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I've had several messages the last few days disappear into the ether somewhere -- I have my email address set to forward to both my Spamcop address and a Gmail account as a backup, then Spamcop forwards to another external email address. There have been quite a few messages over the past couple days (and maybe longer) that have shown up in the Gmail account, but haven't been delivered to my inbox nor appeared in Held Mail.

Any suggestions as to what's causing this or how to fix it?

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Any suggestions as to what's causing this or how to fix it?

30521[/snapback]

The first step I would take would be to turn off forwarding for a short while and confirm all the messages are reaching your spamcop account, which would eliminate a spamcop receiving problem.

Then I would manually use the redirect link from inside each message (so the end product looks the same and the sender does not get changed) to see if messages are being lost during the spamcop send part of the process.

If you can determine which side is having the problem, you could then contact JT (support<at>spamcop.net) with specific message information (at least date, time, and the accounts from and to) so he can check his logs. At the same time you may also want to open a trouble ticket with the other server involved with the same information. In my experience, it is usually the host receiving from spamcop dropping the message for some reason (implemented a spam filter, for instance), especially when we are seeing no other reports here from other users. Usually, if there is a problem with spamcop, we will know it by the volume of complaints.

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I just wanted to chime in and say that I've had similar problems since Wednesday. This is the first time in three years I've had trouble with Spamcop. I'd guess only about 5% or so of messages aren't delivered properly. I'm currently working on going through the troubleshooting procedures you outlined.

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I just wanted to chime in and say that I've had similar problems since Wednesday. This is the first time in three years I've had trouble with Spamcop. I'd guess only about 5% or so of messages aren't delivered properly. I'm currently working on going through the troubleshooting procedures you outlined.

30557[/snapback]

I'm actually having this problem as well, now that I'm looking at it. I thought it was related to my earlier issue with false positives, but I'm seeing certain emails that are neither in held mail nor making it through to my email account. That's got nothing to do with being on the bl. These emails are simply disappearing. It's not my ISPs spam filter, because I have the emails go to two places (it goes to both Spamcop and Gmail). The messages are showing up in Gmail, but not in Spamcop or the account Spamcop forwards to. Again, it's only a few messages (but, actually important ones).

I had this exact issue with Spamcop a while back and it turned out to be a configuration issue at Spamcop's end http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1463. I'm wondering if that's what's happening again.

In the meantime I'll follow the same steps Steven described above.

edited 7-24-05 by dbiel to fix broken hyperlink

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OK, here's an update:

I turned off auto-forwarding and sent about 30 test e-mails over two days, manually redirecting them. That worked perfectly.

I turned auto-forward back on and sent 10 test messages. Two didn't make it.

It thus seems like there's something going strange in the auto-forwarding routine.

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Just so there's no confusion...

service[at]admin.spamcop.net and deputies[at]admin.spamcop.net can't help with SpamCop Email Filtering Service mail problems.

We don't have access to Jeff's system. Contacting him at support[at]spamcop.net is the way to go.

- Don -

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I had this exact issue with Spamcop a while back and it turned out to be a configuration issue at Spamcop's end (http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1463). I'm wondering if that's what's happening again.

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It would have been nice to have had a reply in that topic showing what the problem had been and how it was fixed. You state here that it was a configuraton issue, but give no data to support that message.

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It would have been nice to have had a reply in that topic showing what the problem had been and how it was fixed.  You state here that it was a configuraton issue, but give no data to support that message.

30594[/snapback]

I emailed with Jeff then, and the email I got from him was:

"In fact, I've spent all evening debugging something and I've determined that this is affecting you, too. One of our commercial email servers apparently has a bug that we're exercising. It's pretty uncommon. The incoming message has to be accepted with a mixture of lines that end in just a linefeed and lines that end in carriage return / linefeed. If that happens, we'll send out the message incorrectly, but only slightly incorrectly. So, the mail works fine for everybody except if the receiving mail server is running qmail (like yours). Qmail servers reject the message and so you never get it.

