csouter Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 No spam received since 1:00am Thursday morning, (Sydney Time, UTC+1000)! The big fake meds spam run seems to have finished! No advance fee fraud or stock pump-and-dump spam, either! Nothing! Zilch! Nada! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 <snip> I would much rather grab each and every spammer tightly by the balls with some old rusty pliers <snip> ...Thanks, Art (may I call you "Art?" <g>), for reminding us that while some venting about SpamCop/ Cisco taking so long to fix the reporting system is not unreasonable, the most appropriate target of the majority our ire should be the spammers, scammers and other pondscum who are the ones truly responsible for the degradation of the internet that SpamCop seeks to address in some small way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
che1x Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 ...And therefore...?...And the consequences of the issue not being fixed are....? One constant rule of computer-related issues is that a problem that takes 1000 hours for one person to solve does not necessarily take only an hour for 1000 people to solve. Especially when the problem is intermittent and the actual root cause has not been discovered. ...The sky is not falling. The earth still rotates around the sun. I trust that, like me, you are just as healthy and happy with all other aspects of your life today as you were before the SpamCop problems started (or, at least, any deterioration can not be traced to the SpamCop parser being unreliable). I know that it is sometimes tempting to let one's world revolve around relatively unimportant things but sometimes getting worked into a lather just isn't worth it. Take this opportunity to spend more time doing those other things that you would otherwise spend on reporting spam! <g> Actually the sky is falling. Every minute people are victimized by identity thieves. Some of these are due to phishing emails. Some of these are victimized by reshipping scams circulated by spam. spam and phishing tie up huge amounts of resources and cause important email to be overlooked. Spamcop is an important system which has an obligation to its customers and users. Look at when this thread was started. The problem is almost one month old and the problem is as bad as it ever has been. Your example of 1000 to 1 is not reality. In fact if one person could solve a problem in 1000 hours, 5 might solve it in much less than 200 once these people put their heads together and brainstorm the problem. It is Cisco which calls Spamcop the "industry-leading anti-spam solution" but with they way this situation has been handled that sounds hollow. Where is the "industry-leading" support? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farelf Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 No spam received since 1:00am Thursday morning, (Sydney Time, UTC+1000)! It will be interesting to see if that is reflected in http://www.senderbase.org/home/detail_spam_volume over the days ahead (I guess those are the "sent" figures as seen by SB at the boundaries of the networks they monitor). Certainly spammers globally have been trying to get through just as hard throughout the past month: http://www.senderbase.org/home/detail_spam...een=&order= Some radical changes in the weeks ahead might make it all seem worthwhile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
che1x Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 ...Thanks, Art (may I call you "Art?" <g>), for reminding us that while some venting about SpamCop/ Cisco taking so long to fix the reporting system is not unreasonable, the most appropriate target of the majority our ire should be the spammers, scammers and other pondscum who are the ones truly responsible for the degradation of the internet that SpamCop seeks to address in some small way. Yes spam and phishing is where we should direct our anger and Spamcop is one of the main tools to direct that anger. Every minute that Spamcop is not working is a minute of freedom for the senders of spam and phishing. It give these people more chances to steal someones life savings, spread destructive viruses, and impose a huge cost on the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farelf Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 ...It is Cisco which calls Spamcop the "industry-leading anti-spam solution" ...Can be read that way but I doubt that is what was meant. I think they are talking about the IronPort devices, SenderBase services and similar top-end solutions under the Cisco banner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Actually the sky is falling. Every minute people are victimized by identity thieves. Some of these are due to phishing emails. Some of these are victimized by reshipping scams circulated by spam. spam and phishing tie up huge amounts of resources and cause important email to be overlooked....And that was true before the SpamCop reporting system existed and will exist for some time to come, with SpamCop possibly making some minor dent in the problem.Spamcop is an important system which has an obligation to its customers and users....Well, sorry, I don't see it that way, I see SpamCop as a convenient service for helping us report spam to the responsible abuse addresses