Before it ever reaches your Inbox, each piece of email must be sent from a server. Most server administrators are responsible and don't want their machines used for spamming. Most ISPs have policies prohibiting spamming through their accounts. Once they are notified that a user has been abusing their account, many ISPs will shut down the offender.

So how do you find out whom to contact? That's the hard part.

Look for the point of contact:
In the body of the message, there are almost always instructions for how the sender wants you to respond to the message. Often they will want you to visit a web site or send mail to an email address. If you can shut down their web site or have the email address closed, this makes their spam useless.

Look at the domain. This is the part after the @ sign of an email address or the last part of the server name in a URL. For example, the URL of http://www.abc-bds.bogus.net/somepage.html has a domain of simply bogus.net. Once you have the domain, you can look up the administrative contact at InterNIC.

Once you've done a successful lookup, simply email the entire message (including full headers) to the person listed as the administrative contact. Explain your situation. They may have further requirements, but this is the person or group you want to be in contact with.

If the spam or abusive email is being sent from a Yahoo! Mail account, please forward the entire message with full headers to abuse@yahoo.com. We will take a look at it and take appropriate action. Spamming from a Yahoo! Mail account is not acceptable.