I fired up my email client this morning, and started sending my spam into spamcop int he usual way when suddenly I started receiving bounce messages from spamcop, telling me that my spam reports were bouncing.


Basic message I get back:

content-type: message/delivery-status

Final-Recipient: rfc822;deputies[at]admin.spamcop.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.x.0 - Message bounced by administrator (delivery
+attempts: 0)
Reporting-MTA: dns; per-qv1-irony2.iinet.net.au


iinet, btw, is my ISP - it is not my mailserver, it is the second step in my mailing process and afaik shouldn't be an issue... it is an intermediary only.


I can't give a report number to you becuase it never successfully got to you (so it seems) and I'd like to know why...

I have no idea if this is an actual mailhost problem, but I am using that system, so I thought it might be a reasonable guess. I've been using it for several months now with no problem.

I also used nslookup to check that: my current computer, my actual domain, and my mail serve all were not lblacklisted (none fo them were blacklisted).

I tried emailing the guys at deputies at admin.spamcop.net (yes I did substitute correctly) but it also bounced.

What's going on?



Taryn

Hi, Taryn!
...Are you certain that your e-mails are being bounced by SpamCop? Perhaps IINet is doing the bouncing. It's hard to tell from the snippet of bounce message you posted -- I presume that is all you got. Are you able to post the internet headers of the bounce?
...For more information on how to view the internet headers of an e-mail, please see SpamCop FAQ: How do I get my email program to reveal the full, unmodified email?.

Also, the message you posted appears to be from that message to the deputies as you should not be emailing your spam to that address (unless that is the problem).

The last I heard, Spamcop does not bounce ANY messages with the exception of a couple specific hosts they have had problems with. If you were forwarding your spam to the deputies address and not paying attention to any warnings they sent back, they could have blocked your messages.

per-qv1-irony2.iinet.net.au [203.59.2.51] is not listed by the SCBL, has no recent reports against it, would be reported to abuse[at]iinet.net.au, and has lost about 95% of its average mail volume per SenderBase.

OTOH, it "was found in 9 lists (of 260 tested)" per drbcheck (dr. jørgen mash's DNS database list checker).

Wow, really quick response! This is great


ok to start with: no I wasn't certain - I wasn't sure how to tell these things, but when I looked deeply into the headers I did notice:
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON[at]per-qv1-irony3.iinet.net.au>

which does kind of imply that I was wrong - that it was in fact iinet and not spamcop.

So I do apologise <blush>


ah - yes, I just grabbed the latest of the bounces - all my spam reports were going to my submit.xBay<goobledegook here> address.


erm, this looks like it should be meaningful - and probably would help me understand what's going wrong. Would you be very kind and explain what it all means?

Thanks heaps,
Taryn

Sure. I see that you're new here. Welcome!That's the SpamCop Blocking List Service. Not having your outgoing mailservers listed on it is a Good Thing. This might have been better phrased as "has no Report History", also a Good Thing.If a SpamCop Report was filed against it at the time I posted, that Report would have gone to abuse[at]iinet.net.au (that is where the Parser portion of the SpamCop Parsing & Reporting Service would have suggested sending a Report).The home page for SenderBase can be found at http://www.senderbase.org/.The home page for drbcheck (dr. jørgen mash's DNS database list checker) can be found at http://moensted.dk/spam/.

thanks
and thanks for all the explanation - makes much more sense now.

Two new questions :

1) Out of curiosity, what does it mean when it has "lost about 95% of its average mail volume ". Is this normal or is it due to them bouncing a lot of mesages or similar?

2) is there some reason why it is blocking my emails that are going to spamcop?
After all, I have been emailing all morning to a variety of recipients - and it's only been the ones to spamcop that have been bounced back.

Cheers and thanks,
Taryn

You're welcome.No, it's not normal. SenderBase shows an Average Magnitude at 5.4 (about 329K emails/day), whereas it shows the Last day's Magnitude at 4.1 (about 16K emails/day). That's quite a drop.That's the subject of a conversation that needs to happen between the iinet Administrators and a SpamCop Administrator. You can get the ball rolling by starting at the bottom of General information about SpamCop : How can I contact a SpamCop representative? (or emailing service[at]admin.spamcop.net from a system that is not blocked, perhaps MSN Hotmail or Yahoo!) and having iinet start at Help for abuse-desks and administrators : How can I contact a real person about this?. Please make sure that you include the ENTIRE bounce messages INCLUDING HEADERS (for both Deputies and your Submit Address, as they are handled by different systems). Thanks!

...No apology is necessary -- I can appreciate being new to all this and not being quite certain of what is happening! <g>

E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP? Updated!
Perhaps yet another update needed?

A good thread to keep in mind with this - it certainly does sound like ithe problem I was having.

As an update, I have tried sending "spamples" again today and it seems to have worked (maybe it was just a phase-of-the-moon thing?). I'll see if that situation changes, and if I am blocked again I'll add iinet to the list. I don't want to unnecessarily blacklist them...

Thanks to all for your help!
Taryn

the people that post here are VERY supoprtive and are more than willing to spell stuff out for people like me that are new to the programming/IT world.

They're not too rough on me when I ask stupid questions, either.

Thanks, Brandon.The only stupid question is the one you're too afraid to ask.

I just joined up to spamcop having recieved three spams this morning and wanting to find out how to stop/report them.
Forwarded on these three to the address given i.e. submit.16charANcodeNMBR[at]spam.spamcop.net and next thing I get the following message back from spamcop-autoresponder:

SpamCop encountered errors while saving spam for processing:
SpamCop could not find your spam message in this email:
(with the whole email copied and all the spam sender details and message in it!)

Well, NOT IMPRESSED! I did what it said, why has this happened?


Edit: Jeff G. replaced the Member's confidential Submit Address.

Lesley,

Welcome. I'm sorry to hear that you are having a problem submitting the spam messages via email. Exactly how are you trying to submit the spam messages via email? The safest way is via email "as attachment" or via the web form - please see How do I submit spam via email? and How do I get my email program to reveal the full, unmodified email?.

Assuming you did the forwarding correctly (as attachment, etc.) there have been a lot of people reporting difficulty emailing spam to spamcop. Their ISP's are blocking or stripping out the spam from the email they forward to Spamcop. See the aforementioned discussion: E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP? Updated!

edit: typo/grammar

Hi, lesley!
...Welcome!
...Please be aware that reporting does not necessarily stop the spammers. The principal goal is to place the spam source's IP address on the SpamCop blocklist (if enough users like you and me report that source) and to let the spam source's admin know that spam is coming from one of their machines....There are a number of possible reasons for this. One is, as Jeff G pointed out, above, that you may have unintentionally submitted the spam for parsing in a manner other than that expected by the parser. Another is that the spam had no "body" (message). Yet another is that the spam is constructed in a way that violates e-mail protocols that the SpamCop parser must enforce in order to ensure that it is interpreting the spam correctly so as to minimize the possibility of a mistake in deciding what to do about the spam.

Thanks, yeah - I guess I've just found way too much "usenet bitterness" floating around and spilling over into fora elsewhere - it's refreshing to find a place that is so full of helpful and polite people

Anyway, as an update - I've been sending in spam successfully over the last few days, so I'll just tag it down as a one-off problem... but at least I know where to go for help if I ever need it

Cheers,
Taryn

Thanks for the update, Taryn!