and to build a blacklist that is available to system admins, all things that can still be done without the SpamCop reporting system, just with more work. SpamCop *owes* me nothing! Look at when this thread was started. The problem is almost one month old and the problem is as bad as it ever has been....Again, I can't see the relevance. The causes and solutions for some problems are just extremely difficult to find and implement.Your example of 1000 to 1 is not reality. In fact if one person could solve a problem in 1000 hours, 5 might solve it in much less than 200 once these people put their heads together and brainstorm the problem....Your "counter-example" does not refute my statement. Yes, more people are likely (although not always) to be able to solve a problem faster than one. But my 33 years of experience in computer work tells me that what I am saying to you is more often than not to be true.It is Cisco which calls Spamcop the "industry-leading anti-spam solution" <snip> ...Sorry, I feel that you have mis-read (understandably). The precise quote is:<snip> The results of this investigation have allowed Cisco to improve on the industry-leading anti-spam solution to our customers. SpamCop.net is instrumental in collecting message samples for our ongoing investigation, <snip> The fact that the term "industry-leading anti-spam solution" and "SpamCop.net" are mentioned in separate sentences suggests to me (and at least one other person mentioned this earlier, as well) that the "industry-leading anti-spam solution" is not (at least, not by itself) the SpamCop reporting capability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jims Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 ...As much as I appreciate your "bully pulpit" comments and morally support SpamCop, myself, I fear you may be romanticizing just a bit. Who? Me? Never! But my points still stand, romanticized or not: 1) SpamCop IS, if not an absolute good, then absolutely good for everyone with an email service. Because it at the very least helps to lower the volume of spam. 2) SpamCop has been around a VERY long time, in terms of anti-spam services. 3) Honeypot addresses can only do so much good. They're certainly not a Cisco or SpamCop innovation. Others have used them in the past. Others use them currently. But only the cheapest and most stupid spammers are fooled by them. Without people reporting from "live" addresses, the MOST valuable resource SpamCop / Cisco has in the fight against spam would evaporate. What I'm saying is: If enough people leave SpamCop, SpamCop will die. I can't help but feel that, [you may be]...<snip> engaging in post-hoc thinking Possibly, but the coincidences were rather many, and sometimes nearly instant. For instance, that 300+ to 10, wasn't all SpamCop, I know, it started dropping before I used SpamCop. I didn't have a job at the time, so I made reporting spam (by hand) my all-day hobby every-day for a good while (a luxury few can afford). But couldn't pound the number down any further than 99 spam's a day. After a few weeks (I honestly don't recall how long, it might have been a week or less) of using SpamCop, I was down to 10 or less a day on a pretty regular basis. This was in 2001 or 2002, and the ISP was my former employer, they outsourced all their phone techs to Canada, but kept their System Administrative staff. According to scuttlebutt most everything stayed the same, and had no reason to change. I know I'm drawing conclusions on insufficient evidence, but I have no evidence to the contrary. But I do know that my spam problem was NOT a domain-wide issue. As I'd been rather irresponsible with that email address, I eventually did abandon it (even though all the ex-employees were entitled to free email accounts for life) because I switched ISP's, AND because keeping that address clean was a constant fight. But not all my benefits have been so obvious and dramatic. My Gmail account has never had a huge amount of spam, and almost all is caught by the spam box. But I DO see types of spams go-away after reporting them for a while. Of course, they eventually always come back, just to go away again too. Plus I see definite increases in the bulk of spam I get when I stop reporting for whatever reason. sometimes with the unhappy and unnoticed result of also keeping *valid* e-mail out! A sometimes unavoidable consequence of spam protection, and sometimes a result of sloppy maintenance or other admin error. For instance, the ISP I worked at originally had phone techs take care of email problems by logging into the server directly and using POP commands (and YES, we did ask for the username and password). As such, and all tech not being equil, sometimes mail got deleted that didn't need to be. Sometimes email accounts got emptied by accident. Not sure why, I assume it was because they were too cheap to buy or create proper tools. (Which I did after I left.) But, I don't think I ever had that problem, on that particular email account. While I don't benefit directly in terms of short-term reduction in spam, I am hopeful that reporting spam to.... <snip> indirectly benefit me. I'm sure it will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpamCopAdmin Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 The SpamCop.net Reporting Service is scheduled