Reporting to spamcop is too time consuming

[Eisenbart]

Hello there!

I am getting quite a lot of spam (about 300 emails a day) and I have been forwarding it to spamcop for a while now. Unfortunately, spamcop requires users to manually confirm each and every email as spam, which is terribly time consuming. I sort my emails in Outlook Express before forwarding them, so ALL the spam I submit definitely IS spam. It usually takes around one and a half hours to reconfirm them, which is a very tedious task, especially as the spamcop server often responds rather slowly. I simply do not have that time, so I will finally have to cease reporting the spam if there will be no way to report all the spam with a single click. Please do something about that!

Best regards,

Matthias Hofmann

[Miss Betsy]

What you need is Quick Reporting - click on this link to find out what it is

Quick Reporting FAQ

Note in the link at the end of the FAQ that you need to set up Mailhosts first and that you need to contact service [at] admin.spamcop.net in order to start Quick Reporting.

I think that the condition of setting up Mailhosts first means that it is not as risky to use as it once was. The FAQ should be changed. However, since you didn't say whether you were a reporting only reporter or were using the email service, I thought it was easier to reference the FAQ for you to read.

Miss Betsy

[petzl]

The most effective way to deal with spammers and make reporting them easy is to consider getting a SpamCop Email account This account is a very powerful spam protection system that can collect email from all your existing email accounts. It will sort and send only legitimate email to your inbox with all spam sent to a Very Easy Reporting (VER) folder. Which after a quick check to see it is spam, you can then report with three clicks of your mouse sending spammers to silicon hell in a instant

I am in Sydney, Australia and have used this system since its beginning and it is extremely effective. I now do not use any other email address but my bullet proof petzl[at]spamcop.net with out fear of spammers

[StevenUnderwood]

Unfortunately, spamcop requires users to manually confirm each and every email as spam, which is terribly time consuming. I sort my emails in Outlook Express before forwarding them, so ALL the spam I submit definitely IS spam.

37536[/snapback]

Please remember, the main reason for confirming is NOT to be sure it is spam but to be sure YOU are sending YOUR reports to the right people, or more importantly, NOT to your own ISP (i.e.reporting yourself or your ISP). The SpamCop parser is just a tool. You are the operator of that tool and are responsible for the outcome of it's use.

[Jeff G.]

Given that this Topic is discussing an issue with Reporting that has already been addressed by the Quick Reporting Feature, I am moving it from New Feature Request to SpamCop Reporting Help.

[Kojote]

Miss Betty,

The so-called "Quick-Reporting" is not quick! You still have to log on and manually confirm each spam message you send to spam Cop. This is what the OP said he was doing. "Forwarding it to SpamCop." Who has the time to confirm 300 messages? If I send messages to spam Cop, they are indeed spam, that I've confimed myself. Unwanted, mass-emailed messages, that I DIDN'T subscribe to!

Now on the other hand, I think SpamCop has this "confirmation" in place, so their servers are not bombarded by robots sending stuff to them. That, and the stupid people, that would send non-spam to SpamCop. So I guess "quick reporting" is a comprimise, but it is definitely not quick when you have 300 messages to report!

[Jeff G.]

Kojote, her name is "Miss Betsy", not "Miss Betty". And I think you misunderstand - what you described is regular/full/slow Reporting via email (using a "submit" address). With Quick Reporting (using a "quick" address), there is no confirmation step, just a "Quick reporting data" results email message, which you can review at your leisure. Please see Quick Reporting and What is Quick Reporting? for more info. Thanks!

[StevenUnderwood]

The so-called "Quick-Reporting" is not quick! You still have to log on and manually confirm each spam message you send to spam Cop.

37583[/snapback]

As Jeff G. has said (in a different way), if you have configured mailhosts and enabled quick reporting through Don, there is no confirmation required with quick reporting. It sounds like you may not have completed the process, yet.

[agsteele]

The so-called "Quick-Reporting" is not quick! You still have to log on and manually confirm each spam message you send to spam Cop.

