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Five Golden Rules of Anti-Spamming
Spamming is defined as the transmission of unsolicited,
usually commercial, e-mail to many recipients. This phenomenon is becoming
a nuisance for most e-mail users. Although some countries have drawn up
laws against these activities, most still have no legal basis to stop
them, unless the originators try to sell or promote illegal products.
All technically possible means and infrastructures are, and will continue
to be, deployed to protect our E-mail Service environment from any
potential threats. Nevertheless, complete protection against these dubious
activities is not possible. The following recommendations could help you
(as an individual) and the Commission (as an organisation) to minimise
their impact. A more detailed document, including an anti-spamming
procedure, from which the following five golden rules have been extracted,
can be found on the OPTIMAIL web-site 1 .
Each Director General will designate for his Directorate General a person
to deal with these issues and to act as point of contact for questions
concerning the interpretation and/or implementation of these rules.
Rule 1 - Do not panic
Legitimate e-mail users should not panic, because in most cases they have
not been specifically targeted. The reception of spam-mail, containing
material which is in violation of existing e-mail usage policies, or the
inadvertent activation of spam hyperlinks is not in itself a breach of
staff rules or defined e-mail usage policies. The Commission would of
course not undertake any administrative action in such cases, provided the
recipient does not send the abusive or spam-mail to somebody else.
Rule 2 - Avoid being a spammer yourself
The Commission will not tolerate spam-mail originating within its
organisation. This means that you must not be the originator or relay of
any message, that is unsolicited by one or more of its indicated
recipients, and which contains information that is in violation of
existing e-mail usage policies 2 .
Rule 3 - Never unsubscribe or otherwise reply to an alleged spammer
If you are not sure that the message originator is trustworthy (e.g.
newsletter from known Internet-site), you should avoid trying to
"unsubscribe", because your action will only confirm that your
address is valid and active, which will encourage the alleged spammer to
continue to disrupt your daily work. For the same reason and to avoid
retaliation, you should never send them any replies (or threats).
Rule 4 - Never blindly trust an originator's address
Spammers usually have invalid e-mail addresses and one of their most
popular techniques is to hide their true identity by impersonating another
e-mail user's valid address. This technique, also known as
"spoofing", usually results in trustworthy e-mail users being
wrongly accused. You should therefore be very careful making accusations
or even assumptions, based on received e-mail properties.
Rule 5 - Start by trying to solve the problem yourself
First start by simply deleting e-mail that you consider being unsolicited
or in violation of existing e-mail policies. If they continue to arrive
regularly, use Outlook's "Rules Wizard" function 3 to
automatically detect and remove them from your mailbox. If this still does
not solve the problem or the e-mail contains illegal material, please
contact your Local Help-Desk for assistance or further handling of the
case by the competent authorities.
FOOTNOTES
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1. Optimail
2. Administrative Information Note N°
88-2002
3. Have a look at the available WebSheets
on the topic
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