Blogspot spam reporting

[elind]

I just checked my recent reports. None have Knujon listed, even though it does show as an option (but needs the box checked) when I report manually.

??

[Miss Betsy]

The bottom line is money. Credit card companies are not going to stop spammers from using their services because the spammers bring in money. Also law enforcement does not go after phishing criminals unless they can prove that someone lost a significant amount of money.

But, as with so many laws that affect criminals, but also can affect legitimate citizens, there is a potential problem with freedom and rights whenever one starts to limit what one class of people can do. As soon as the precedence is set that a certain group can be denied internet access or the use of credit cards or banks, then the door is opened for discrimination based on religion, race, etc.

Those who are selling acai berries, as seen on Oprah, are probably within the law. Those who are phishing for credit card numbers are outside existing law and can be arrested as soon as a case is built against them.

Attacking criminals, as someone here said, is not a prudent idea. Offline, one cannot ignore them either if they decide to hijack your car. But online, one can ignore criminals by simply filtering out their emails. Unfortunately, there are enough idiots out there, who respond so that even if 30 million emails are ignored, there are enough responded to that it makes it worthwhile to keep sending spam.

It may add a little expense to one's internet access for the filters, but then one pays more for keys and locks and also more for products in stores because of all the shoplifters.

On the internet, if you want to do harm to spammers, then you have to use their tactics. Otherwise, you have to go offline and physically attack them. Actually, a few years back, a spammer was arrested, but was out on bond. Someone found out his home address, published it on the internet, and people signed him up for all kinds of snail mail catalogs, newsletters, etc. Bags of mail were delivered to his house. He said, 'They are crazy.' There was also a website where someone corresponded with 419 scammers. Once he actually got one to send him a 3.50 usd money order. It is hilarious, but it also 'harmed' them by wasting their time and as someone said, criminals are not the people to poke at if they can find you offline.

spamcop is nice because it is one place on the internet where end users can help with a blocking list, the really practical way to prevent spammers from accessing inboxes and thus failing to get customers. As in another topic, one can also kill their drop boxes if they use email for response. It is very satisfying to know that one can help prevent spammers from achieving their goals. But it is improbable that one can teach the gullible or the stupid or the ones who want something for nothing in order to make it really impractical for spammers to operate.

Miss Betsy

[elind]

Betsy, I disagree with your assessment regarding credit card companies. They discriminate all the time on the basis of many factors. Being in the business of forcing people to spend time and money to defend against unsolicited email is one they could easily apply, although if our legislators had any brains they could make it a requirement,

As to whether the product is legitimate or not, that is irrelevant. As far as I am concerned those currently sending me a few hundred identical solicitations per day are simply vandals, and I would try to do them harm in one form or another if I knew who they were, not to mention all the rest.

BTW I now see that Knujon is blocked for spamcop reports. So much for that.

[rconner]

BTW I now see that Knujon is blocked for spamcop reports. So much for that.

Huh? Who is doing the blocking, SpamCop or Knujon? I'm continuing to send my reports to my private Knujon address, and they appear to be getting through (as of 2/9) although it is hard to track these things within Knujon.

-- rick

[Miss Betsy]

You are right in saying that it doesn't matter whether the product is legitimate or not. My point was that there are existing laws against many spammers (as well as an existing law against spam) so that if one wanted to go that route, there doesn't need to be another law. There is an existing law against scams being sent through the mail, but there is no point in reporting receiving a 419 scam unless you have lost money. And, all the spammers have to do is to be Canspam compliant and there is nothing even law enforcement can do. There is a snail mail scam happening now where I live, but they have a disclaimer in fine print and if you fall for it, there is nothing that the law can do for you much less stop them from sending the scam.

The credit card companies will only refer you to the FTC if you have a problem with a merchant (I know because I had reason to call them in reference to fraudulent charges linked with my billing address and MasterCard was not interested. You would certainly think that they would be interested in a merchant allowing fraudulent charges.) I doubt very much if the credit card companies discriminate against anyone who brings them money though I don't know what discrimination you are talking about.

If you want to harm spammers on the internet, then you have to use 'rude' methods just as they are. Hire yourself a hacker.

Miss Betsy

[elind]

Huh? Who is doing the blocking, SpamCop or Knujon? I'm continuing to send my reports to my private Knujon address, and they appear to be getting through (as of 2/9) although it is hard to track these things within Knujon.

