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no body text in spam, can't report


guik3eeM

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I got a 419 spam today that the SC reporting page won't accept.

Tracking URL is http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z1227891093z9...2504ddcf55ce80z

The error at the bottom of that report is "No body text provided, check format of submission. spam must have body text." Well, the email is most definitely spam, it just doesn't have any body text. The 419 pitch is stuffed into the subject field.

So how do we report this thing?

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I got a 419 spam today that the SC reporting page won't accept.

Tracking URL is http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z1227891093z9...2504ddcf55ce80z

The error at the bottom of that report is "No body text provided, check format of submission. spam must have body text." Well, the email is most definitely spam, it just doesn't have any body text. The 419 pitch is stuffed into the subject field.

So how do we report this thing?

WHat you can do is include a blank line and somethinf like <no message body> at the bottom of the message and it will parse. That has been determined not to be a material change to the spam.

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  • 2 weeks later...
WHat you can do is include a blank line and somethinf like <no message body> at the bottom of the message and it will parse. That has been determined not to be a material change to the spam.

Yes, that has been deemed acceptable.

I would add, however, that in any case in which the spam is even slightly modified, to keep a copy of the original for some time, just in case anyone questions it. Better safe than sorry.

I usually keep my reported spam for a month or so before properly disposing of it in a medical waste bucket :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I sometimes copy the source for rare spam received on another PC and email it to my main reporting email, when I will select all of the text in that email and report it (without again getting the headers, which would now point to my other PC).

However sometimes that text has become garbled in the copy and spaces and line returns have disappeared, giving the above message as well as a few others by spamcop. EG

"No blank line delineating headers from body - abort"

It is not practical to find where to insert a blank line, and often the websites referenced are also garbled by being buried in other text.

What I can't figure out is why "sometimes" a simple select-all/copy/paste should cause a format change, and why that wouldn't always happen.

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What I can't figure out is why "sometimes" a simple select-all/copy/paste should cause a format change, and why that wouldn't always happen.

It is more likely the forward is introducing the format change and it would depend on the format of the original message.

If the original message had a longer lines and your client wraps that, you are introducing a modification. If the original already was formatted with shorter lines (that your client wraps at), no changes are introduced.

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I sometimes copy the source for rare spam received on another PC and email it to my main reporting email, when I will select all of the text in that email and report it (without again getting the headers, which would now point to my other PC).

<snip>

...Please clarify: what do you mean by "spam received on another PC?" Normally, spam is received by an e-mail server and delivered to an e-mail subscriber. Are you saying that both PCs are e-mail servers?

...In any event, please consider reporting the spam from the e-mail address at which it is received. SpamCop reporting is intended to be used by the receiver of the spam. Doing it the way you appear to be trying to do it may cause your reporting account to be suspended (iiuc).

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...Please clarify: what do you mean by "spam received on another PC?" Normally, spam is received by an e-mail server and delivered to an e-mail subscriber. Are you saying that both PCs are e-mail servers?

...In any event, please consider reporting the spam from the e-mail address at which it is received. SpamCop reporting is intended to be used by the receiver of the spam. Doing it the way you appear to be trying to do it may cause your reporting account to be suspended (iiuc).

Well, I have one main account which happens to be my oldest that gets a lot of spam but I don't want to change it. That mail is forwarded to my main "receive" account after spamcop filtering. However I still get a small amount of spam and some legitimate mail directly to my "receive" account and I also have another email on another PC for different purposes. I get some spam on that PC but not enough to have bothered to set up a filter so I have forwarded to my main account to report later. It all comes to me, so I did not think there could be anything wrong with that and the original to: information is not altered so nothing is being hidden and I hate to just delete spam when I could report it.

If there is something wrong with that please let me know, but at this time I don't see why.

A related question would be if one spamcop account can be used to filter more than one email address, at least on the same ISP domain but send the reports to only one email address. My multiple email addresses (most ISPs allow 5 or so) would be too cumbersome to all set up with separate accounts and filters and the volume is too small to justify it.

And while we are on the subject, if one travels and uses web mail to view email, and spam has gotten through the filter, is there any way to report that? The source is not available via web mail, I think, and by the time one gets home it is too late to report.

As to the original question about why some source code formating is changed when the text is forwarded, I have discovered that if the send message format is set to Rich Text, then it is sent with original format, if not it may change, or not.

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You should be able to report spam no matter which of your accounts has received it - if you have configured mailhosts. You don't have to configure mailhosts for all your email addresses - just for one per domain. Spamcop understands that there may be multiple email addresses - it is really looking at the IP address of that email server that those emails pass through.