37583[/snapback]

There is a virtually identical conversation two subjects down

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5522

Andrew

[Eisenbart]

Well first of all, thanks for the responses. I took a look at those "Quick Reporting" links you mentioned and they seem to provide the solution for me at first sight, but on closer investigation I found out that there are two major drawbacks:

1. I would have to have spamcop collect all my email and forward it to a single email address from which I download my messages. The problem here is that I got several distinct email addresses on purpose, one for private use, one for my company, one to handle support for our products, one for our newsletter, and so on. I set up Outlook Express in such a way that the messages are sorted into different folders on download, depending on which of my email addresses it comes from. As soon as I have spamcop merge everything into a single email address, that sorting won't be possible any more.

2. I have read that "Quick Reporting" does not really parse the email as effectively, it will only report the source of the email. However, I want to report spam as effectively as possible, so I don't know whether "Quick Reporting" does the job at all.

I am afraid that "Quick Reporting" under these conditions is not a solution for my problem. If there will be no batch reporting, I will have to cease reporting at all, as I do not have the time to click the same link again and again for one or two hours. I guess that most people would act that way, so the more spam they get, the less likely it is that they report it to spamcop.

Please remember, the main reason for confirming is NOT to be sure it is spam but to be sure YOU are sending YOUR reports to the right people, or more importantly, NOT to your own ISP (i.e.reporting yourself or your ISP).  The SpamCop parser is just a tool.  You are the operator of that tool and are responsible for the outcome of it's use.

37539[/snapback]

I do not quite understand this. The confirmation screen on the spamcop website keeps asking me to "please make sure this email IS spam". This does not sound like the purpose of confirmation is anything else but making sure that the email I submit is spam. Under which circumstances would I report my own ISP?

Please pardon my ignorance, but I don't understand why there is no option to report all the spam at once. The way I see things, there is a database that collects all the spam I submit in a table and when I hit "Report Now", the next one is parsed and reported when I press the corresponding button. I am a programmer myself and I would have thought that there's nothing easier to implement than a loop that iterates over each entry in the database and reports it. If there is spam that cannot be reported for whatever reason, than just don't report it and show that on a results page like "300 emails reported, 292 succeesful" or whatever.

And one more thing: Currently, if there is spam that has not yet been reported, there is only a message indicating that there is an indeterminate number of unreported spam. Would it be possible to at least display a number that tells me HOW MANY emails there are waiting to be reported? Believe me, it makes a difference if you know whether you are only 10 emails away from finishing your report or there are still 480 left...

Best regards,

Matthias Hofmann

[Eisenbart]

Just in case anyone is interested: I have reported 566 emails to spamcop 5 minutes ago and I am now wondering whether I should take half a day of to manually confirm them.

[StevenUnderwood]

1. I would have to have spamcop collect all my email and forward it to a single email address from which I download my messages.

37608[/snapback]

This is also incorrect. You can forward the spam to your single REPORTING email address from as many different accounts as you wish. You just need to be sure to perform the mailhost configuration for each account unless they all follow the same route (same domain).

If you would, could you please help us understand why you thought it all needed to be reported from a single account. We would like to improve the FAQ.

[StevenUnderwood]

Just in case anyone is interested: I have reported 566 emails to spamcop 5 minutes ago and I am now wondering whether I should take half a day of to manually confirm them.

37609[/snapback]

I used to report about 500 every day using Quick reporting. I only report the web sites of the messages that slip by spamcop's filters.

[Miss Betsy]

I am a programmer myself and I would have thought that there's nothing easier to implement than a loop that iterates over each entry in the database and reports it. If there is spam that cannot be reported for whatever reason, than just don't report it and show that on a results page like "300 emails reported, 292 succeesful" or whatever.

Possibly that could be programmed; possibly not. No one else has been able to program successfully an application that reports spam as spamcop does.

The problem here is that I got several distinct email addresses on purpose, one for private use, one for my company, one to handle support for our products, one for our newsletter, and so on.