to be offline and unavailable for approximately two (2) hours beginning at 10:00 p.m. PDT on Wednesday July 11, 2012. The reason for the outage is to perform database maintenance to help relieve some of the operational issues currently being experienced by our users. The SpamCop.net website, including spamcop.net, www.spamcop.net, members.spamcop.net and mailsc.spamcop.net will be down during the upgrade. Emailed spam submissions will continue to be accepted but will not be processed during the downtime. Once the service is brought back online you can expect a delay of several hours as the backlog of spam is processed. The SpamCop Email Service, newsgroups, and user support forums are not affected by this scheduled outage and will continue to be available throughout the upgrade. Thanks for your patience! - Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin - - Service[at]Admin.SpamCop.net - . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
labboypro Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 ...as we haven't had any authoritative confirmation. You've (inadvertently) stated the real problem here.. I believe we would all agree that sites have issues from time to time. And many of us would still be OK in the fact that this particular issue has been going on for quite a long time by technology/web standards. However, for there the be ZERO substantive communication to the community about the nature of the issue, progress made, estimated (even a WAG) resolution time, etc., is in incredibly poor form. In the absence of information, people WILL fill in the blanks with their own guesses, wild-eyed conspiracy theories, and sometimes actual facts. A SIMPLE solution to all this speculation would be for SC to COMMUNICATE to us. Instead, they let the community fester. That is INCREDIBLY unprofessional behavior, and THAT is the essence of the "trust" that is being discussed here. /another 2 cents (I believe that's 6 cents in total. Spend it wisely.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 <snip> A SIMPLE solution to all this speculation would be for SC to COMMUNICATE to us. Instead, they let the community fester. That is INCREDIBLY unprofessional behavior, and THAT is the essence of the "trust" that is being discussed here. /another 2 cents (I believe that's 6 cents in total. Spend it wisely.) ...It's possible you could be right but I'm going with the multiple communications from Don D'Minion (SpamCopAdmin), especially his post about not telling us more, as being the most they can tell us without doing more damage than good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farelf Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 However the rights and the wrongs are perceived, I am looking forward with unbounded hope to the next two and a half hours (and the two after that) being over and the results of the latest attempt at service restoration made clear ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turetzsr Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Who? Me? Never! <big g><snip> 3) Honeypot addresses can only do so much good. They're certainly not a Cisco or SpamCop innovation. Others have used them in the past. Others use them currently. But only the cheapest and most stupid spammers are fooled by them. ...But I think SpamCop's use of them (I assume when you write "honeypot" you are referring to what SpamCop calls "spam Traps") is unique -- see the SpamCop FAQ entry labeled "What is on the list?" for more details. If I understand correctly what knowledgeable contributors have posted here (not this topic), the most significant spam activity these days is by the cheapest and stupidest of spammers ever -- malware from criminals that infects dozens, hundreds or thousands of personal computers and sends out spam. I doubt these volume operators really care that the .000001% of the e-mail addresses to which they send spams are actually honeypots.Without people reporting from "live" addresses, the MOST valuable resource SpamCop / Cisco has in the fight against spam would evaporate....While I'm sure we're of importance, SpamCop's algorithm seems to rely far more on S_pam Trap hits than it does on us reporters -- see aforementioned SpamCop FAQ entry.My Gmail account has never had a huge amount of spam, and almost all is caught by the spam box. But I DO see types of spams go-away after reporting them for a while. Of course, they eventually always come back, just to go away again too. Plus I see definite increases in the bulk of spam I get when I stop reporting for whatever reason. ...As do I, whether I report them or not. Post-hoc propter hoc not, I'm pretty certain.For instance, the ISP I worked at originally had phone techs take care of email problems by logging into the server directly and using POP commands (and YES, we did ask for the username and password). <snip> ...Interesting story but that isn't what I meant. I was referring to "automatic" tools, such as an over-reliance on the SCBL and tools like it, to reject suspected spam, which will inevitably include false positives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodewijk Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I hope the following was due to the backlog after the 2 hours shut down for maintenance: My average reporting time of 3 hours since I