SpamCop Forum

Scheduled Service Outage - Thursday May 10, 2012

Tue, 08 May 2012 01:15:23 -0400

The SpamCop.net Reporting Service is scheduled to be offline and unavailable for up to four (4)
hours beginning about 9:00 a.m. PDT on Thursday May 10, 2012. The reason for the outage
is to bring you a major update to the SpamCop.net Reporting Service, including the capability
for parsing and reporting IPv6 sourced spam and IPv6 address space. The new version will show
as SpamCop.net v4.7.0.019

The SpamCop.net website, including spamcop.net, www.spamcop.net, members.spamcop.net and
mailsc.spamcop.net will be down during the upgrade. Emailed spam submissions will continue to
be accepted but will not be processed during the downtime. Once the service is brought back
online you can expect a delay of several hours as the backlog of spam is processed.

The SpamCop mail service, newgroups and forums is not affected by this scheduled outage and
will continue to be available throughout the upgrade.

Thank you in advance for your patience

Richard

[Resolved] Brief Spamcop outage, today at 11 am PDT

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:18:51 -0400

Sorry for the late notice, but we need to do a quick database upgrade today, 6/30, at 11 am PDT. This will require placing the website into maintenance mode for one hour.

Thanks for your patience!

[Resolved] May 22 System outage

Sun, 22 May 2011 08:11:13 -0400

We had a system outage early this morning which affected Internet facing servers. The problem has been identified and the servers have been brought back on line. Sorry about the interruption in service and thanks for your patience!

Bad Email Addresses

Sun, 15 May 2011 07:35:46 -0400

Situation arose in that some users had "subscribed" to receive notifications of new Posts/Topics into various Forum sections. However, for whatever reasons, they changed, dropped, whatever the e-mail address used to Register to this Forum. Unfortunately, the error messages involved went to an address that apparently has been 'adjusted' to ignore the spam. Haven't heard back from either JT ot the support person, but it seems an easy assumption that the other server reacted to all these 'bad email address' notifications and tossed them into the grinder. Unfortunately, that address is still used in other parts of this Forum app, and it was just brought to my attention that these functions are now broken as well.

My work here ....

cleared out the spool files that have held and caused the repeated attempts to send the notifications to the configured-from-day-one address.
configured a new Group with much modified Permissions in hopes of gettting the attention of these users.
modified those user accounts to move them into this new Group.

Normally, a PM would be sent to advise these users of the actions performed. However, in most cases, this would also caise an e-mail to be sent to notify the user that there was a new PM. Note: the reason for all of this is because they have a bad address in thier Registration data here. Why start another cycle of garbage traffic between the systems involved here?

So, if you log on and only see a couple of Forum sections, check your "Group" assignment, see the 'Bad Email Address' tag, ... fix the problem. You'll probably want to send a PM to the Forum Admin to advise that you have handled it. Noting for instance that one user Subscribed to several Forum sections asking for notifications of any and all new Topics, Posts, etc. several years ago, yet has only Posted here less than a half-dozen times .. and at this point, not having any idea how long ago the Registered e-mail address went 'bad' .... I don't feel the need to add another chore to my task list to notice that 'you' got around to fixing the problem. I'm actually thinking that in all likelyhood, I'll probably never here from you, as you have moved on, dropped out, whatever.

However, just in case, this Announcement has been offered. I probably should add this to the Forum FAQ but it just seems so obvious that no one reads it

Follow-up depends on what JT/support has to say. Obviously, the 'system address' needs to be updated. Yeah, I suppose I could change it to one of mine, but .... it's not my system, I only get to 'play' here.

March 23, 2011 Planned Maintenance

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:21:58 -0400

From the newsgroups;

QUOTE

From: Richard W
Newsgroups: spamcop,spamcop.geeks,spamcop.help
Subject: Planned Maintenance Window - Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Followup-To: spamcop
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:39:40 -0600
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 23:39:42 +0000 (UTC)
Xref: news.spamcop.net spamcop:172529 spamcop.geeks:30941 spamcop.help:95135

Planned Maintenance Window - Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The SpamCop Reporting System will be offline and unavailable for
approximately one hour beginning at 10:00 a.m. PDT Wednesday, March 23,
2011. The reason is to perform some routine maintenance as well as to
introduce upgrades that will begin IPv6 support in the SpamCop Reporting
System.

This outage will affect only the SpamCop reporting system. It will not
affect the SpamCop/CESmail email service, newsgroups or forums.