It would be quicker than what you are doing now to quick report each spam folder for all these different addresses. I don't think that it would be a problem except in setting up mailhosts.

I have read that "Quick Reporting" does not really parse the email as effectively, it will only report the source of the email. However, I want to report spam as effectively as possible, so I don't know whether "Quick Reporting" does the job at all.

There are two aspects to reporting spam through spamcop. The first is that you are alerting a server admin that spam is coming from his network. That's the report. A responsible admin reacts immediately to the source of spam and stops it.

The second aspect is the blocklist which is used to identify incoming spam. While a server admin is getting the report and fixing the problem, no one who uses the blocklist is bothered by spam. Unfortunately, some admins are irresponsible and allow spam to continue. Their IP addresses are blocked as long as spam continues.

The spamvertized websites are also reported to the person responsible. The IP address, however, is not added to the blocklist. There is a FAQ discussing the philosophy of this.

IMHO, just reporting the source is more effective. Unless I am sure of the reporting address, I uncheck all boxes other than the source. Knowing whether it is worthwhile to report a spamvertized site takes far more time than confirming that each spam is a spam and that it is going to the proper source before you send the report. Filters are not 100% accurate, and filtering manually is even less accurate. If there is a mistake made, it is not spamcop's fault; it is your fault because you are using spamcop as a tool.

If you think about it, all a responsible admin needs is one spamcop report. Many of the irresponsible admins have asked not to receive reports, the IP address just goes on the blocklist. The most important spam to be reported is the most recent and the ones that are not caught by filters.

Many people only report a certain category - the last 10, the last 50, only stock scams, only porn, etc. Of course, that system works better if you are using the spamcop blocklist to filter.

If you are serious about spam reporting, then you should take the time to read the FAQ. It will make you a much more effective spam fighter.

Miss Betsy

[dra007]

With a paid e-mail account you can have an infinite mailhosts (once configured) forward to a single spamcop.net account. Spamcop will trap mail in a heldmail folder using criteria of your choice. Whitelisted, or unrecognized good e-mail can then be forwarded back to your ISP account. You can also set up in OE (as IMAP or POP) to read your spamcop account so you can drag and drop spam that was not filtered from other folders back into the heldmail spamcop folder for reporting. That way you are always 2 clicks away from reporting the entire collection of spam. Reporting web-advertised domains here does not do much good as that data does not feed the block list. There are other services (free) like bluefrog.com that will analyse the web-domains in the spam and report them for you to several law enforcement agencies, if that is what you want to acomplish.

[turetzsr]

<snip>

I think that the condition of setting up Mailhosts first means that it is not as risky to use as it once was.  The FAQ should be changed.

<snip>

37537[/snapback]

...In my experience, it is still potentially risky, so I would in fact emphasize the risk and certainly not remove it from the FAQ.

[turetzsr]

I am afraid that "Quick Reporting" under these conditions is not a solution for my problem. If there will be no batch reporting, I will have to cease reporting at all, as I do not have the time to click the same link again and again for one or two hours.

37608[/snapback]

Hi, Matthias,

...Is it really all or nothing? As Miss Betsy points out in an earlier reply 37612[/snapback], many people report only some of their spam. I think we'd all be pleased if you would continue to report at least some of them, whatever you have the inclination and time to do. Thanks!

<snip>

Please remember, the main reason for confirming is NOT to be sure it is spam but to be sure YOU are sending YOUR reports to the right people, or more importantly, NOT to your own ISP (i.e.reporting yourself or your ISP).  The SpamCop parser is just a tool.  You are the operator of that tool and are responsible for the outcome of it's use.

I do not quite understand this. The confirmation screen on the spamcop website keeps asking me to "please make sure this email IS spam". This does not sound like the purpose of confirmation is anything else but making sure that the email I submit is spam.

