be a chief target of a harvestor, who's sole goal is to validate eMail addresses as being currently in use. And there are many ways to get it.

A better goal would be to reduce the possibilities for spammers to cloak themselves in anonymity. Many laws are passed, such as including prefix for subject of "ADV: " (similar to fwd:, re:, fyi:, etc) but that is only partially ok, as it only impacts spammers who want to go legit, or at least to appear to be legitimate. Penalty for non-compliance can be actual damage or a token of $10 - $750 per email to the individual receiving it - a small claims court issue. Or enormously higher for the gov't actions or ISP actions or mailserver operator actions or others, but that again are more for the ones where the individual mass-spammers identify themselves, for justifying their funds and by leaving enough traces such as indicated by Pete above.

At risk of repetition I'll post some old links I've bookmarked, with no comment on whether any have a value.

http://www.cauce.org/
CAUCE, The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email is an ad hoc, ...

http://www.spam.com/
(the original product)

http://spamsites.org/
See the main list of 363 live spamware sites and the list of 7081 dead/reformed sites.

http://combat.uxn.com/
(lookups. may have parts under construction)

http://www.geektools.com/whois.php
(whois)

http://spamcop.net/
"started in 1998 and remains the premier spam reporting service. ..."

http://www.abuse.net/
"place to report abusive activity varies from one system to another, we're trying to keep a master database of reporting addresses for users throughout the net to use."

http://www.elsop.com/wrc/nospam.htm
Spam: How to Fight it (more links)

I am not too sure about unsubscribe.com....
I listed my email address with them about two years ago...and the floodgates opened.
I don't know if they are:
1) Spammers in disguise - using a unique method to get real email addresses,  or
2) Not very good at what they purport to do.

I ended up abandoning a truly beloved email address because the spam situation got so bad.
(500-600 per day)

These days I don't give out my email address...and have so strictly filtered my email client that only about six people can send mail to it.

All the spam I get at work goes to spamcop (duly noted above).

I have found that some of the unsubscribe links are really used to verify they found a live address.  Click the link and they may go away but now they know they have a real live address to use and sell.

Many spammers also have numerous mail acounts which a simple variations on their real account.  In this way you can block one message but they simply use another address and bingo it comes.

I also had an account I really liked but the spam situation is so bad I have almost abandoned it several times.  Rather than that I simply use it for anywhere that requires an email address that I don't knw or trust.  I check it periodically and look through quickly for anything important.  I then validate that address so it can come through.  The rest just goes to a junk mail file which I delete daily.  Generally I have 50 - 100 to delete.  Since normally I don't want anything from most of the places I simply make a quick scan and delete the rest.

mlmcc

Hi - just a brief comment - not quite directly answering the question, but might be useful.

I've been using a prog called MailWasher for quite a while now, and have found it very good.  It gets the headers from your POP3 mailbox, checks through for spam, and gives you the list to check.  It then goes off and deletes all the spam messages from the server, so when you then do a send/recieve with your mail prog, it doesn't have to waste time downloading all the spam.

It also bounces the spams, pretending your address is invalid.  I didn't expect it to have much effect, but i used to get around 30-50 spams a day - after using it for a while, i now only get maybe 5-10, so it does *seem* to work pretty well.  It was free ('donation-ware') when i first got it.  Now, i think it's free for a version that only checks one POP3 account, commercial for the 'pro' version.

Worth trying out, although it does add an extra step to getting your mail.