For the last long while I have been SpamCop reporting only the scams that come my way, on the theory that closing them down might save some suckers some cash. (There are just too many of the other types of spam to go to the trouble.)

I think that I can remember when SpamCop Reports automatically put the Abuse department of the ISP of the Reply-To address as one of the reporting targets, and allowed an unlimited number of User-Defined Notice targets. Now the Reply-To notice is gone, and there's just one User-Defined one.

I am guessing that the Reply-To notice is gone (even though, as I recall, it was unchecked by default) because the Reply-To is too easy to spoof; I have no complaint about this. These days I try to figure out just where the scammer does want to receive replies (which might be the Reply-To or some address in the text) and enter abuse@<wherever> there, with a note "Note contact address xxxx@<wherever>," sometimes with the addendum "Of course, it is possible that this is an innocent person the spammer wants to get into trouble."

Lately I have been receiving scam spams that offer the sucker two contact addresses in the text, and I'd like to be able to report them both. Would it be possible to add another User-Defined Notice field, or perhaps go back to the "as many as you like" situation?

I have been using SpamCop.net for reporting scams/spam a long long time (I don't bother with the email screening function, so it's very cheap for me; I do supplement my original donation with periodic "refuelings") . Let me just express my appreciation here for the service to the whole Internet community that SpamCop.net provides.

I'm making a large assumption that you want to sometimes send notification reports to multiple user-defined recipients but that having individual user-defined notes attaching to each of those those is not as important.

You can use that single user-defined address space for multiple addresses - see http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1311 (but note it is 100 char limit, not 255, but not limited to 4 addresses within that over-riding restriction), see also http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8423 and the FAQ link provided in that one.

As you say (for the benefit of others who might read this in times to come), care needs to be taken with "Reply-to:" addresses. In most types of spam those are are forged, any real person behind such a forged address is innocent - see http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/116.html.

You phrased this as a "New Feature Request" (which is a different forum) but it can be regarded as a "Reporting Help" topic if the multiple addressing feature was not understood so I'm leaving it here, where you posted it, unless you want to put your hand up for something additional to the user-defined report provision as it stands.

Scams are important to report. I am not quite sure why you want to add an address to the one that spamcop picks. Usually, the abuse desk spamcop picks is the correct one that would want to make sure that the scammer does not use their network to scam again. There is no point to contacting the scammer since he has tricked someone into allowing him to send his scams. I have not paid any attention to the User Defined Reports - there is discussion somewhere around - because I decided that it was not productive to send reports to the FTC and other reporting places as a copy of the spamcop report. If I did decide to report them, I would send a copy of the spam directly.

You also want to report the contact emails within the scam. A very long time ago, spamcop did report email addresses within the body of the spam. However, the spammers included so many 'innocent bystanders' and reporters were not diligent in identifying the contact addresses, that email addresses are not reported any more.

You can manually report them and many people do since it does protect the gullible. You can cut and paste the email address to the web form and spamcop will give you the abuse address, I believe. It has been so long since I have done that, I am not sure if it still works. Usually, I look them up myself via ARIN and abuse.net.

As you say, IMHO, it is a good deed to notify abuse desks of scam contact addresses and most of them take immediate action. If the scam is 'Yummy Fresh', you will get a different response sometimes than you get if it isn't. And that means to me, that I was the first one to report! But usually, I am not.

Keep up the good work!!

Miss Betsy

Farelf, your assumption is exactly correct, and your information exactly answers my concern. Many thanks.

Miss Betsy, your comments are also appreciated. Cheers, --Howard

Thanks for the feedback Howard, marking this one resolved.

Adding an address to the one that SpamCop picks: I certainly trust SpamCop to know the best addresses for the spam origin, relays, and such; I'm talking about addresses like "Please reply to me at my secret address <spammer>@<someplace>.com. Sometimes this is also the Reply-To address, and sometimes the only contact address is the Reply-To. In those cases, I like to notify the ISP that handles that address by sending a notification to abuse@<someplace>.com. Since Reply-To addresses can easily be spoofed, and, as you say, spammers often like to include "real" addresses or URLs ("you can check on this fatal accident at news.bbc.co.uk/...."), this is the sort of thing that SpamCop, rightly in my opinion, does not automatically generate a notification to, but a person can discern the correct place to notify. And sometimes I get a reply that that account has been canceled.

(Of course, there's always another possibility: If I wanted to get someone in trouble, I might generate a lot of outrageous 419 spam (from a throw-away address and ISP) with that person's address as the contact.) Cheers, --Howard