This is my first post at this forum. I'm still learning my way around. Please excuse if this is covered elsewhere.

Since the vast majority of spam that lands in my SpamCop Held Mail folder originates or is routed through servers in China - and since spam-friendly ISPs there don't care about this continued theft of global time, money, and bandwidth - I would like to set up some sort of filter or scri_pt that devnulls all incoming mail with a .cn anywhere in the header, message body, or message links.

I realize that most links in a message don't have a .cn in them... and wonder if this proposed filter could somehow check a WhoIs server to see if a spam site link resolves to a .cn domain. The filter would then forward any incoming mail that matches the criteria to a devnull address... such as devnull@[my domain].com. This would save me time and bandwidth, and allow me to concentrate on reporting spam-friendly ISPs in the US in general and California in particular (where my attorney is in a position to actually do something about their violation of several anti-spam and existing torte laws).

Hope I described this clearly. Anyway, has anyone ever worked up anything like this? Is it even possible? I'm sure there are lots of very nice people in China, but I don't happen to know anyone there. I am no longer willing to receive any incoming email from China, until it cleans up its act. Or Brazil. Or Korea. Or India. Or a dozen other countries with ISPs that pollute and abuse the Internet with cavalier impunity.

Thanks in advance for any pointers or tips. I'm willing to hire a programmer to help with this. FYI, my domain was joe-jobbed a few months ago. Interested forum users are welcome to check out this page at my site for a quick video about what happened and what we're doing about it:

http://www.art101.com/video/nospam.html

Cheers and best wishes to everyone who fights spam.

Hi, Art!
...This is HIGHLY unusual -- a whole day passed an no replies from anyone who frequents these fora. Well, if you don't mind a reply from a relatively unknowledgeable member of the spam-fighting community:
...A lot of us would appreciate something along the lines you suggest (not only from cn but also tw and comcast, in my case). The good news is that as spam coming from such locations gets reported, the SCBL (SpamCop blocklist) will include them and e-mails services that use the SCBL will block them.

The age old problem... I saw the original and didn't respond because I figured somebody else would say something...


From within webmail, go to Options \ Spamcop Tools \ Select your email filtering blacklists.

The only ones available on a country-basis are South Korea, China, Nigeria, Argentina, and Brazil.

No help for Taiwan or Comcast, but the other blocklists shown on that screen will get you a long ways...

Thanks. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I already know how to use SpamCop filters to block incoming mail from China, Comcast, India, etc. I want to know how to _devnull_ incoming mail associated with specific countries (and Comcast). I want to know how to kill it forever, delete it, make it disappear and vanish. Reporting spam to ISPs that don't care and take no action is worse than useless. It's a further waste of time and bandwidth. I don't want to sift through a ton of held messages. I want to concentrate on the spam and spammers I'm in a position to effectively help shut down.

Ah, sorry. I didn't read your original post carefully enough.

I'm afraid the only way to do what you want is to run your own mail servers. Spamcop doesn't provide any such feature.

The closest it comes is with filters in webmail - but they're nearly useless (to me, at least) since they only run when you log in.

good work!!

Actually, you can run them by clicking the little "funnel" picture, but its usually only available if you have it set to not run filters at login (though you can override the default and have filters run at login, and when you click the icon).

Also you'd want to enable the filters to run on any folder.

The point I was trying to make is: The webmail filters do me no good since I don't use webmail. I have my Spamcop mail forwarded to me and use IMAP to access the Held mail (when needed). The only time I log in to webmail is when I want to change my blocklist options.

But this is drifting off topic, so I'll shut up now...

oh, I see. Sorry, my mistake. I misunderstood what you said.