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"I'm Gonna Come 'Round Yer House & Get Yer, Sonny!"

Everyone knows spam is bad. No one likes receiving it, but yesterday I received a death threat from someone who thought I'd spammed him. This was a first for me, and it made me think about how important is it for business to firstly be able to know what is, and is not spam, and secondly, how to deal with spam if you get some.

I was sitting at my desk as usual, and the phone rang. I answered and without the usual pleasantries my mystery caller made his first announcement.

"Spam is illegal in the UK." He said.

"Erm, yes. It is." I replied.

"I know where you live." He then reeled off my address, and told me he'd been on the Companies House website and had got the director's (my) home addresses.

"What's your email address, I'll make sure..." I said.

"Oh no, you 'aint getting any information from me. If you email me again, sonny, me & my mates will come round your house and get yer."

Clever, I thought. He's is trying to hold my email list hostage. I can't remove him because I can't identify him, and if I email again, he will presumably put his plan to get me into action.

He then started to repeat his threat, and I started to laugh, which made him really, really angry. I hung up.

How to recognise spam

My potential assassin had made some seriously wrong assumptions. First of all, I had not emailed my list yesterday. The email he was describing was not from me. He has assumed because it contained my name & email address, I'd sent it. Spammers today are a little more sophisticated than putting their own name & address on the emails for the cops to find them. It's the easiest thing in the world to fake the sender's details.

Genuine emails will contain the sender's name, postal address and an unsubscribe link. None of which he found on the offending email. He had resorted to working out my website address from the fake sender's email address, scouring my website to get my phone number, and using Companies House to get my home address.

The rule of thumb is if it's genuine spam, you will not abe able to trace it - not even the cops find that easy.

What to do if you get spam

It's more important what you don't do: my potential assassin has committed a really serious crime by making a death threat against me. I registered it with the police, just in case he spray-painted the outside of my house at a later date. They were actually much more interested than I thought they would be. Because I know he was on my website, I pulled the logs at their request and they are going to trace him. Even his dynamic IP won't protect him. His irate phone call could end up in a jail sentence.

If you get spam, mark it as spam. Your spam filter will deal with it from that point on. If you get an email which you don't want just click on unsubscribe.

Finally, and most importantly, never forget the Internet is never, ever anonymous.