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Suggestion: Personal Blacklist Matches


hhp

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My held mail is so unwieldy any more that if I don't check it constantly throughout the day it is too cumbersome to check for false positives (and I get a lot of these thanks to mailing lists where some of the members come from domains in the various blacklists). It seems that if I could blacklist the worst offenders, I could get my held mail down to a far more reasonable level. I'd like to suggest that matches to personal blacklists just get deleted and not moved to held mail. Since most of the blocks come from the spamcop blacklists anyway, I don't think it should hurt anything if I don't report them (I haven't seen much evidence that reporting does much good anyway).

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It seems that if I could blacklist the worst offenders, I could get my held mail down to a far more reasonable level. I'd like to suggest that matches to personal blacklists just get deleted and not moved to held mail.

I'm not sure that you will actually be able to blacklist the worse offendors. Do the worst offendors consistently email with the same addresses or domains? In my experience, no.

What others have asked for (and I'm inclined to do) is to let you set a threshold for SpamAssassin above which emails would simply be deleted. That would let you get rid of a lot of spam with nearly no chance for a false positive.

JT

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I have yet to find a use for the personal blacklist. As far as regular spam goes, the From info is always forged and not predictable. The IP blacklists plus a SpamAssassin threshold of 5 (I played with other settings and this works best for me) means that almost all spam is caught (though in recent weeks more has ben slipping through. maybe 1-2 a day) and there are very few false positives.

You may want to consider not using the personal blacklist and rely on the "global" blacklists for a while to see if it works for you.

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The suggestions actually have to do with having some fashion of setting a parameter (the SpamAssassin threshhold is a nice one -- better than my suggestion!) so that mail that meets the criteria is completely deleted and does not show in my held mail. To be clear, I'm satisfied with the level of blocking SpamCop is doing in terms of what gets forwarded to my clean account. It's just that I do have to review the held mail for false positives, and it would be nice to be able to prune it before I have to look at it.

I do have a group of about ten hosts that ONLY send spam (regardless of the from), and they send a LOT! So I was thinking the personal black list would be a nice way for ME to have control over stuff that just gets discarded and not passed to my held mail folder.

Some fashion of having a group of mails deleted, whether based on personal blacklists, SpamAssassin threshholds, or whathaveyou, would not only save users time in reviewing held email, but would also conserve disk space and server resources for SpamCop.

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I think HHP points to a significant issue: it's possible to get very large amounts of held mail, but still feel the need to review it all regularly for false positives. I like the idea of having one or more mechanisms for weeding out the stuff that can safely be assumed to not require review (eg, stuff above a certain spam Assassin threshold).

A couple of other thoughts:

* I think having the ability to choose different ways to sort the held mail list could make it easier to quickly review for false positives. I do this with the bulk mail folder in my Yahoo account and find that sorting by From address or by Subject putd the duplicates next to each other and makes scanning for false positives quicker. I've suggested this before and heard no responses. What do other people think?

* I find the recently introduced system of displaying only 100 held e-mails at a time to be rather unwieldy. If I'm away from my computer for just a few days, I can easily come home to over 1,000 spams in Held Mail. Going through them 100 at a time can be very time consuming. I would really appreciate the option to control how many messages get displayed per page. I'd like to see choices of 50, 100, 200, 500, and ALL.

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* I find the recently introduced system of displaying only 100 held e-mails at a time to be rather unwieldy.  If I'm away from my computer for just a few days, I can easily come home to over 1,000 spams in Held Mail.  Going through them 100 at a time can be very time consuming.  I would really appreciate the option to control how many messages get displayed per page.  I'd like to see choices of 50, 100, 200, 500, and ALL.

Please see your "Held Mail" Folder in Webmail, starting at

https://webmail.spamcop.net or http://webmail.spamcop.net . Also, please

try the new options in

http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-...ber/011836.html , a

post by JT to spamcop.mail with Message-ID bqjdfg$c9k$1[at]news.spamcop.net

entitled "New spam reporting options (beta test)" on Tue, 02 Dec 2003 at

20:15:07 -0500. You may wish to adjust "Messages per page in the mailbox

view" in Webmail's Options / Other Options / Display Options.

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* I think having the ability to choose different ways to sort the held mail list could make it easier to quickly review for false positives.  I do this with the bulk mail folder in my Yahoo account and find that sorting by From address or by Subject  putd the duplicates next to each other and makes scanning for false positives quicker. I've suggested this before and heard no responses.  What do other people think?

You can also sort each column in Webmail's mailbox view, but sorting by # or Date doesn't work too well within a clump of messages that were received at the exact same time (such as in one gulp by FetchMail or PopGate).

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* I find the recently introduced system of displaying only 100 held e-mails at a time to be rather unwieldy.  If I'm away from my computer for just a few days, I can easily come home to over 1,000 spams in Held Mail.  Going through them 100 at a time can be very time consuming.  I would really appreciate the option to control how many messages get displayed per page.  I'd like to see choices of 50, 100, 200, 500, and ALL.

Please see your "Held Mail" Folder in Webmail, starting at

https://webmail.spamcop.net or http://webmail.spamcop.net . Also, please

try the new options in

http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-...ber/011836.html , a

post by JT to spamcop.mail with Message-ID bqjdfg$c9k$1[at]news.spamcop.net

entitled "New spam reporting options (beta test)" on Tue, 02 Dec 2003 at

20:15:07 -0500. You may wish to adjust "Messages per page in the mailbox

view" in Webmail's Options / Other Options / Display Options.

Jeff,

Thanks for this information. I typically use the non-webmail view of Held Mail (the one accessible from www.spamcop.net).

What JT seems to be suggesting in his December post on "new spam reporting options" is that Spamcop will be moving in the direction of using the WebMail interface for reporting functions -- even for those people like me who are forwarding mail to their local ISP and normally don't use WebMail at all.

