This webpage is excerpted from Berkeley Computing & Communications, Volume 12, Number 2 (Spring 2002) http://istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Spring2002/

Responding to objectionable electronic communications

by Karen Eft, IST–AVCO

Individual email or websites

The Campus cannot and does not wish to be the arbiter of the contents of electronic communications. See the UC Electronic Communications Policy section III Allowable Use. Therefore we cannot protect users from encountering material they might find annoying or offensive. This includes material that offends many recipients but that is actually legal in our State, such as adult pornographic material.

If you wish to report annoying or offensive email or websites, you will need to contact the responsible party's Internet service provider (ISP). The vast majority of unwanted online material encountered by the campus community comes from off-campus sources. For all such situations you would contact the relevant off-campus ISP — not campus authorities. A website called Abuse Net (http://abuse.net/lookup.phtml) enables you to look up the contact addresses for ISPs. You can then ask the ISP to take action against their user in accordance with whatever applicable terms and conditions for appropriate use they have in place.

When you want to report material that was sent from or posted at a Berkeley campus online resource (i.e., its address includes .berkeley.edu) you can contact abuse@berkeley.edu. Note that reports emailed to abuse@uclink and abuse@socrates are automatically routed to this centralized address.

Inappropriate email messages often display forged "From" information as an attempt to hide the sender's identity. This can sometimes be overcome by viewing additional header information that is often suppressed from view when using programs such as Eudora or Pine to read your email. To report any inappropriate email, whether from off-campus or campus locations, you will be asked to include the complete message header. If you use Eudora software to read your email, you can expand the headers by going to the message window and clicking on the button in the upper menu bar that says "blah, blah, blah". To find out how to display the complete headers in other email programs, consult your email "help" system. Abuse Net provides details on how to interpret email headers (go to http://www.abuse.net/howwork.html and scroll down the page to "How can I tell where to complain?").

Campus mailing lists

Under certain circumstances you will receive email from an official campus mailing list or listserv. See the Interim e-Berkeley Policy section on Electronic mass mailings (http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/e-Berk/mailings.html). Complaints regarding email received via an official list should be sent to the manager of the list or to the administrator of the department or unit sponsoring the list.

However, for any campus mailing list that is not official, you have the right to be removed in order to avoid receiving material you don't want. Contact the list owner. The "abuse" office will intervene when the list owner doesn't resolve the issue.

It is very important that you do not address an entire list about the problem, i.e.,
by replying to "all". Instead, contact only the person responsible for the list.

To identify a mailing list owner:

• If it is a Majordomo list, you can send email to listname-owner@server name.
• Some other types of mailing lists allow you to look up the owner's address.

If you cannot determine how to identify the list owner, contact the administrators of the server on which the list resides (send email to "consult@", "postmaster@", or "root@" the server name) to get help with list owner contact information.

Measures to reduce unwanted email

Never reply to "remove me from this list" addresses in unsolicited email messages. This only confirms that your email address is active and often results in more unwanted email to your address. Also, be wary of clicking on a URL embedded in an unsolicited message, as this may reveal your address to that website. For additional information see How to reduce the flow of junk email in the Summer 1998 issue of BC&C.

Special cases

There are some special contact methods for responding to the following types of electronic communications:

• Report inappropriate newsgroup postings to the originator's service provider, who can be identified from the "NNTP-Posting-Host" header line. (The newsfeed.berkeley.edu backbone transit server does not have control over the content of Usenet news.)
• If you receive email or see a website describing a commercial opportunity which you believe involves fraud or other violations of consumer or economic law, you can contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection (http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/bcppriv.htm).
• Reports about violations of civil laws such as libel or slander or about non-life-threatening criminal activities may be sent to policy@berkeley.edu for referral to the appropriate contact.
  For threats of violence or other emergencies, call the Campus Police at 510-642-6770.

Privacy

Service providers are not able to release information identifying individuals involved in alleged inappropriate use, or to describe actions taken in response to your reports. Exceptions require legal documents such as a court order or subpoena. Staff who administer the campus electronic communications abuse address will only reveal the identity of the reporting party to authorized investigators.

Related websites

• Responding to Inappropriate Use of Computing and Network Resources (http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/abuse.html).
• Information Technology Policy Articles (http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/articles.html).
• Online Hoaxes (http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7015/hoaxes.html).