Emailed spam submission will be accepted while the site is offline but
processing will be delayed until the system is brought back online.
There will also be delays when the system is brought back online as the
system deals with the backlog.

Richard

Looking at the graphic at the top tight of the screen, it appear that the time slipped a bit, but the action has happened.

We have lost Miss Betsy

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 12:16:49 -0500

http://www.fergusonlee.com/_mgxroot/page_10780.php?id=858928

QUOTE

Elizabeth M. Henley
Born in Manhattan NYC, New York on Dec. 23, 1941
Departed on Nov. 21, 2010 and resided in Bedford, IN.

BEDFORD - The family of Elizabeth (Betsy) M. Henley mourns her passing on Nov. 21, 2010 in Bedford.

She was born Dec. 23, 1941, in Manhattan NYC, New York to George E. and Laura Thompson Merritt.
Her memory will be cherished by her husband of 47 years, Joseph L. Henley; daughter, Laura Henley of
Bedford; son, Matthew Henley and wife, Karen of Flemington, N.J.; daughter Jane Henley and husband Ben
Kupronis of Atlanta, Ga.; six grandchildren, Jack, Peter, Brendan, Will, Paul and Kate; and foster
son, Ben Hart of Salisbury, Md.
She is reunited with her parents; halfsisters, Marjorie Ellersieck and Madeline August; and her
halfbrother, Donald Merritt.
Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church with Father Rick
Eldred officiating. Burial will be in Fort Lincoln Cemetery, Brentwood, Md.
Friends may call from 4-8 p.m. on Tuesday at the Ferguson-Lee Funeral Home with a rosary being said at
7:30 p.m.
The family suggests memorial contributions be made to the St. Vincent de Paul Society or HHAFFA
(Hoosier Hills Armed Forces Families Association).

NOTE: there is a guestbook available.

Talked to daughter Laura again today. She's going to try to package up and send me some more background data, as their local paper has seen fit to make any access to their news/articles a pay-to-view option.

I knew of a few things that she did in her 'free' time, but ... what an amazing list of things I knew nothing about. No idea how she managed to work 'us' into her life/schedule. Just a few things that Laura offered up in a short phone call ....

she cared for the vigil candles at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church for more than 25 years
worked at the local food pantry
volunteer for the local United Way
volunteer at the local "Little Theater"
volunteer at the Lawrence County Museum
volunteer at the Bedford Boys & Girls Club
founded the Hoosier Hills Armed Forces Families Association
received a Woman of Excellence award a couple of years back

Miss Betsy and husband Joe commemoratng a combined 36 years of Red Cross volunteer/staff service

The couple had been selected to be the Grand Marshalls of a local parade (to kick off the holidays) .... daughter Laura rode in the car with her Dad

As stated, caught Laura as she was heading out for an appointment, so this was just a quick list of what she could think of ...... how Miss Betsy found the time to do all the fantastic stuff here is nothing short of amazing.

My relationship with her dates back to helping her through the configuration and usage of Outlook Express 4 (if I remeber correctly) .... she called on me to help recover the Hoosier Hills Chapter of the American Red Cross web-sire after it got hacked .... and then her involvement with this Forum and its associated bits. Believe me, I have missed her much for a number of months while she was fighting to get well. I have no doubt that everyone here will definitely miss her guiding and shining light.

September 14, 2010 Planned maintenance

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 20:37:55 -0400

Courtesy Richard W posting in Newsgroups:

QUOTE

From: Richard W
Newsgroups: spamcop.help,spamcop,spamcop.geeks,spamcop.mail
Subject: Re: Planned Server Maintenance and Upgrades
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:44:10 -0600
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:44:11 +0000 (UTC)

Note this work has been rescheduled from 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. PDT

Richard

Richard W wrote:
> Scheduled server maintenance and software upgrades will be taking place
> starting at 9:00 a.m. PDT Tuesday, September 14, 2010. During this time
> the SpamCop Reporting Service will not be available for a period of up
> to three hours in duration. Visitors will find the site in maintenance
> mode.
>
> Emailed spam submissions will be accepted, but processing will be
> delayed until after the maintenance process. There will also most likely
> be a processing delay for several hours after the service is brought
> back online to clear the backlog.
>
> The purpose of this maintenance will be to deploy a new version,
> bringing SpamCop to version 4.6.1-006 and fixing some minor bugs.
>
> This will not affect the SpamCop/CESmail email service, newsgroups or
> forums.
>
> Richard

[Resolved] 2010-08-16 Email delivery issues

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:07:46 -0400

Admin Edit: Moved here from the E-mail support Forum section. See http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11500 for the background Discussion.