In fact, you probably could report them without mailhosts, but there is more chance of spamcop stopping before it gets to the real culprit, I believe.

If you can 'forward as attachment' in your web mail, you should be able to submit spam.

Miss Betsy

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Well, I have one main account which happens to be my oldest that gets a lot of spam but I don't want to change it. That mail is forwarded to my main "receive" account after spamcop filtering. However I still get a small amount of spam and some legitimate mail directly to my "receive" account and I also have another email on another PC for different purposes. I get some spam on that PC but not enough to have bothered to set up a filter so I have forwarded to my main account to report later. It all comes to me, so I did not think there could be anything wrong with that and the original to: information is not altered so nothing is being hidden and I hate to just delete spam when I could report it.

If there is something wrong with that please let me know, but at this time I don't see why.

<snip>

...There is still of a bit of mystery here to me (and it's probably my fault, so please don't take my continuing badgering as flaming you).

...What I was trying to ascertain is why it is relevant that there are two PCs involved. If you are simply using two different PCs to access two different e-mail accounts, then (IIUC) you should not be forwarding spam from one e-mail account (let's call it e-mail account A) to the other (let's call that e-mail account B ) to report via SpamCop. What changes in that case is that e-mail provider A adds internet headers to the e-mail it forwards to account B; when you then report the spam from account B, SpamCop will think that the source of the spam is the outgoing e-mail server of provider A. If each of your PCs is a mail server, the same problem will occur. If you are using the forwarding feature of a SpamCop e-mail account, then this may not matter (although I'm not sure why but, then again, I am not a SpamCop e-mail account subscriber, so I don't know how it works).

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...There is still of a bit of mystery here to me (and it's probably my fault, so please don't take my continuing badgering as flaming you).

...What I was trying to ascertain is why it is relevant that there are two PCs involved. If you are simply using two different PCs to access two different e-mail accounts, then (IIUC) you should not be forwarding spam from one e-mail account (let's call it e-mail account A) to the other (let's call that e-mail account B ) to report via SpamCop. What changes in that case is that e-mail provider A adds internet headers to the e-mail it forwards to account B; when you then report the spam from account B, SpamCop will think that the source of the spam is the outgoing e-mail server of provider A. If each of your PCs is a mail server, the same problem will occur. If you are using the forwarding feature of a SpamCop e-mail account, then this may not matter (although I'm not sure why but, then again, I am not a SpamCop e-mail account subscriber, so I don't know how it works).

If these were totally different emails with different email providers I would agree, but in fact they are one and the same and the only difference in headers is the actual email address before [at], which are all sub accounts of the main one and the provider will recognize them as such. As these are not server PCs as I see it they end up in a box at the provider, not sent to my PC(s) at different addresses. I just pick them up from those boxes (please excuse the simple terminology).

As to the different PC, I could access all email from one PC, but this just happens to be how this particular setup is organized. Certain email is filed on a particular PC as opposed to different folders on the same one.

You should be able to report spam no matter which of your accounts has received it - if you have configured mailhosts. You don't have to configure mailhosts for all your email addresses - just for one per domain. Spamcop understands that there may be multiple email addresses - it is really looking at the IP address of that email server that those emails pass through.

In fact, you probably could report them without mailhosts, but there is more chance of spamcop stopping before it gets to the real culprit, I believe.

If you can 'forward as attachment' in your web mail, you should be able to submit spam.

Thanks, I will look into that further.

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If these were totally different emails with different email providers I would agree, but in fact they are one and the same and the only difference in headers is the actual email address before [at], which are all sub accounts of the main one and the provider will recognize them as such.

<snip>

...Thanks for your patience with me! I am still a bit mystified as to how your having two different PCs is relevant (but I doubt my failure to see its relevance is itself relevant to this matter) but I'm now pretty much convinced that what you are doing should not cause a problem. As always, as long as you are careful not to report your provider as the source of spam, what you are doing seems as if it should be okay. Thanks! :) <g>
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...Thanks for your patience with me! I am still a bit mystified as to how your having two different PCs is relevant (but I doubt my failure to see its relevance is itself relevant to this matter) but I'm now pretty much convinced that what you are doing should not cause a problem. As always, as long as you are careful not to report your provider as the source of spam, what you are doing seems as if it should be okay. Thanks! :) <g>

OK. Thanks. Everyone has their organizational quirks I think. ;)

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