So, very little mail has these weird line endings and even then it works except if it's going to a qmail system. In your case, though, your scri_pt is consistently generating these, I guess. We've modified the mail flow through the system and I think you'll find that it's working again. I apologize about that. We've opened a ticket with the mail server company so hopefully they can get this fixed quickly.

Jeff"

That was on May 17, 2004.

This happened again in October, and Jeff emailed me saying:

"OK, I've found the problem. Sorry about that. I'll post the resolution shortly at http://mail.spamcop.net/news.php. However, no mail was lost and all of this should be sent to you shortly.

Jeff"

That was October 6, 2004.

However, the news page only has more recent stuff now.

So... that's about all the "data" I have... but, frankly, it seems a bit backwards for you to imply that I was lying about this considering that this is the 3rd time it's happened. I've been a Spamcop customer for many years, it seems a bit ridiculous that I have to *defend* myself every time Spamcop breaks down and doesn't deliver email.

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I see no issue of name-calling going on ... the point is that you show that you had some privileged/private conversation with JT ... the fact that no one else has any of that data does tend to make it hard to offer that data up for someone else to use or apply. The story you have provided is all news to me. I can tell you that I know of nowhere that this tidbit was documented, and yes, the day the "news" page got wiped is documented within this Forum (and never explained either)

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to rewrite any of this as a FAQ item, as I don't know the whole story ... not even sure how 'universal' this is due to JT's comment of "In your case, though, your scri_pt is consistently generating these, I guess." .... What scri_pt is he talking about?

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I see no issue of name-calling going on ... the point is that you show that you had some privileged/private conversation with JT ... the fact that no one else has any of that data does tend to make it hard to offer that data up for someone else to use or apply.  The story you have provided is all news to me.  I can tell you that I know of nowhere that this tidbit was documented, and yes, the day the "news" page got wiped is documented within this Forum (and never explained either)

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to rewrite any of this as a FAQ item, as I don't know the whole story ... not even sure how 'universal' this is due to JT's comment of "In your case, though, your scri_pt is consistently generating these, I guess." .... What scri_pt is he talking about?

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In the first case, the messages that were disappearing were all based on a generated scri_pt on our machine alerting me to things that were happening. That's the scri_pt he was talking about. In the second case, though, it was more random (as is what appears to be happening now).

However, since JT didn't give me any additional data, I don't see how I'm supposed to give you any additional data. Can't you ask him?

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Sure I could, but no guarantee of a response. See the last Announcement ... it's assumed he fixed something, but I've no idea what, no response to those e-mails sent. As far as the case you've documented, again, there was nothing posted anywhere I know that would have caused me to ask any questions. I don't have a SpamCop e-mail account, so my knowledge is based on traffic here and in the newsgroups. Nothing seem, nothing to ask about. As stated a number of times elsewhere, it's hard to jump on something of there's only one person complaining of an issue ... and this one eventually got a few folks to chime in (still nothing in the spamcop.mail newsgroup that I recall seeing on this) ...

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Perhaps coincidental, but working on the Forum a bit and I noticed that the e-mail connection between the forum and the e-mail servers is hosed again ... he's also got another e-mail on that situation.

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As stated a number of times elsewhere, it's hard to jump on something of there's only one person complaining of an issue ... and this one eventually got a few folks to chime in (still nothing in the spamcop.mail newsgroup that I recall seeing on this) ...

30607[/snapback]

It's doubtful too many people have their email going to 2 separate places -- otherwise it would be quite difficult to ever notice this problem was occuring. And without that type of setup, this "evidence" and "data" we have to show to seem to prove to you people that there's a problem won't exist.

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Everybody that has a SpamCop Email System Account that is Autoforwarding has access to at least two email systems, SpamCop and the Autoforwarding Destination, and may have access to more. If they suspect a problem with email messages getting lost, they can send test email messages from elsewhere to their SpamCop email address and their Autoforwarding Destination email address, both separately and in the same email, keeping copies, both with and without Autoforwarding turned on, to see which messages show up and which don't show up. They can then report to JT which exact messages don't show up, including date, time, from, to, subject, and their SpamCop email address (if not included above).

