Steps to take if you are receiving unwanted emails from a Yahoo! group.

Yahoo! Groups provides a number of tools and systems to enable you to block unwanted messages and spam. When you report spam to Yahoo!, we feed the information to our anti-spam systems. As more users report spam like this, our system is better able to identify trends and eliminate these spammers or spam groups.

Typically, users receive these unwanted emails for one of five reasons. You can learn more about what to do in each of these situations below:

1. I joined a group and don’t know how to unsubscribe.

Click here to learn how to unsubscribe from a group.

2. I thought I had successfully unsubscribed from a group, but I’m still getting messages from it.

Learn more about what is likely happening and what you can do to successfully unsubscribe.

3. I am receiving some spam messages from a group that I think is an otherwise good group (and I wish to remain a member).

If you do not want to unsubscribe from a group but simply want to stop the spam, you can ask the group owner/moderator to moderate the messages posted to the group. Yahoo! provides moderators with the ability to moderate messages coming in to a group to block spam and other inappropriate messages (as well as the ability to restrict who can join the group in the first place). Yahoo! does not monitor the messages posted to groups, and we expect the moderators to make use of the moderation tools we provide them to ensure messages are appropriate.

To contact the moderators of a group, send email to GROUPNAME-owner@yahoogroups.com (replacing “GROUPNAME” with the actual name of the group).

Unfortunately, if the moderators of the group are unresponsive, your only other option at this time is to leave the group.

4. I am receiving invitations (or “confirmation messages regarding a request to join”), from a group I never tried to join or expressed any interest in.

Learn how to change your settings to block invitations from Yahoo! Groups.

Unfortunately, this settings change will only prevent invitations that are sent when a moderator uses the “Invite” feature within a group. There are two other types of “invitations” that the settings change cannot prevent:

• If the spammer is sending you an “invitation” as a direct email message.
• If the spammer is “spoofing” your email address and sending an email to the subscribe address of a group with your email address in the “from” field. By doing so, the spammer triggers the confirmation message from Yahoo! Groups that asks you to confirm whether you want to join the group.

If you are receiving either of these types of invitations, your only options at this time are to:

• Delete the spam invitations.
• Report them to Yahoo! so that we can take action against the groups and spammers. (Note: If you are a Yahoo! Mail user, you can report spam simply by clicking the “Spam” button when viewing a message in Mail.)
• Set up email filters with rules that will send these messages automatically to your spam filter.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! Groups is working on steps we can take to thwart the effectiveness of email spoofing.

5. I was added to a group without my permission.

Learn how to change your settings to block being added (or invited) to Yahoo! Groups.

Unfortunately, this will only prevent situations where a spammer is truly trying to add you to a group using the “add member” functionality Yahoo! Groups provides. In some cases, however, spammers will make it appear that they have added you to a Yahoo! group, when in reality they are just sending you messages directly.

In such cases, you can:

• Delete the spam messages.
• Report the spam to Yahoo! so that we can take action against the groups and spammers. (Note: If you are a Yahoo! Mail user, you can report spam simply by clicking the “Spam” button when viewing a message in Mail.)
• Set up email filters with rules that will send these messages automatically to your spam filter.