I received junk email. What can I do about it?

We cannot take direct action against any spam that originates outside our local (oswego.edu) domain -- it is a very rare occurrence when spam you receive does originate locally. An email's true origins can be determined by examining the full headers.

What to do:

• Delete them. The quickest and best course of action is to simply delete the offensive emails.
  
  
• Filter them. If your email client allows, you may be able to filter junk email as your computer receives it. This usually requires that you spend some time "training" the software to differentiate between legitimate emails and junk emails. Basic instructions are provided for the clients below; otherwise check your software's documentation:
• • Apple Mail
  • Outlook
  • Thunderbird
    
    
• Educate yourself. The more you know about junk email, the better equipped you will be to handle it when it arrives in your mailbox.
• • Wikipedia has a very comprehensive article discussing junk email.
  • The Center for Democracy and Technology conducted a six-month survey to discover how spammers find people online. If you are interested in the origins of all the junk email you receive, the Center’s report and conclusions make for interesting reading.

What not to do:

• Never reply to a spam e-mail. For a spammer, one "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice. Instead, if you want a product that is advertised in a spam e-mail, go to a Web site that also carries the product, inquire there, and tell them you do not approve of spamming and will not patronize a company that uses spam techniques.
   
• Never follow a spam e-mail's instructions to reply with the word "remove." This is just a trick to get you to react -- it alerts the spammer that your address is one that is checked and read often. When you reply, your address will be placed on more lists and you receive even more spam as a result.
   
• Never sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from spam  lists. The authors of these sites usually fall into two categories: (1) sincere anti-spam advocates, and (2) spam address collectors. The former sites are ignored (or exploited) by the spammers,  the latter are actually owned by them. The most effective ways to fight spam are to delete the messages yourself and use an email client that is capable of learning how to filter such mail automatically.