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Mole reporting


louisd

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As a spamcop e-mail user and a long time spamcop reporter I have to reopen the conversation questioning the wisdom of mole reporting.

I use spamcop for a number of reasons including:

I got tired of manually tracking and reporting all my spam in order to:

1) Help legitimate ISPs quickly knock spammers off their network

2) Get ISPs not willing to solve the spam problem on the BL.

It seems to me that mole reporting kills #1 completely. Systems are being blocked on mole reports alone, preventing the ISP from taking any real action until they find out they're blocked. How much extra time does this allow the spammers to exploit whatever hole they've found? How many thousands of extra mail pieces does this allow them to send?

It seems to me that ISPs should not be blocked without at least being notified that there's a problem. Can't get rid of mole reporting? Then at least don't allow mole reports alone to cause an IP to be blocked.

Just my humble opinion.

--Louis

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IMHO, posts like this belong in the spamcop newsgroup since this is the primary place to come for help with spamcop reporting or the spamcop blocklist. Any other subjects make it more difficult for seekers to find answers.

Also, it is much easier to discuss the pros and cons of issues in the newsgroup format.

Miss Betsy

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[snip]

It seems to me that ISPs should not be blocked without at least being notified that there's a problem.  Can't get rid of mole reporting?  Then at least don't allow mole reports alone to cause an IP to be blocked.

Just my humble opinion.

--Louis

You are assuming that no reports are reaching the ISP because of the mole reporting. Since most SC users don't use the mole reporting mode, and most Internet users don't report spam through SC it is unlikely that an ISP will get listed without knowing that a problem exists.

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As Spambo says, I don't think that the percentage of mole reports is very high. I doubt it makes much of a difference to an ISP.

Contrary to what is sometimes posted here, most of the blocklist entries that don't show any data are due to spamtraps.

I think that the legitimate ISP's will have plenty of evidence about any spamming activity on their network. Maybe an overwhelming amount. Some of the questions we've had here recently have actually been from admins of individual machines or IP's that don't get the SpamCop reports that are being emailed to their upstreams. If they're large enough, they can fill out the request to get those reports sent to them. Owners of individual machines won't get reports, but they shouldn't have much of a spam problem to worry about, either.

JT

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