37608[/snapback]

...The confirmation screen is not (necessarily) to be taken to be 100% complete. StevenUnderwood is quite right that (one of) the reason(s) for the confirmation screen is for you to ensure that your reports are going to abuse addresses that seem reasonable to you. Another reason (as it says on the page) is to give you a final opportunity to verify that you are, in fact, reporting spam.

Under which circumstances would I report my own ISP?

<snip>

37608[/snapback]

...One reason would be failure to have successfully completed (including never to have started, as it is currently optional) the MailHosts configuration. Another would be that your ISP or MSP (e-mail service provider) has added an IP address to the server farm through which your outgoing mail might flow -- this happens to me every so often.

[Miss Betsy]

Another reason is that before Mailhosts, if the parser failed in a look up, it reverted to the last known headers - yours.

That did happen to me.

Other reasons have to do with what an ISP decides to do with the headers which may not parse correctly, again stopping on your ISP.

Miss Betsy

[Eisenbart]

This is also incorrect.  You can forward the spam to your single REPORTING email address from as many different accounts as you wish.  You just need to be sure to perform the mailhost configuration for each account unless they all follow the same route (same domain).

If you would, could you please help us understand why you thought it all needed to be reported from a single account.  We would like to improve the FAQ.

37610[/snapback]

Actually I am totally confused now... It probably does not have to do with your FAQ, I drew the conclusion from information in other postings within this forum.

IMHO, just reporting the source is more effective.  Unless I am sure of the reporting address, I uncheck all boxes other than the source.

37612[/snapback]

What boxes are you talking about? There are no boxes when I confirm spam, also the text printed in bold letters mentions them. Please take a look at the following screenshot to see what I see when I confirm spam:

As you can see, there are no boxes to check.

Hi, Matthias,

...Is it really all or nothing? As Miss Betsy points out in an earlier reply 37612[/snapback], many people report only some of their spam. I think we'd all be pleased if you would continue to report at least some of them, whatever you have the inclination and time to do. Thanks!

37647[/snapback]

You're right, I should keep reporting that spam. I will check out that "Quick Report" feature and see if it helps. I used to forward my spam to "spam[at]uce.gov" and I even got the impression that it had some effect. Unfortunately, the FTC (who's behind that address) does not seem to be able to handle asian spam, so I started to use spamcop. I will also take a look at "bluefrog.com", as dra007 suggested.

[Eisenbart]

Ok, I have just configured the mailhosts, what's next? By the way, there's one thing that confused me: I got two distinct email addresses with the domains "anvil-soft.com" and "klomanager.com" and I configured both of them. However, only the one at "klomanager.com" showed up in the list of mailhosts, so I repeated the process for the one at "anvil-soft.com". When I looked at the list again, I found out that now the one at "anvil-soft.com" had replaced the one at "klomanager.com" again.

This is probably because both domains are hosted by the same provider, but it's still confusing, as the instructions talk about domains, not about IP addresses (at least that's what I remember, I unfortunately cannot read them again because the displayed text changes once you have configured a mailhost).

I hope that everything is still configured correctly now, so how do I do that "Quick Reporting"?

[Eisenbart]

I meanwhile got confirmation messages for each configured mailhost. One thing that's strange is that each confirmation message was accompanied by a corresponding blank message with did not contain any text. Just thought I'd let you know...

[Miss Betsy]

You are correct - there are no boxes on your screen. I have 'show technical details' turned on, but I thought everyone had boxes. I can't read it well enough to see if there is something else happening.

The next step in Quick Reporting is to email Don - service [at] admin.spamcop.net requesting quick reporting status - you might mention to him about the second email with no text and the information about the two email addresses in the mailhosts configuration. He would have the answers (or be glad to know the information).

Miss Betsy

[Eisenbart]

Turning on 'show technical details' does not change anything about there being no boxes. I have just tried that out.

[Eisenbart]

Don has meanwhile enabled "Quick Reporting" for me. I also informed him about the host/domain issue and the blank emails.

[Eisenbart]

Looks like it works! I got my first "Quick reporting data" by email! I'm glad that I finally found a solution that does not require me to click that link a couple of hundred times...