sickofthefrigginspam Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Today, I hit the 100 spam in 12 hours level and I can't take it anymore. While it's all caught by Spamcop, it obviously isn't working. What good does it really do to report this crap when every day I get more and more spam. I just renewed my account, so I can't switch for a year. Can anyone be of help with this? Does spamcop really work, and does reporting them really help, because it appears to me it is not working. Pls. help, ANYONE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 There are a couple of ongoing discussions in the Lounge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Hi! Today, I hit the 100 spam in 12 hours level and I can't take it anymore. While it's all caught by Spamcop, it obviously isn't working. What good does it really do to report this crap when every day I get more and more spam. I just renewed my account, so I can't switch for a year. Can anyone be of help with this? Does spamcop really work, and does reporting them really help, because it appears to me it is not working. Pls. help, ANYONE! ...You may (I emphasize the word may) have be caught up in a post hoc fallacy. The fact that the level of spam continues to rise even as you report spam does not necessarily mean that your reporting of spam is without value. If nothing else, it is helping others who might otherwise receive the same spam in our inboxes and potentially identifying to e-mail and ISP administrators the existence of malware running on computers under their control. ...If you signed up for the $30 filtered Email and Reporting plan, Pricing Information says: we ... guarantee a cheerful refund for unused time if things don't work out. Perhaps some other friendly soul will post the e-mail address to request a refund -- I don't know what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dra007 Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Knock wood, I have a noticeable reduction in spam since I started reporting...I report consistently and as soon as I see the spam, it's hard work....whether the reduction is coincidental, it's the result I want. Occasionally I get confirmation that a guilty IP was blocked, which is reassuaring.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyNameHere Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 I, too, will knock on wood, and say that over the past few months I have received (guess) less than 2 spams a day. In the past couple of weeks that has risen to over 5/day because somehow I got on the list of the "defective spammer". But now that Spamcop reporting handles these spams, I expect the number to decline again. I've had my Spamcop address for over two years, and I use it as my primary e-mail address. When I had an Earthlink address, it seemed to get many more spams per day. Personally, I think a lot of spammers purge Spamcop addresses from their lists. If that's true, then Spamcop certainly is succeeding. It's being enough of a thorn in the side of spammers that they're trying to minimize their exposure to Spamcop. Which lead me to guess that sickofthefrigginspam is forwarding (or POPing) mail to Spamcop from somewhere else. It would be interesting to run a survey to see who uses their Spamcop address as their primary, and who is forwarding from elsewhere, and what the different spam experiences are. My hypothesis is that Spamcop addresses do not get anywhere near so much spam as non-Spamcop addresses. My other comment is this thread probably should be in the Lounge.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sickofthefrigginspam Posted April 21, 2004 Author Share Posted April 21, 2004 I exclusivly report all spam that is caught from the "Report Held Email" section of the website with the quick reporting and trash feature in the drop down menu. It does a 99% job of catching all spam, and the occassional gets through that I report at the website in the "Report spam" area. I never forward it, as that usually never works. I use the spamcop.net address exclusively, and some how, they got my ISP email address, which I NEVER use. It's getting worse & worse every day. went from 10 or so to 20, then to 50, and now I hit the all time high of over 100 from the time I went to bed, until 6pm tonight. This is beyond frustrating, as i am spending much time each week now just reporting and deleting. There is so much, I am seriously considering changing both the ISP and the spamcop addresses. I would love to chop a spammer into little tiny pieces and feed him to a cat or dog. They send me the same friggin spams over & over & over. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dra007 Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 There is so much, I am seriously considering changing both the ISP and the spamcop addresses. I would love to chop a spammer into little tiny pieces and feed him to a cat or dog. They send me the same friggin spams over & over & over. (Complementary: Feed them to yourbuddy, he seems to like them!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 There is so much, I am seriously considering changing both the ISP and the spamcop addresses. I would love to chop a spammer into little tiny pieces and feed him to a cat or dog. They send me the same friggin spams over & over & over. Feed them to yourbuddy, he seems to like them! Now, now ... are you attempting to be abusive again Are you ready to pretend indignation if I growl at you Personal remarks (I think) should be complementary or else sent privately - unless you're looking for trouble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments not withstanding...... ;-) Let me say there is some things going on in the mail server world that may not be apparent to the casual observer. When you feed your tasty spam into places like SpamCop or some of the other anti-spam sites, you are doing much more than simply (hopefully) alerting the spammer's ISP. You are feeding blacklists. By reporting the spammers, you are getting them listed in these blacklists so those of us that use DNS-based blacklists can find these scumbags in the SpamCop database and bounce them out of our mail servers before they even complete the SMTP transaction. So first, don't feel bad. You are doing a service even though it seems futile. Secondly, if people don't report them, they would likely never get shut down. Just because the ISP doesn't personally inform you that they are doing anything doesn't mean that they haven't canned the guy. Lastly, THANK YOU! You are adding to the blacklist databases that