began utilizing SC a year ago will become a much longer time if things continue this way. I was able to finally report 3 spam just now that had been waiting for 11 hours due to repeated timeouts. To report these 3 phishing spam -besides the 11 hour delay- has taken me about a total of some 20-25 minutes of trying time again and again -with hours of intervals- and when I finally got through having to wait for over a minute before my SC report page appeared, then another minute to log in, and from then on over a minute again to get to my SC report page the next 2 times, and about half a minute each time to see a reaction after hitting "submit spam." All this is much slower than it was before, even not counting the timeouts and delays. All this time to report 3 spam.... it requires an awful lot of dedication and time to continue with this. Most of us will simply give up. The spam volume will likely increase over the Internet without us reporting it. I still hope this difficulty will be gone. Otherwise SC will end up having only a few very dedicated afficionados with lots of free time on their hands reporting spam. The rest of us will be gone, and SC will lose it's reputation, and become a curiosity, hardly still utilized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petzl Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 I hope the following was due to the backlog after the 2 hours shut down for maintenance: The graph shows SpamCop is still broken/unusable to me! Fact is if you can't report spam quickly there is little point in trying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xylella Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Looks like the problem is sorted >.> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dra007 Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 It's interesting that as this service gets back on line the pill guys have upped their antes, I am seeing a spectacular rise in pills spam. I don't think this battle is over folks... Let's just see how long this upswing will last... For now the statistics is promissing, at least on SC reporting/submital side.. Their latest statements confirm my own observations and a what few other people here have said. I have seen slow downs in Postini and other services so this could be indeed an issue caused by botnets increasing their activity globaly. Also correlates with the unusual raise in spam but at my end this is very selective so hopefully will also point to the source. I am also pleased with the long awaited appologies to us, the supporters: "Over the past week our researchers have been actively monitoring increased global spam volumes caused by heightened botnet activity. Our investigations have revealed this as a global event not specific to SpamCop. In the past, the service has successfully processed higher volumes of spam, but our team has identified performance issues within our infrastructure. SpamCop remains an important part of our technology, and Cisco is working diligently to restore SpamCop to its previous service levels. Even as we continue the investigation, the spam and botnet data collected from SpamCop is improving Cisco’s industry-leading anti-spam solution for our customers. To show appreciation to the SpamCop community, Cisco is offering $15 worth of fuel to all registered users of the SpamCop spam reporting service. Registered users will receive an email notification within 3-5 days with further instructions and details on the credit. Cisco remains committed to the community and we acknowledge their contributions are integral in the continuing fight against spam. We remain a committed partner to the cause. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xylella Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Ever since I joined SpamCop the pill guys have left me alone. Mostly get 419 stuff nowadays but that may be because I work in that region of Africa a lot. Also they are a lot less sophisticated and may not link my e-mail address to SpamCop reports. In any case nearly two hours with no hitch YN It's interesting that as this service gets back on line the pill guys have upped their antes, I am seeing a spectacular rise in pills spam. I don't think this battle is over folks... Let's just see how long this upswing will last... For now the statistics is promissing, at least on SC reporting/submital side.. Their latest statements confirm my own observations and a what few other people here have said. I have seen slow downs in Postini and other services so this could be indeed an issue caused by botnets increasing their activity globaly. Also correlates with the unusual raise in spam but at my end this is very selective so hopefully will also point to the source. I am also pleased with the long awaited appologies to us, the supporters: "Over the past week our researchers have been actively monitoring increased global spam volumes caused by heightened botnet activity. Our investigations have revealed this as a global event not specific to SpamCop. In the past, the service has successfully processed higher volumes of spam, but our team has identified performance issues within our infrastructure. SpamCop remains an important part of our technology, and Cisco is working diligently to restore SpamCop to its previous service levels. Even as we continue the investigation, the spam and botnet data collected from SpamCop is improving Cisco’s industry-leading anti-spam solution for our customers. To show appreciation to the SpamCop community, Cisco is offering $15 worth of fuel to all registered users of the SpamCop spam reporting service. Registered users will receive an email notification within 3-5 days with further instructions and details on the credit. Cisco remains committed to the community and we acknowledge their contributions are integral in the continuing fight against spam. We remain a committed partner to the cause. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newsmedia Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Looks like the problem is sorted >.> Far from it - the occasional report seems to get through but it is 1 in 10 or more. I fear this might be the looming end of an important tool in the battle against spammers and unscrupulous ISPs. I have been using SpamCop since 1999 and will continue to do so providing it is restored to a working system. But it is interesting that I have seen a massive drop in spam to my own mailboxes over the past week ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 But it is interesting that I have seen a massive drop in spam to my own mailboxes over the past week ... I've noticed a HUGE increase Seems they're taking advantage of the best reporting system being on a stretcher. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efa Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 account still disabled Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 account still disabled According to Spamcop.net they are still working on it. News: (Last Modified: July-12-12 2:51:27 AM -0400) (Email-account news) SpamCop Access and Performance Issues: Cisco recognizes the performance issues many users of SpamCop.net have been experiencing, and would like to apologize to the community for the service delays. Over the past week our researchers have been actively monitoring increased global spam volumes caused by heightened botnet activity. Our investigations have revealed this as a global event not specific to SpamCop. In the past, the service has successfully processed higher volumes of spam, but our team has identified performance issues within our infrastructure. SpamCop remains an important part of our technology, and Cisco is working diligently to restore SpamCop to its previous service levels. Even as we continue the investigation, the spam and botnet data collected from SpamCop is improving Cisco’s industry-leading anti-spam solution for our customers. To show appreciation to the SpamCop community, Cisco is offering $15 worth of fuel to all registered users of the SpamCop spam reporting service. Registered users will receive an email notification within 3-5 days with further instructions and details on the credit. Cisco remains committed to the community and we acknowledge their contributions are integral in the continuing fight against spam. We remain a committed partner to the cause. Again, we apologize for the intermittent delays, and as our investigation continues, we will provide regular updates to the SpamCop community. By the way if accounts remain disabled you could always contact them. http://mailsc.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/401.html service[at]admin.spamcop.net or deputies[at]spamcop.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hok Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 SpamCop has been working fine for me close to 24 hours now, no delay whatsoever, wonderful! Again, during entire up and down period, every single spam still got reported, just with delay up to 40 hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hjp Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 It was good for me this morning around 5:00 EST but now Gateway Timeout The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server. Reference #1.8d6d19b8.1342101287.6c0ddaa Gateway Timeout The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server. Reference #1.8d6d19b8.1342101301.6c1125e Gateway Timeout The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server. Reference #1.8d6d19b8.1342101419.6c2badd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csouter Posted July 12, 2012 Share Posted July 12, 2012 Still no spam received since 1:00am Thursday morning, (Sydney Time, UTC+1000)! That's almost 24 hours! (well, 23 hours, anyway ) The botnets are working so hard trying to bring SpamCop down, that they don't seem to have time to send me any more spam! Hehehehehe!!!!! :D :D You know, guys (and gals, too), I'm leaning more and more towards my original opinion that the earlier announcement from Cisco was a bit of disinformation aimed at the spammers, as I suggested earlier. It used to go on all the time during World War II and during the Cold War. When the various secret services (such as CIA, MI5 and MI6, etc.) found that they had a mole in their service, they used to let that mole find "secret" information and feed it to the other side, but the mole was unaware that the information was actually false and misleading. Another 2 cents' worth. I think I'm up to about 10 cents, now, but who's counting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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