[Resolved] Spamcop recommending faulty software Options

[adrianbye]

Hi,

Following spamcop's recommendation on this page:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/403.html

I downloaded SpamKiller from Minute Group.

It put a toolbar in my outlook 2003 client. It did a bad job at filtering spam, and I wanted to uninstall it. I was not able to, and I tried a lot of stuff; it continued doing its horrible job with my inbound email (and slowing down outlook). I contacted Minute Group's support, but got no response.

In the end, I had to pay a developer to figure out how to uninstall it. We had to manually disable, and delete 7 DLLs that made up the program.

Now outlook is working great again.

I suggest you take down the recommendation of SpamKiller from that page, and any other places its mentioned.

Adrian

[Wazoo]

Not familiar with the product, no idea when it was added to that FAQ .. but have to start out noting the sentence ....

SpamCop does not review or garantee these third party products.

Google leaves me wondering ... SpamKiller seems to be a product developed by Novasoft, bought by Network Associates, added into the McAfee priduct line .... and then there's this MINUTEGroup outfit with a same-name product ....????

At any rate, http://www.minutegroup.com/faq_spamkiller.htm sure offers the appearance of a standard Windows installer/uninstaller ....??? Your description of "slows down Outlook" doesn't seem to marry up with the description of how it's configured/used ....???

At any rate, neither products seems to have a universal appreciation of being a great product.

[Turmoyl]

You're running a MicroSoft-based operating system and a MicroSoft-based email client. Your entire setup is faulty software. One more little toolbar isn't going to make that much of an impact.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

[petzl]

Hi,

Following spamcop's recommendation on this page:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/403.html

[Snip tedious fix for]
I downloaded SpamKiller from Minute Group.
Now outlook is working great again.

I suggest you take down the recommendation of SpamKiller from that page, and any other places its mentioned.

Adrian

The best way to stop getting spam in you inbox is to get a SpamCop Email Account This allows your email to be downloaded or forwarded to (forwarding is best) and then accuratly spam filtered.Probable spam is put in a Very Easy to Report (VER) folder and email identified as clean to your inbox
This account allows whitelisting of email addresses and or domains you regually receive email from. Most find it very accurate to POP spamcop which You will also be given a SpamCop email address which is the only email address one will ever need.
You are allowed two weeks to decide if it is your cup of tea or not

[DavidT]

WARNING!!!
I just did a little investigating, and I think that regardless of whatever technical flaws the program might have, there are multiple red flags that would suggest that "adrianbye" is on target with the suggestion that SpamCop.net should stop linking to this software. Here are some of the issues I found...some are very minor, but I'm trying to present a complete picture:

1. When visiting the URL given by the OP, you'll see a stale copyright notice at the bottom of the page (2003). No reputable software company allows two years to go by without updating things like that. This is very minor, but little things like this can and should make you suspicious.

2. To quote from the product page "free access (only via the SpamKiller program) to Spamcop’s popular blocking lists." This is misleading and flawed. Other software exists that queries the SCBL (including MailWasher, I think), and there is only *one* SCBL...they imply multiple using a plural. In addition, here's a quote from the FAQ for their SpamKiller (as opposed to the more widely-known SpamKiller from McAfee) "with a dynamic mail servers "black list" that is a free added-on service maintained by SpamCop (www.spamcop.com)" -- several problems there....bad English (well, it's probably their second language) but also the mistaken reference to the ".com" site, having nothing at all to do with *this* SpamCop. This flag is pretty red.

3. There are discrepancies regarding the name of the person behind this software. On the referenced website, his name is given as "Barak Abutbul" and yet in the domain name registration, it appears as "Barak Avitbul." My knowledge of Hebrew is limited, but I don't think that sort of discrpancy is due to transliteration issues...he gave the name differently in different situations. For example, he posted information about another of the "MinuteGroup" programs (VCatch) at Winsite, using the "Avitbul" version of his name:

http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?4754

4. The two parners listed on the "minutegroup" site apparently have had some other joint projects. Here's a mockup of their "DV Networks" site I found on the site of the company that designed the "minutegroup" site:

http://www.121webdesign.com/customers/dvnetworking/

However, when you go to:

http://www.dv-networks.com/

you'll see that this operation is no longer active at that URL, in that it displays a logo for "IPortent" and says "Formely [sic] DVNetworks."

