On September 28, 2006 AwareNautics began receiving e-mail delivery status notification failures for emails that had been sent around the world. These e-mails were never sent by AwareNautics. An average of 15 undeliverable e-mails per day and up to 20 undeliverable e-mails per day have been received by AwareNautics ever since. Someone is obviously spoofing the AwareNautics e-mail address and sending out spam as though it came from AwareNautics on an international basis.

AwareNautics does not maintain mailing lists or send unsolicited mass emails or spam of any kind. AwareNautics sells products primarily through distributors and does consulting, so direct mailing is not a part of company activity. AwareNautics supports responsible e-commerce.

In many ways spamming resembles those automated calling machines that became popular with telemarketers a few years ago. They programmed the machines to dial their way through entire prefixes, and frequently the machines hung people's phone lines and literally wouldn't go away. Likewise, spammers get email address lists and run through them. Further, they appear to have managed to take over individual computers and use them robotically as spambots, issuing commands to them to relay spam. This approach makes it difficult, if not impossible to trace back to the originators.

Under current regulations the anonymity of the Internet makes it almost impossible to trace the origins of email generated by spammers and spambots. Unfortunately there are no international Internet regulations regarding spam. There are organizations that assist people in cases like these but there appears little that can be done in the current environment to stop spoofing and spamming.

You may have received email recently that appears to come from our company, or be about our company. Perhaps the "From" and or "Reply-to" addresses look like they are coming from AwareNautics.com.

These messages are NOT from AwareNautics.com, and these email tactics are NOT condoned by our company in any way.

Most of the undeliverable e-mail spam that we have received appear to be forged from email addresses not associated with AwareNautics.com in any way.

If you are receiving this spam, we extend our apologies.

Regrettably, we do not have any control over the source(s) of these "spoofed" emails misusing our company's name and/or website address. We hope you have not been damaged in any way by receipt of spam that had nothing to do with us.