> I know that you may not be able to help me with this problem.
> But I have been getting some pretty nasty e-mails with full frontal
> nudity. I have reported it as spam but it getts getting through and I
> know that is probably because this man is changing his id.  I have
> also reported it to SBC abuse and only get their pat response that
> they have taken appropriate action & can not tell me what that action
> is...which i am fine with... as long as they r trying to do something.
> The 1st report or two they were telling me did not have enough
> information but since then I have been forwarding to them as in-line
> text so that his IP address shows.  But this has been going on for
> weeks now.  A while back I had a problem with someone sending to me
> from one of my groups wanting to know my password so they could help
> me with a problem I posted.  I posted back to the room about this &
> was told that I should contact the yahoo
>  abuse when I did abuse acted like they could see a problem with
> that...i mean they pretty much even said that in the e-mail they sent
> me.  Right now I am not even trusting that SBC or Yahoo are trying to
> do anything about this.  Last night I received a request for me to add
> him to my friends.  I denied it with a response this time...& this is
> the 1st time that I have ever responded to him.  But I told him that I
> did not want him contacting me again...& that if he continues to do so
> I intend to talk to my attorney.  Doesn't appear to have helped
> because I have at least two e-mails this morning in my in-box. 

This was my reply (their Yahoo ID is changed):

If a person is targeting YOU with abusive email it is NOT spam. If the person is NOT using SBC, then it serves no purpose to complain to SBC about the issue.

If possible, you should hit the "spam" button on your Yahoo mail BEFORE opening the emails. You should examine the IP address using the tools at sites like http://www.dnsstuff.com/ to identify the abuser's email provider and ISP, and report that abuse to those providers.

As you note, do NOT send the report as attachment and, it is best to send it as Plain Text.

Also make sure your mail settings are to block external image linking and embedding. (Yahoo Mail - Options - Spam Protection - Image Blocking. If you have WinXp SP2 installed and use Outlook Express, see Tools - Options - Security Tab - Download Images (second section) should be checked.)

Again, if it is a blind zombie PC or server bot spewing masses of porn advertising via email, it IS spam. If it is one person harassing you, it is NOT spam, but it IS abuse. Spam filters may block it on sender name, but you must somehow tell your software or mail service that it's spam. Normal spam filters will never tag it as spam before it reaches you because it's not really "spam."

Let me also assure you that the email addresses you asked me about are NOT members of any group I moderate, nor have they ever been according to checks of membership logs.

(Yahoo users read this part!)

You are doing one thing that makes it very easy to get/guess your email address. The profile name you are using is the same one that matches your @yahoo.com email address -- as in "meanderer1" is the profile name and "meanderer1@yahoo.com" is email address. If someone sees your profile in a post in archives, or Yahoo Message boards, or Yahoo chat, or tagged onto the end of your Yahoo Profile or 360 URL (http://360.yahoo.com/meanderer1), they can easily add @yahoo.com to it and - voila - send you email! This is a bad idea... esp. for women because they seem to draw more attention from hormonally challenged men crossing their path online.

I'll use myself for example here - notice my Profile name is shown as OldOnliner or greaterbeloit or Dracomark in groups and on 360 and Flickr and so on. Seeing them and adding @yahoo.com and sending email to the resulting @yahoo address will get you a bounce back because those profiles (which are used on all public areas of Yahoo - for message boards, chat, messenger, 360, etc.) do NOT match my @yahoo.com mail address. The profile I use for Yahoo Mail is NOT any of the ones you see me posting with on Yahoo!

Most abusers are, almost by definition, lazy and stupid. You can eliminate over 90% of the abuse just by making it a *little* hard for the morons to figure out.