5. If you Google "Barak Abutbul," you'll find some rather disturbing references to this man as being part of a group of hackers (or crackers?) who were charged with breaking into computers at the "Pentagon, US Navy, NASA, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, the Israeli Parliament. Hacked two Israeli ISPs obtaining names and passwords of subscribers." The news articles say that Abutbul reached a plea agreement in exchange for testifying against the others.

6. The company is from Israel, a country not particularly known for producing quality software. I say this due to direct experience with software developers from Israel. The web hosting company I've been using for years uses some of them for their customized control panel, and it is total crap. This one is more of a personal experience "red flag" - YMMV.

7. I downloaded the software and started the install process, until I got to the "Read Me File" portion (the TOS), where there are multiple issues. Instead of referencing the "minutegroup.com" website, there are instead references to the privacy policy at two other domains:

www.mailcleaner.com/private.htm
www.PayyaTec.com/private.htm

The first site contains a seemingly unrelated product, while the second domain has obviously been abandonded and is now controlled by a company that grabs abandoned domains.

I found some other odds and ends that I don't have time to relate here, but there were enough red flags that I decided to abort the software installation process.

I agree that the link to this product should be removed from the SpamCop.net site. Perhaps we can get the attention of an IronPort employee to remove the link? It was not present on the SpamCop site in Nov. 2004, the most recent available version viewable at "archive.org."

DT

This post has been edited by DavidT: Jul 31 2005, 01:44 PM

[Wazoo]

Query and pointers sent upstream. Thanks for the time spent researching.

[Wazoo]

Per Don, link will be removed. Thanks all.

[Richard W]

Per Don, link will be removed.  Thanks all.

It's gone.

Richard

[Jeff G.]

It's gone.

Maybe it hasn't expired yet off the Akamai cache servers, but I still see it.

[Jank1887]

I still see it.

Browser cache? All I see is the spamassassin link:

How can I use the blocklist without mailserver configuration?
Many spam filtering systems automatically use the SpamCop blocklist as part of a larger scheme. SpamCop does not review or garantee these third party products.

One very effective and well-known filter is Spam Assassin; an open-source perl scoring system. Spam Assassin can be installed on unix-based systems in either system-wide or in "user land". It is highly configurable.

This post has been edited by Jank1887: Aug 2 2005, 07:41 AM

[StevenUnderwood]

Browser cache?  All I see is the spamassassin link:

Jeff: And that is all I saw yesterday after you posted as well. Figured the site had updated in the lag so did not post it.

[Jeff G.]

OK, NOW I see it as gone. No, it wasn't a browser cache issue, I tried it with forced refresh, different browsers, and both www and mailsc before posting.

[StevenUnderwood]

OK, NOW I see it as gone.  No, it wasn't a browser cache issue, I tried it with forced refresh, different browsers, and both www and mailsc before posting.

Slow update for that server, I guess.

[Lking]

It's gone.

Richard

Maybe it hasn't expired yet off the Akamai cache servers, but I still see it.

Those at the center of the universe always seem to have the time to question how others spend their time.

[Jeff G.]

Those at the center of the universe always seem to have the time to question how others spend their time.

What is that supposed to mean?

[turetzsr]

Those at the center of the universe always seem to have the time to question how others spend their time.

What is that supposed to mean?

...Good question -- I was wondering the same thing! Maybe it's just us Stevens? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) <g>

[Miss Betsy]

What is that supposed to mean?

...Good question -- I was wondering the same thing! Maybe it's just us Stevens? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) <g>

My guess is that it is a variation of "If everyone is out of step, but Johnny, then maybe Johnny is out of step"

Miss Betsy


Edit: Jeff G. fixed quoting and whitespace.

This post has been edited by Jeff G.: Aug 3 2005, 09:07 AM