Hello,

I recently submitting what I thought was considered SPAM, and i received a reply saying something to the effect of "SPAM MESSAGE NOT FOUND"...

Here is my situation. I keep getting emails from people using the Fanbridge.com service. I have NEVER signed up for anything like this, I absolutely hate email lists.

So anyways Fanbridge.com is like an email list service for the music industry. All of the emails actually come from different people (artists), but they all are via the fanbridge.com service.

"This email message is powered by:
FanBridge
Free Email and Mobile fan list management for bands."


Each email comes with an unsubscribe link, but that only unsubscribe's me from that list, and the next day I get another email from another company promoting something else, but still using the Fanbridge.com service. So I imagine my email is available to any and all of the people who use this service. But blocking one email or unsubscribing to one list, really does nothing because I just get another from a different company/artist.

I have asked them many times to remove me from all future email contact, and also forwarded the messages to abuse[at]fanbridge.com and abuse[at]softlayer.com (host). Never replied...

Any idea on how to report this correctly?

Above and beyond all the data offered in the SpamCop FAQ and the Wiki ?????

As found in the various links and pointers to How to ask a GOOD question, there is a serious lack of data in your posted request for help.

Operating System, Software Applications involved, your actual submittal process to include things like cut/paste or Forward type actions via web-form, e-mail, Quick, etc. No one on this side of the screen would have any idea if you have ever sucessfully submitted a spam for parsing/reporting before.

Not to worry, that information is all that's needed in order to solve your reporting problem.

The reason you got that error message is because the full headers were not present in the spam you submitted. SpamCop needs to see the entire path the message took on its way to you so it can track the spam back to the source.

Maybe these FAQs will help:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/17.html

If your mail client supports it, using the "Forward as attachment" function to send the spam as an email attachment to your 'submit' address is the best way.

SpamCop is looking for the full headers in one contiguous block of text, followed by a blank line, which signals the end of the headers, and then followed by the body text of the spam. The parse won't accept headers if there is no body text with them.

Or, you can log into your account at http://www.spamcop.net/ and copy/paste the full headers and text into the manual reporting form, or even use the two-part Outlook/Eudora workaround form.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

Hi this is Mark from FanBridge.com and I have already private messaged you in regards to this matter. We take abuse very seriously and I would like to work with you to resolve this matter once and for all.

Please check your private messages.

Thank you,
Mark Brooks

Topic starter's inital post states that abuse had been contacted but no reply had been received. Any explanation for that?

Any explanation for this seemingly strange scenario?

This was a specific scenario that has already been handled and the topic starter is in direct contact with me via email. If you need any further information, please contact me via PM.

Thank you

This is a Public Forum. There are actually several issues still sitting 'open' in this Topic, most raised by the Topic starter, but .....

Due to some other background traffic about this Topic's subject matter, a PM has been sent to the Topic Starter asking him/her to make a re-appearance and clear up all the open items still hanging ....

Yes sorry. Mark from Fanbridge PM'd me, and i responded via regular email, and I didn't think of posting an update on the thread.


Basically the issue has been taken care of. I haven't received any further emails. From what I understand it was just one client of fanbridge using my email on mutliple lists (all through fanbridge).


I am satisfied with the result. The only gripe I have is that I never received any response to the many emails I sent to abuse at fanbridge until I posted this thread.

thanks!

Thanks for the follow-up. However, the other outstanding issue was your reported problems with 'reporting of the spam' involved. Has that issue been resolved and if so, what was the problem?

Remember the story about the lady with the hammer who busted up a local office of Comcast's? I read in the newspaper that a more savvy customer started a website called ComcastMustDie listing his complaint. Soon other disgruntled Comcast customers started posting their problems. And, then Comcast started fixing those problems. The newspaper article said that soon Comcast customers with problems started posting there, without even calling the help desk.

If fanbridge doesn't want to have an auxiliary desk in this topic, then maybe they need to promise to immediately contact people who email their abuse desk. Especially if googling them brings up this forum, I would think that an interested, sympathetic presence in this topic would be a good policy to show that management does care. Mistakes do happen, but 9 times out of 10 people will forgive them if the company shows concern, not only for the problem, but also to prevent a recurrence.

