Because of Gmail's setup (Label's, not folders, no real inbox, messages almost never deleted, etc.) and the fact that it doesn't "forward as attachment", reporting spam received at a Gmail account can be a bit of a nuisance. You can easily get the full headers, but only one at a time. These forums have given some methods for doing this, but it is still one-at-a-time if you go through the gmail interface. Fine for small quantities, but if you get more, an en'masse method would be preferable.

Gmail has enabled forwarding and POP access to the accounts. However, it will not download anything in the Spam folder. So, here's how to POP download your spam, so that you can forward your spam en'masse to SpamCop using another more capable account.

1) Enable POP access in Gmail

• From within your Gmail account, click on Settings.
• Click on the "Forwarding and POP" heading.
• Under "POP Download:", select one of the "Enable POP for..." settings
  (which you select is up to you. Just remember that it will download everything not in Trash or Spam. That can be a lot the first time if you select the ALL option. After the first download, it always reverts to just downloading stuff since you're last download.
• Make sure you have the "keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox" set.
• Click the "Save Changes" button.

2) Set up POP access in your client

• Configure your preferred account to download your Gmail mail via POP (link given with typical instructions on the Settings page, or HERE for convenience.)
• I would recommend setting up a Gmailspam folder or something with appropriate filters.

3) Download your Spam, First time

• First, clear out your inbox. Move everything to Archive, Trash, Spam, etc.
• Download your gmail to your other account. Do with that mail whatever you want. (it could be a lot of mail if you selected the "All" setting above.
• In Gmail, select all the spam you want to report, and select the "Not Spam" button to move it back to the inbox.
• Download your gmail mail again to the other account. Depending on your Gmail setting, all of the spam from your inbox may or may not be downloaded.
• Select all of the spam in your inbox, and select the "Report Spam" button to get it back out of your Inbox.
• If you want, "Delete Forever" everything in Spam.
• Report at your leisure.

4) Future Spam downloads

• Clear out your inbox, as above.
• Download your new non-spam gmail. Move it 'out of the way'.
• Select everything in Spam that you want to report, click "Not Spam" to move it to the Inbox.
• Download the spam
• Move the spam back into Spam via the "Report Spam" button.
• Report at your leisure.

Until Gmail allows direct access to Spam via POP, or gives "multiple forward as attachment" capability, that's the convoluted process you'll need to POP your Gmail spam.

edit: typos/grammar

Thanks for the time and effort, Jank. I'm wondering, if you have Gmail set up to forward, will it still save the spam in its Spam folder, will it forward the spam, or both? I haven't tried this yet.

don't know. I know you can't JUST forward spam. But I thought I read somewhere that it doesn't forward spam at all. If I find the link or reference, I'll post it.

edit: Got it. This Blog describes how one guy uses his Gmail account just as a spam filter. In it he mentions:
So, really, Gmail does everything in it's power to prevent you from moving your spam off their servers in an efficient manner.

< conspiracy theory>My guess, it's the same as with Postini. The more spam you move to other handling options, the better those handling options can get (better filters, blocks, heuristics, etc.) As they possibly compete with Postini or Gmail, they limit this functionality so as not to indirectly reduce their own worth. < /conspiracy theory>

Wow! Interesting, well presented, the perfect solution for some. Thanks for all the effort.

Quandary .... exactly where would one recommend placing this item? At present, it would appear that to (more or less) fit into the existing structure, it would slide into the block;

Parsing & Reporting spam - decisions, problems
How do I get my email program to reveal the full, unmodified email?
-----> See also the tutorials in the How to use .... > SpamCop Reporting section
How do I configure Mailhosts for SpamCop?
-----> Mailhost System Configuration Explanation
NEW! One version of a Step-by-step MailHost set-up

but .... from that perspective, it seems like it would fall into the Tutorial section ..??? Ir's not really a "how to get full headers" item ....

In this structure (recall, one Saturday morning bit of frenzy) .. I had only snagged the first, sometimes second level of the FAQ entries from the www.spamcop.net FAQ list. I'd added the "see the Tutorials" entry here to add in the data developed 'here' that isn't 'there' .. other applications, other servers, etc.

There is/was a plan to convert this a bit closer to a web page . things like expanding line items, drop downs, etc. .... but still having some issues with the "custom HTM Lpage" modification I added ... ton loads of work, to say the least, and with all the changes seen in the upcoming 2.1 version of this app ....???

This query might be better split from here and added to the long FAQ Topic itself ..??

You're the expert... I'll defer to your astute judgement

I had added it to the top section .. not sure whether to simply call that an unsorted section or some general stuff ... so it "is" placed into the FAQ as a NEW! item .... it's just the next step/level/whatever that has me wandering around in my head <g>

Good suggestions. I have changed step 3 to make it even easier:

* Create a label (mine is "SpamSpam").
* Select all messages in Spam, assign the label "SpamSpam".
* Click on "Not Spam"
* POP your messages (messages in labels will be popped)
* Open the Label "SpamSpam"
* Select all messages
* Click on "Report Spam"
* Open Spam
* Click on "Permanently Delete all spam"
* Done!

You can also:

1. Go to
http://www.freepops.org/en/
and install FreePOPs.
2. Make sure you put FreePOPs in your Startup folder so it is always running. It uses very little resources to leave it running.
3. Go to http://www.freepops.org/en/viewplugin.php?plugin=gmail and read about the Gmail.lua plugin.
4. Download this plugin and make sure it is in the FreePOPs Program Files directory with all the other ".lua" files. It may already be there.
5. Set up a separate "Gmail Spam" account in Thunderbird. Under "Server Settings", make sure that you:
A. Set the "Server Name" to "localhost" only.
B. Set the "Port" to "2000".
C. Set "User Name" to "your_acct[at]gmail.com?folder=spam" where "your_acct" is your Gmail account name. It is critical that you do NOT capitalize any of the letters in the "User Name" field.
D. For "Use secure connection", you MUST make sure the "Never" is selected.
6. You will be asked for your password the first time you connect and have the option to have Thunderbird save the password for future connections.

Taken from http://www.castlecops.com/postx159435-0-15.html, SB06794's post.

[edit - plugin link fixed]

Awesome!!! This is a HUGE time saver.

Thanks for posting it here!

FYI, the URL that points to the Gmail plug-in is invalid on the Freepops site, and should be: http://www.freepops.org/en/viewplugin.php?plugin=gmail (the text of the URL is right, but the BBCode is not). One reason I dislike BBcode forums

Hold the bus!

I downloaded all of my spam, which was over 1000 messages, most of which are older than 48 hours and can't be reported anyway (which makes that move stupid)... At message number 928, I got a timeout on the POP connection.

When I tried to check my email via Gmail normally, I got the following message:


Prolly it's cos I downloaded so many messages... Ima wait 24 hours and see what happens.

The lesson in all of this is to not download so many messages

FWIW, I have been using the python scripts (
http://www.submanifold.be/triade/misc/gknujon/gknujon.html ) to automatically report spam from my gmail account to both spamcop and knujon. I have been using it on my Linux machine for a while with good results.

Prepend your GMail address with recent: and you will only download the last 30 days of messages.
Ref: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer....mp;answer=47948

Andrew

GMail is currently rolling out IMAP Access!!!

Indeed they are

And from the webpage that referenced at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...amp;#entry58407

The Submanifold scri_pt(s) now use Gmail's IMAP feature to grab only "Spam" messages, and batch send them to SpamCop (and Knujon, optionally).

Thus far, it's working great, been using it about a month or two now without any errors.

The only restriction I think may be that IMAP is currently only rolled out for English (US) gmail.com users...