How to Report Abuse
by Curve
After any article on IRC, and especially after our last edition dedicated to DoS/DDoS, we get many queries from people asking how they can report abuse. Hopefully this short 'how to' should help!
Reporting Abuse to DALnet:
Advertising (spamming):
Mass inviting to channels, or spam you receive with website addresses may be reported to the MassAds team. Remember, you should never go to a website you are spammed with - most are infected with trojans and if you visit them you may be infected in the background without you ever knowing!
Contact: massads-report@dal.net
Exploits
Most abuse which is malicious may be reported to the Exploits Team. The sorts of things they can help you with are botnet attacks on channels, infected websites, threats to attack the network, shell accounts being used for abuse and open proxies.
Contact: http://kline.dal.net/exploits/contact.htm for most abuse; or
http://kline.dal.net/exploits/info.htm to report attacks, or threats to attack, DALnet.
Services Abuse:
If you encounter service impersonators, or you know of people who are 'collecting' dozens of nicknames and channels, or are selling nicknames, channels or Sop/Aop access - then the Services Abuse team can help you. You should also contact them if you have been flooded with memos, or if you know someone who has added *!*@* to the Sop/Aop list of a channel, or a nickname's access list.
Contact: sabuse@dal.net
Reporting Abuse Elsewhere:
Denial of Service Attacks
If another user threatens to 'packet' you, or says they have already attacked you, then you should save the log and send a complaint to their ISP or shell-account provider. In order to find out whom to contact, you can do one of two things. If their IP has resolved to a host name (eg nasty@dial-ip.blah.com), then try emailing abuse@blah.com. If they have an IP address, you can try to resolve it via the command /dns [nickname] or you could use a site such as SamSpade.org which can give you lots of information on a host name or IP if you simply whack them into the box marked 'Do Stuff'.
Advertising
If you are spammed with a website, then it is always worthwhile reporting the abuse to the company who hosts that website. You should supply a log of the spam as proof. Some popular abuse-reporting sites are:
Geocities abuse form
Tripod and Angelfire abuse form
AOL abuse
Otherwise, try emailing abuse@blah.com if you are spammed with http://girls.blah.com or putting the website name, minus the 'http://www.' into the 'Do Stuff' box of SamSpade.org for more information.
Illegal Activities
If you encounter activities on the network which you believe to be illegal, then you should report the matter to your local law enforcement. Remember to send a clear explanation, written for people who may not know what IRC is, and include dated, timestamped, unedited logs with your time-zone detailed. Some useful contacts are:
www.inhope.org - The website of the Association of Internet Hotline Providers in Europe. This site provides contacts, help and information for many European countries, as well as the USA and Australia.
Internet Watch Foundation - A good site for UK users to report child pornography.
Internet Fraud Complaint Center - The FBI lay behind this organisation and it is useful for reporting Internet fraud (stolen credit cards etc), in the USA.
Cyber Criminals - A site containing links on where to report all manner of online crime in the USA and Canada.
Crimestoppers - Australia - report crime via an on-line form.
Things to Remember:
Neither DALnet, nor any law enforcement agencies, can help you unless you provide solid information. If you send in a report saying only "Xboy is a hacker!", the information is of no use to anybody. So, when sending in a report, please try to include the following:
- A clear, concise explanation of the problem. Try to write your explanation as though it will be read by someone who has never used IRC
- Your contact details - name, email, phone number if possible
- A full and unedited log - if the log is big, then you could also copy the most important parts into a separate document and reference for easy-reading
- Ensure any logs you send are dated and timestamped
- The host, or IP, of any person involved. Enable 'show addresses' and 'whois on query' in mIRC options or /whois the person you are complaining about
- The time-zone any logs you send are from
All these things are of
equal importance and will mean the difference between your complaint being investigated, or your complaint being chucked in the trash!
İCurve/Emma curve@dal.net 2002