are used by thousands of us around the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanna Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 I use a public address and then have spamcop filter it. My renewal for smapcop is coming up in a week or two and I am considering some changes. I too wonder if it is doing any good to report the spam. My spam has increased exponentially. I have considered changing to a service that blocks all email not on your whitelist. You know, the ones that you send email out to your friends and they have to respond by sending an email to a certain adress to get on your whitelist. I also have my own domain and an unlimted number of email address there. For sites that I need to use an email address, I use sneakmail or one from my domain that hits the bit bucket if someone sends email to it. I could block all but whitelist users here. I could mark the spam and use my domain server to filter it. These are changes I am considering. One thing is for sure, the main account I use now is going to direct all email to the bit bucket and I am going to start using another address. One thought, if I use my own domain to filter the email, then I can include a keyword in the signiture. This is a way to allow the server to pass along email which is in response to an email I sent to someone. Everyone else must be on the whitelist. And if they do not include original text in their response to me, the email also gets blocked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farelf Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Nice, supportive comments (and they give me a bit of lift too) but at the end of the day, I can't imagine coping with 100+ a day. I suppose the quick reporting features help but am not familiar with them. How many people actually report at this volume? I've seen references in other topics about prioritizing in accordance with personal preferences or perception of what will do the most good (how do you know what's in the stuff just by subject/headers? - many spammers go to some pains to obscure content at that level) and, depending on the frequency of reporting, simply deleting the older stuff on the theory numerous "someone elses" have surely reported the same already (but not all email clients co-operate, mine shows the fake date/times and sorts by them). Is there some advice to be given along these lines, or am I off-track? A person shouldn't be driven to extremus "in the greater good". [added] Ah, composed & posted before dhanna's post seen. That's the sort of advice I was hoping someone might have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhanna Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 I report 100+ a day. It is somewhat humorus at times. I have a little App that shows how many emails I have sitting on the server. I have it set to show me my unfiltered account that spamcop retrieves and then my filtered account that spamcop forwards to. Here I am one nite and all of a sudden my unfiltered showed 88 emails... 5 min later they were gone from there and never appeared in my filtered account, spamcop had blocked all of them. I went to held mail and quick reported them all. You would think they were from the same spammer, not, each had different sources. Very stange. My 100+ a day is what is having me consider alternatives to deal with this issue. I have found awesome solutions for popups, nothing that stands out as a great solution for spam. For popups I list sites I visit daily as trusted and set security to low and for all other sites, security is the highest. I also use an ad-ware scanner that runs nightly. 98% of the time, it comes up with no results. The other 2% I blame on the girlfriend. Need a good solution to spam now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyNameHere Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 I use a public address and then have spamcop filter it. My renewal for smapcop is coming up in a week or two and I am considering some changes. <snip> One thing is for sure, the main account I use now is going to direct all email to the bit bucket and I am going to start using another address.[emphasis mine] Folks, I begin to feel I'm all alone here. After reading your posts, it's pretty clear you're all using some regular ISP or freemail address and using Spamcop to report your spam. Maybe the change you need is to get rid of those addresses completely and just use your Spamcop address exclusively. Works for me. ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 If you change email addresses, it is important to use one that is not easily guessable by the dictionary spammers. The easiest way to do that is to put numbers in the middle of the address d6a2na The second thing is to keep it from being posted on the web and to beg your friends not to enter it anywhere to get you free stuff or send you an email. Also have an account you can abandon (like the sneakemail) if you make a mistake and do order from someone who sells your address to the spammers. It is good to have an 'order' account anyway in case a good guy gets robbed - I started getting spam from the ones who breached expedia security. I have done that with a couple of accounts and do not receive spam on either one. And I do not use a whitelist. Domain owners have a different problem, but since I don't have a domain, I don't remember good advice for them. But I still have an account that receives spam and I just report what is most recent when I have time. Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Your reasons for using spamcop are obviously different than my reasons. I am glad you have found a solution that works for you. My solution works for me as well. 2 reasons why I won't do this: 1. I refuse to give up the address I have used for 8+ years because of spammers. It is well circulated among my friends and family, especially those I'm not in contact with regularly. 2. I use spamcop because I want to stop spammers (or at least bother them), and I can not do that if I don't receive spam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 By reporting the spammers, you are getting them listed in these blacklists so those of us that use DNS-based blacklists can find these scumbags in the SpamCop database and bounce them out of our mail servers before they even complete the SMTP transaction. So first, don't feel bad. You are doing a service even though it seems futile. Not really ... By reporting spammers, you are actually getting the IP address listed (which is most often an ISP providing service to many legitimate users). The legitimate inconvenienced users complain to the ISP and (if lucky), the spammer gets booted and moves on to another ISP/Server. In the process, some servers with problems may get fixed, but mostly you are hurting (inconveniencing) the ISP and their customers - not spammers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MyNameHere Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 2. I use spamcop because I want to stop spammers (or at least bother them), and I can not do that if I don't receive spam. Oooh! I hadn't thought of that! Maybe I'm only bothering the dumb (or brazen) spammers. Hmm.