Miss Betsy

Hi Wazoo,
We have redone our process of handling emails to our abuse address, and retrained our support services people to handle any non-feedback loop emails in a more prompt manner (after doing an internal investigation).

As we all know, the world of spam and spam reporting is a rapidly evolving one, but we are committed to working with all parties involved (senders, recipients, 3rd party agencies) to ensure a positive experience.

Please let me know if I can provide any further info.

Best,
Mark

It's great to know that some providers are interested in /working with/ customers rather than highhandly deciding what to do about spam and that they are adapting to the changing situations caused by spammer exploits.

Thanks for contributing to this topic!

Miss Betsy

Agreed.

I am having a problem with fanbridge.com, may I append to this topic, or start a new one?
A member of fanbridge.com, DJ Ed Tangent, has signed up a couple of my email addresses to his mailing list, and now, apparently, has provided (or fanbridge has provided) my emails to other members(DJ Sharon and Hologram). I did not request to be added to any of these lists, nor did I receive any confirmation of being added.
My Spamcop report attempts show that "ISP has indicated spam will cease; ISP resolved this issue sometime after Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:36:00 PM -0400".
I do not believe in unsubscribing from lists to which I haven't subscribed, in the first place.

Adding here is the preferred method... otherwise the moderators will need to move your message into this thread

You can continue to report the spam... the reports are just not being sent to the abuse desk, who have indicated they are aware of it and are working on it. If the numbers of messages puch the IP over the line, the IP will be listed even with that flag set.

Thanks, Steven, I wasn't sure if, since it was not the exact issue, it would need to be moved...

Aha, okay, even though my "Past Reports" say "No reports filed"? I thought that meant NO reports!
Thanks!

How are you submitting these and how long are you waiting?

"No reports filed" is often seen shortly (up to a couple of hours) after submitting a quick report (no interaction needed). If you check back later, those reports will often show as sent, possibly to a devnull address.

Hi Steven, I am using the Spamcop webpage form, as the emails are either coming to a Yahoo or Gmail address.

In the "Report History", they simply say "No reports filed". No tracking ID or anything. Not to a devnull address.

The earliest was July 10, I rather think that it would have processed by now.

By the way, I've been a (free) Spamcop user for several years now.

OK, I assume there are no checkmarks and no button to "Send spam Reports Now" when you "Process spam"?

I have yet to hit one like this on my free account, but most of my hardcore spam goes to my personal accounts (paid reporting). There we have the option to have the deputies look at it if we wish.

Hi Steven, yes, that is correct. After the spam is parsed, I get a message that says "ISP has indicated spam will cease etc etc" but no reports are submitted, even for statistics. (In parsing a spam and checking the"Show Technical Details" checkbox, I can see that reports would have gone to softlayer.com; I had already emailed their abuse desk directly.)
That's why I was surprised that you said they were being sent somewhere and that it would (perhaps) list the IP...

Really, though, in restarting this topic, I was hoping to get a public response in the forum from fanbridge addressing the practice of their members harvesting and sharing addresses and signing them up to opt-out mailing lists, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I haven't received any more spams at this point to my Gmail address, and have blocked the senders to my Yahoo addresses.

Thanks very much for your input, it is appreciated.

Possibility that some Moderator work might be desired here .. but, take a look at last half-dozen or so posts in the Topic found at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3842 ... both softlayer and fanbridge are discussed there, with some action taken by SpamCopAdmin ....

Thanks, Wazoo. I don't know if I have anything further to add to the conversation over there, especially since Don D.Minion has taken action...I'll check in and say hi.

wooooops. I replied to the "other" thread on page 4:
http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...3842&st=120

my take on the situation situation, from reading _this_ thread seems to have come out about right....

I haven't been hit by this unwanted mail, but perhaps something that fanbridge should look into, so their service isn't abused like this in the future.

Hi,
I am replying in this and the other thread with the same message. The incidents mentioned were from multiple accounts in our system all created by the same user (which is how the same email address was on multiple lists as we do not facilitate sharing of lists at all). All of that user's accounts were promptly disabled as soon as we saw the heightened level of complaints.

Sincerely,
Mark Brooks
FanBridge.com