Thanks for the heads up on the email delivery issues. We are working on the problem and hope to have it resolved shortly. Thanks for your patience.

email-support

Bad behavior

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:58:10 -0400

I just suspended a user's Posting ability for a couple of days due to what I'll call abuse of the PM system here.

QUOTE

I get ridiculed by smug answers when i post a question on the forum

so i will kindly ask if u know the answer becuz i have searched and have found no links and i don't have a week to read FAQs and every pinned thread

And with that for an introduction, this user decides to start sending PM traffic to a whole bunch of folks, some of whom haven't been seen in these parts since the dark ages. One specifically states that she does not want any PMs sent in her direction. By the tme I saw what was happening and went through the process, this user had already sent out seven copies of the same remarks and a further request for help. No idea how many more would have been sent had I not stepped in.

Sorry, this is not what a public Forum is for or the way it's used ... and certainly not the reason for the PM function. Hard to believe that this user doesn't havre the time to actually try to construct a good query or make a single Post to ask the question that could be answered by any one of the thousands of other users .... but is willing to sit there and abuse the PM system and send copies directly to a boat-load of people. Again, some of the folks targeted haven't been live here in ages, so no idea just where he/she decided to start with snaggeing names to begin with.

Yeah, yet another smug answer.

Handling of some Accounts

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:29:40 -0400

Several Accounts have been moved into Banned status. Users involved attempted an "e-mail account change" action, but never followed up on that sequence of events. One chose to use a known non-functional address, so the corresponding e-mail to 'confirm the action' was never received. Others used a 'new' GMail account. Several advisory/request-for-followup e-mails were sent by myself and Farelf, sent from a spamcop.net account, GMail accounts, Yahoo accounts (attempting to work around any possible 'move to spam/junk/trash Folder actions) with absolutely no response from these folks. Could pretend that these folks set their GMail Accounts up to 'automatically delete' anything looking like spam, but ?????? Timeframes involved range from 220 days to over a week. So if you're one of these folks and are wondering why your Account was Banned .....

[Resolved] 7 May2010 - Deferred Incoming e=mail issue

Fri, 07 May 2010 13:28:22 -0400

As seen in incoming deferred issue

QUOTE

05/07/2010 - reports of deferred mail

I am receiving reports of mail being deferred by our inbound mail servers with 4.x.x responses. We are investigating.

email-support

[Resolved] SpamCop/CESmail issue

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:00:08 -0400

As posted on the news page for the e-mail system;

QUOTE

Apr 5, 2010

•[21:02 EDT] A disk problem on one of the filtering servers has resulted in some mail deliveries being delayed today. The problem has been fixed and all delayed email is currently being delivered. No mail was lost during this problem. We apologize for the inconvenience.

[Resolved] e-mail servers down

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:03:55 -0400

Apologies for coming in so late to the game. Current status is unknown, other than the primary application servers have crashed.

Voice-mail as been left for JT. A ecently hired email-support person is awae of the issue (noting that he/she has been logged in here and was seen within the Topics/Discussions relating to this outage.

Perhaps see http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...ost&p=74444 and any follow-on there, until something comes up and I can add to this.

[Resolved] www/mailsc server farm problems - 3 Mar 2010

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:56:12 -0500

Yes, there is an unannounced problem with the www/mailsc.spamcop,net server farm. There is traffic both here in the Forum and over in the newsgroups with folks asking/complaining about it. However, nothing official from any of the staff has been made available at this point.

Emergency Update of Reporting System 15Jan2010

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:12:02 -0500

From the Newsgroups (and admitting that the data is after-the-fact in this Post)

QUOTE

From: Richard W
Newsgroups: spamcop,spamcop.help,spamcop.mail,spamcop.geeks
Subject: SpamCop reporting site emergency update
Followup-To: spamcop
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:39:11 -0600
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:39:04 +0000 (UTC)

Sorry for the short/no notice, but this just came across the wire about
five minutes before it took effect.

An emergency Hot Patch is being applied to the SpamCop Reporting side
servers starting at 1430 -0700 hrs (PST). The SpamCop reporting site
will be in maintenance mode for up to two hours while this patch is
being applied.

The reason for the patch is to get the parser to recognize the
X-Originating-IP line for a whole bunch of new Hotmail servers.

Richard