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 (which is most often an ISP providing service to many legitimate users) Not really... Since most of the time these are not coming through the ISP's mail server but directly from a comprimised machine which the spammer is bouncing off of. While there are cases (which will be the most visible) of ISP servers being listed, this is not the usual case. Take a look at the statistics for spam in progress: http://mailsc.spamcop.net/w3m?action=inprogress and tell me how many of the IP's in question are not DHCP client machines. It would help if the statistics page did the rDNS and posted it, but I could see with the speed that gets updated that it would slow the system down greatly. I just played a game trying to view one of the IP listings and then hit the back button and each time the IP I just looked at was at best number 3 on the current list. P.S. I just remembered the old/new Hall of Shame which is more static but does the rDNS. It can be found here: http://mailsc.spamcop.net/w3m?action=hoshame Out of the 200 top hosts listed, I could only find gochex.com which might be a legitimate ISP but they have 4 servers listed in the top 15 so I doubt legitimate fits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 (which is most often an ISP providing service to many legitimate users) Not really... Since most of the time these are not coming through the ISP's mail server but directly from a comprimised machine which the spammer is bouncing off of. While there are cases (which will be the most visible) of ISP servers being listed, this is not the usual case. Take a look at the statistics for spam in progress: http://mailsc.spamcop.net/w3m?action=inprogress and tell me how many of the IP's in question are not DHCP client machines. It would help if the statistics page did the rDNS and posted it, but I could see with the speed that gets updated that it would slow the system down greatly. I just played a game trying to view one of the IP listings and then hit the back button and each time the IP I just looked at was at best number 3 on the current list. At SpamCop yes (perhaps), but at other DNSbl's not really ... Check the listings at Spamhaus.org sbl and see all the major ISP's listed, along with the notes on Known spam Gangs that used the ISP IP address. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevenUnderwood Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 At SpamCop yes (perhaps), but at other DNSbl's not really ... Check the listings at Spamhaus.org sbl and see all the major ISP's listed, along with the notes on Known spam Gangs that used the ISP IP address. We (I at least) are only talking about the bl.spamcop.net here. The OP was a spamcop mail customer reporting spam caught in the held mail folder presumably to spamcop. I will agree with you that other bl's do go beyond the actual source to try and persuade the users to revolt against their ISP. That is one of the reasons I do not support (financially and statistically) those bl's but do support spamcop. Are you coming around on the spamcop bl? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dra007 Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Are you coming around on the spamcop bl? Obviously not, but keep pounding, eventually he will! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Steven Underwood Your reasons for using spamcop are obviously different than my reasons. I am not quite sure whose reasons you are referring to (newsgroups are much better for discussion!). However, the only reason for an end user who does not have a domain to use spamcop is that they want to *do* something about spam. Many people find spamcop because they receive one porn spam too many - especially the Lolitas and want to *report* it. spamcop is the only way I have found that a technically non-fluent person can report the spam to the person who *can* *do* something to stop it - the *sender* Nowadays, it is usually a compromised machine or an open proxy - which you would think would be happy to be informed that there was a problem and be quick to fix it. (unless, of course, they are getting paid to leave the proxy open). There are other reasons for people who run servers to use both reporting and the spamcop bl - mainly, from my observation, that it is cost effective to belong to a 'cooperative' because they can't afford to create and use their own blocklist - which larger businesses do. OTOH, there are other reasons, but since I don't run a server, I don't want to put words in their mouths. The primary reason that I hang around spamcop forum and newsgroup is that IMHO, the consumer of email services should have a greater say in what DNSbl's are used and what criteria they are based on. And that they should know what their ISP is doing and some basic concepts of how spam can be controlled. IMHO, DNSbl's are the logical way to control spam and that the *sender* of email needs to be made responsible for choosing a reliable and responsible ISP. Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Miss Betsy ... Most responsible/major/national ISP IP's are currently on a blacklist. They may have an infected customer PC or be compromised, so all the clients get hurt - the spammer moves on to another ISP or zombie PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yourbuddy Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Are you coming around on the spamcop bl? Obviously not, but keep pounding, eventually he will! You wish ... SpamCop is the worst (for errors) than nearly all DNSbl's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn Posted April 21, 2004 Share Posted April 21, 2004 Are you coming around on the spamcop bl? Obviously not, but keep pounding, eventually he will! You wish ... SpamCop is the worst (for errors) than nearly all DNSbl's. Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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