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Everybody that has a SpamCop Email System Account that is Autoforwarding has access to at least two email systems, SpamCop and the Autoforwarding Destination, and may have access to more. 

30614[/snapback]

Hmm. I don't think that's quite the point. The point is that most people *won't even know they're missing messages* because they assume that Spamcop delivers all emails (or, at least, holds them). This is a case where they've done neither.

Honestly, this entire thread keeps going back to the fact that we, the PAYING CUSTOMERS, are being told to defend ourselves and prove that a problem really exists.

I know you guys just want more data to answer these questions, but repeatedly, the tone and the suggestions in the email seems to be accusatory, when we're just reporting problems. I agree with the earlier poster that the reason people may not be complaining about this is that it's likely many people don't even realize they're missing emails.

When Spamcop was a small operation maybe this made sense, but it's now owned by a larger company and this sort of "customer support" isn't what I would expect.

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When Spamcop was a small operation maybe this made sense, but it's now owned by a larger company and this sort of "customer support" isn't what I would expect.

30620[/snapback]

AFAICT, the SpamCop Email System is still pretty much a one-man-show, and JT needs specific data to look for in his logs, so he can state definitively either something like "my logs show that my systems got the email message you referenced and handed it off to $Autoforwarding-destination-mx on $Date at $Time $Timezone - please ask the admins of $Autoforwarding-destination-mx where it went from there" or something like "you're right, I'm sorry, my systems seem to have lost that email message, I'm looking into what went wrong" followed by something like "I found the problem, here's what I did to fix it, here's what I did to prevent this type of problem from happening in the future, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience."
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When Spamcop was a small operation maybe this made sense, but it's now owned by a larger company and this sort of "customer support" isn't what I would expect.

30620[/snapback]

As Jeff G. alluded to, the spamcop email business was NOT part of the Ironport acquisition and is still a one-man operation.

I know you guys just want more data to answer these questions, but repeatedly, the tone and the suggestions in the email seems to be accusatory, when we're just reporting problems. I agree with the earlier poster that the reason people may not be complaining about this is that it's likely many people don't even realize they're missing emails.

30620[/snapback]

I have repeatedly tried to duplicate your problem from multiple sources and have not been able to. I do not believe Spamcop is losing information for everyone. I have no doubt in the reports from yourself and the few other people reporting. We just have no common link (common ISP or server software, etc.) to point JT toward at this point. Getting the log information to JT for him to try and compare to his own logs is the best way to get this situation resolved.

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<snip>

this "evidence" and "data" we have to show to seem to prove to you people that there's a problem won't exist.

30612[/snapback]

...There's nothing you need to "prove" to "us people." But if you are asking for our (other SpamCop users) help, you're expecting too much if you are going to make us guess as to what we need to know (on the other hand, you can't always know what we need until you ask a question and we can reply with a request for more information -- it's not personal or an attempt to act accusatory, it's just a necessary part of the process). Sometimes we can, sometimes we do not know enough, same as any users of an application.
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I don't know if people have seen it yet or not, but here's the latest news:

Jul 25, 2005

    * [18:50 EDT] Today we discovered that one of our filter machines was queueing outgoing mail instead of delivering it. This means that a percentage of mail which should have been forwarded was stuck here. We have corrected this problem and all stuck mail is now being delivered. It may take a few hours for all this mail to be delivered, but we do not believe any mail was lost. We apologize about the problem and will be looking at ways to ensure this doesn't happen again.

It seems like the problem has been tracked down and hopefully will resolve itself soon.

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I don't know if people have seen it yet or not, but here's the latest news:

It seems like the problem has been tracked down and hopefully will resolve itself soon.

30672[/snapback]

Quinn,

Great! Thanks. I just started receiving emails from last Wednesday that I never got. Wish there had been an easier process to get this all settled, but glad it did get settled.

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Wish there had been an easier process to get this all settled, but glad it did get settled.

30673[/snapback]

Did you email support<at>spamcop.net? That is always my second step after checking to see if a problem has been mentioned here.

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