Reporting email abuse and spamming
In order to investigate your report we must have the FULL headers of the spam email provided to us. To access email headers:

1. Go to your Outlook Express inbox and right mouse-click on the relevant message. Select the Properties option.
2. Select the Details tab and you should be able to see the full headers. This allows you to see the full headers for that message. For us to solve your problem it may be necessary for you to send us the details of these headers. Do this by following these instructions:
3. Right click on the newly revealed headers and choose Select All. Right click again on top of the selected text and click Copy.
4. Now click the Windows Start Button, select Run and type 'notepad' in the white text box. Click OK.
5. In Notepad select Edit and Paste to copy the full headers into this file. Save this document by clicking File then Save As. You might want to call the saved file Message Headers for future reference. Do this by typing 'Message Headers' in to the white text box marked File Name.

If you are using a different client, check any online help for how to read message headers. Send header information as plain text, in the body of your email, rather than as an attachment.

Reporting virus and port scanning
If your firewall logs are showing reports of other Metronet customers port scanning, attempting to hack your PC or launching a Denial of Service attack against you, then we need to determine whether or not these are affecting either the quality of service or the speed of your connection.

The number of reported intrusions is very high and each attempt takes time to investigate. With this in mind, we would ask you to report each 'serious' offender as a separate instance, instead of forwarding the full firewall log. With port scanning, if your firewall is reporting a few scans per hour, this should not cause concern, your firewall is protecting you. However, if it is 100 times a minute then this is a different matter, and should be reported immediately.

To see if this activity is affecting your connection you can run a speed test, available at http://speedtester.bt.com/

Remember that some of the intrusion alerts you receive are actually valid responses from servers on the Internet that you are accessing, in this case the server tries to connect back to you to verify that you are who you say you are.

What happens once I have made a report?
Due to restrictions imposed by the Data Protection Act we are not able to provide much feedback. Unless we require additional information we are unlikely to contact you back in person - but this does not mean we are ignoring your report. Provide information in a clear and concise form, including appropriate URLs, firewall logs etc. This will help us complete our investigations much more quickly.

I have been contacted by the abuse team - what next?
If you have received an email from us about an instance of abuse originating from your account there are few things to bear in mind:

• If you are not sure exactly what the problem is then you can contact the support centre through Contact Us. They will then be able to provide you with assistance.
• If you need details of the report, such as email headers from spam emails, please raise the request through Contact Us, rather than reply to the email you have received. This will speed up the process of getting the data you require.
• Remember, we want to get to the bottom of the problem and resolve it! If you have any questions then please get in touch and we will be happy to work through the problem with you.
• Please treat any abuse cases seriously. If we see repeat offenders or it seems that people are not taking action based on us contacting them by email we may have to take further action to maintain the integrity of our network.