This could take some getting used to, but I'll give it a try. Thanks for your suggestions.

JT, is the idea that the non-WebMail Held Mail interface may be phased out in the future?

/dp

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JT, is the idea that the non-WebMail Held Mail interface may be phased out in the future?

/dp

The plan now is that the non-Webmail interface (which we have historically called VER) won't necessarily go away but there won't be much development taking place on it. New features and the like will all need to go into the webmail interface. Major bugs will be fixed in VER, but we're not going to be adding features.

The webmail already offers a lot fo things that people have complained about in VER. Webmail lets you display 500 messages per page if you want. It's faster than VER, both for showing the messages and for sending spam reports. You can sort by various fields. You can turn on a preview of the messages so you can see the first few lines of every held mail. (That's what I do and I scan through them to make sure they're spam).

Webmail does not yet have the "forward and whitelist" button, but it's coming.

JT

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  • 2 weeks later...

The reason I currently use VER as opposed to the Webmail version of Held Mail is that I can get there with one click - my browser remembers my login / password, so it is quicker than manually logging in to webmail, then clicking on Held Mail.

Am I overlooking a quick way to get to Held Mail (Webmail version)?

Thanks.

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I prefer VER because I can do the two steps (submission and confirmation) in sequence for each spam. If I submit a group of spams by email, and then at a later time confirm the group of reports, I have to spend extra time and effort reviewing each spam to recall its content.

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The reason I currently use VER as opposed to the Webmail version of Held Mail is that I can get there with one click - my browser remembers my login / password, so it is quicker than manually logging in to webmail, then clicking on Held Mail.

Am I overlooking a quick way to get to Held Mail (Webmail version)?

Thanks.

Yes, is there any way of doing this please? I currently have four Spamcop mailboxes, and I have links set up to take me into VER for all of them. I would certainly start to use the Webmail interface if I didn't have to manually log in to each mailbox.

Thanks.

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Yes, is there any way of doing this please?  I currently have four Spamcop mailboxes, and I have links set up to take me into VER for all of them.  I would certainly start to use the Webmail interface if I didn't have to manually log in to each mailbox.

Well, it's not quite as easy as having the links, but if you use Opera, the Wand tool will remember each combination you use at a page. So you just got to the webmail page, either hit the wand or ctrl-enter, and it will either fill in the fields (for those that only have one account) or ask you which one you want to use (if you have multiple username/pasword combos entered.

If you use IE, then I don't know of a better way. (Personally, I just gave Opera another try based on info seen here and in the Spamcop.net newsgroups, after trying it a few years ago and not liking it. Now, I've switched from IE as my default browser -- much faster, better features, and much less of a memory footprint.)

-JEV

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Also, you can set up your webmail preferences to that the Held Mail folder opens when you login to webmail instead of the Inbox, which is the default.

This fails when your session times out - you end up with your Inbox on the next login.

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Does your session time out even if you access pages, or do you have to have it open for hours without doing anything before it times out? (I remember someone (JT?) posting that the timeout was in hours, but I could be wrong on that.)

The reason I ask is that I don't think I've ever had a session time out, and I leave it open all day while at work. In fact, I've left it open overnight, when I forgot to log out/shut down before going home, and I was still on when I got back the next day. Maybe I have something set up that prevents this, though...

-JEV

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This fails when your session times out - you end up with your Inbox on the next login.

I need to agree with jev, there is something in your configuration causing these problems. Perhaps a firewall intervineing?

I have never had webmail time out on me and I also keep Held Mail as my default as I usually POP the inbox to my local machine and only use webmail for reporting purposes. I am usually either on the webmail held page or on the reporting page and switch back and forth without needing to re-enter the password for either.

Steve

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  • 1 year later...
Does your session time out even if you access pages, or do you have to have it open for hours without doing anything before it times out?  (I remember someone (JT?) posting that the timeout was in hours, but I could be wrong on that.)

1247[/snapback]

It probably is hours, or when something drastic happens to the Computer, OS, or Browser I was using at the time, or the browser just can't find the page for any reason. Normally, the automatic "Refresh Folder Views" setting (in the New Mail Option) takes care of keeping the connection alive.
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Webmail does not yet have the "forward and whitelist" button, but it's coming.

410[/snapback]

For the record, it's here and working, but sometimes too well (that's why it needs a safety).
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Does your session time out even if you access pages, or do you have to have it open for hours without doing anything before it times out?  (I remember someone (JT?) posting that the timeout was in hours, but I could be wrong on that.)

1247[/snapback]

Please also see the following text from SpamCop FAQ - SpamCop Mail Service - FAQ about WebMail - Why do I keep being logged out with messages about my session expiring?:
Symptom:

You are having problems using webmail such that each time you try and do ANYTHING, you are logged out with a message that your session expired.

Answer:

99% of the time this is a cookie issue. Cookies aren't required to use the SpamCop webmail program. What will cause problems, though, is if you use a cookie blocking program or a "personal firewall" which interferes with cookies. If cookies are accepted by your computer, but not returned, or if your computer sometimes responds with cookies and sometimes does not, it will cause this problem.

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Yes, is there any way of doing this please?  I currently have four Spamcop mailboxes, and I have links set up to take me into VER for all of them.  I would certainly start to use the Webmail interface if I didn't have to manually log in to each mailbox.

1206[/snapback]

For windows machines

Password Depot offers 20 passwords for doing this in freeware mode. Which makes logging in a doddle and secure. This program will work from your PC, a USB drive as well (on any other Windows computer)

remember the maximum password length for webmail is 30 characters (alphanumeric is best) You need a password of your own to access and open the PasswordDepot list you create

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