If I look at "past reports" I see none to knujon. If I report manually the box for knujon needs to be manually checked, but when the report results come up it says "Reports disabled for knujon[at]coldrain.net".

How do you do report? Do you do all yours individually to spamcop and separately to knujon? I get hundreds per day (to my spamcop address) so I don't have time to do that.

I should have added that spamcop also reports "bounces (7 sent; 7 bounces)" which presumably is why they disable further reporting. I haven't investigated that further with knujon. Perhaps they have changed their reporting email, but are sloppy with their website.

[rconner]

How do you do report? Do you do all yours individually to spamcop and separately to knujon? I get hundreds per day (to my spamcop address) so I don't have time to do that.

1. I set up my paid Knujon submission address (in the coldrain.net domain) as a "personal standard report recipient" as previously discussed.
   
2. When I parse a spam in SpamCop, and it contains a web link that I want to report, I check the block to send reports to the coldrain address.
   
3. Past Reports tells me that my messages are being sent. Knujon appears to be receiving them.
   

From my end, I see no evidence that SpamCop is refusing to send reports to Knujon, or that Knujon is refusing to receive them.

There are other ways to submit to Knujon, as explained on their site.

-- rick

[Lking]

How do you do report? Do you do all yours individually to spamcop and separately to knujon? I get hundreds per day (to my spamcop address) so I don't have time to do that.

Although I use a different method than Rick, I too use paid KnujOn and SpamCop accounts.

I used to:

1. Setup a "Template" email with my paid Knujon submission address (in the coldrain.net domain) and quick spamcop.net addresses in the template.
   
2. Open a copy of the template and attach a reasonable number of spam and send. It goes to both KnuOn and SpamCop
   

Now I uses a KnujOn add-on for Thunderbird. The add-on automates creating emails to KnujOn with email marked as "Junk" (spam) attachments. After sending an email the attached spam are moved to the "Trash" folder. You can add other email addresses and change the number of spam to attach. I have added my spamcop quick address so the add-on automates sending to both KnujOn and SpamCop.

1. Mark all spam in an email folder as "Junk."
   
2. Click on the Add-on in the tool bar.
   
3. Check created email, and click Send.
   
4. Repeat till all spam have been reported.
   

In addition when I identify a phishing email I also send it to PhishTank using my account there. They need to have them sent (1) one phishing spam per email. I use a pre-addressed template to report to them.

[Miss Betsy]

Another thing to consider is that it is not necessary to report /all/ your spam if it is a problem for you timewise. Doing several in detail may be worth more than reporting all.

Miss Betsy

[elind]

I appreciate the detailed response, but at this point I don't have time to do the extra work. I like spamcop because all I have to do is scan the held mail list for any real mail (hardly ever), select all and select report and trash. Done.

I sometimes forward and report manually when I am curious about something new or when spamcop doesn't pick up a new spam, very seldom since I reduced my spamassin rating by one.

What you describe takes up more time than I can give it, but as I'm approaching 130,000 reported so far and well onto 200,000 by this year end, I figure that is good enough.

However, nobody has made any suggestions about the coldrain, knujon, issue yet. That would be a simple addition except that it doesn't work. I followed the "workaround" instructions. For the knujon email I have described what happens. I changed the email to the alternate given "nonregistered" and that seems to go through to coldrain, but only if I manually submit and manually check off the reporting address to coldrain.

If I look at past reports done by batch submission, there is no report shown for coldrain.

Perhaps this is a part of the bug described above, but it would be nice to know.

[rconner]

I changed the email to the alternate given "nonregistered" and that seems to go through to coldrain, but only if I manually submit and manually check off the reporting address to coldrain.

Yes, I think you must go through the VER web interface and explicitly check the KnujOn address on each spam in order for the reports to be sent to KnujOn. I don't think they will be sent if you are reporting held mail using the "Quick - Report immediately and trash" option (which generally only finds and reports to the spam sources). This is not really a bug, I think it is SOP.

-- rick

[Lking]

I like spamcop because all I have to do is scan the held mail list ...

Sorry for my oversight. Somewhere I missed that you were using SC mail.

I see rick answered your other questions. That has been my experience also.