Reducing the Time Taken to Report Spam

[jwq]

I have reporting-only accounts. On my accounts which receive only a trickle of spam (less than 10 spam messages per day on average) reporting the spam does not take a lot of time.

I have recently received an account which has been reactivated after 6 years of disuse and it receives an average of 34 spam messages per day. Most of these messages are sent at a time while I'm asleep and in the morning I can have over 40 messages to report. The burden of reporting these messages is not trivial, particularly when I use dial-up. Even with the fastest copy-and-paste web submission, it can take up to 30 seconds to report each spam message (email submission is significantly longer). The parsing and the need to click buttons to both submit and report the spam messages one-by-one takes most of the time.

As it seems I'm not making much of a dent in the spam flow and the burden of reporting spam is high, I'm considering giving up reporting spam received at this account.

Before I do that, is there an easier way of reporting spam? It would be much quicker if I could simply batch-submit spam in an email and/or batch-confirm the sending of reports. Is there a way to do this?

[Wazoo]

You make no mention of the tools in use on your system. Based on the lack of detail offered, maybe one could guess that you mught be using Outlook Express on a Windows-based system. If this is true, (heck, even if it's not) ... try the Forum FAQ (read before posting) and note some entries dealing with submitting your spam to the parser via e-mail, which was a process developed specifically for your issue ... originally described as when one could hit the office in the morning, handle the spam, get into the 'real' job and handle the parsing/reporting engine output as they day progressed and time became available ...

The downside is that it got to working so well for so long that people complain if the results don't come back immediately (those delays of hours that crop up are not the norm, though they do occur) ... anyway, the answer to your query has many posts in existence here ... even a Forum FAQ entry titled "How I use ..."

[jwq]

The email interface only helps with batch submission. AFAIK I still have to one-by-one report the batch-submitted spam which, because it can't easily be performed in parallel, ends up taking longer than the copy-and-paste (between Thunderbird and Mozilla, if that's relevant) method. That's neglecting the 15 hour delay I experienced between submission and acceptance the last time I batch submitted 10 spam messages for processing. So I'm still left in the situation that the fastest method I know of submitting and reporting spam is too time consuming. Is there a quicker way?

BTW, I read the forum FAQ before posting and, alas, it didn't help. I also checked prior posts to the forum and, alas, couldn't find anything addressing my problem. If you think some specific posts or FAQ entries would be of help, would you mind giving links as references?

[Jeff G.]

You might want to look at What is Quick Reporting?.

[Lking]

So jwq, is there that much difference between Netscape's mail app and the app your using?

From within your mail app, open a new email with compose, address it to submit.xxx[at]spam.spamcop.net, (your SC reporting address), then drag and drop each of the spam you want to report as attachments to the new mail and send it.

You don't need to hold your breath untill SC sends you a response. But when it does come, log into spamcop.net and each spam takes 2 clicks plus time to review. This part takes no more time per spam than the 2 clicks during the cut and past approch.

the time between sending the email with attachments, and getting a response depends on how the net is doing at the time, SC load, the number of attachments ...

Or did I miss something?

[turetzsr]

You might want to look at What is Quick Reporting?.

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...But, if you decide to use it, be very cautious! Please see Why does SpamCop want to send a report to my own network administrator?. It seems to happen with some frequency to people using Quick Reporting.

[AlphaCentauri]

I have the same complaint. I'm using MailWasher Pro, so sending the reports takes NO time at all. But it's the confirming them one -- at -- a -- time that is so time consuming. If SpamCop even had a button at the bottom of each report that said "Send spam Report Now and Go to Next Unreported spam" instead of confirming one report, waiting for the page that says reports have been sent, then clicking on the "Report Now" button on THAT page, it would halve the time waiting for pages to load.

[Jeff G.]

If SpamCop even had a button at the bottom of each report that said "Send spam Report Now and Go to Next Unreported spam" instead of confirming one report, waiting for the page that says reports have been sent, then clicking on the "Report Now" button on THAT page, it would halve the time waiting for pages to load.

27967[/snapback]

GMTA! Clyde already suggested the same concept with a different name at "Send spam Report Now and Process next spam", new option at bottom of "spam details"pg.

Also re the speed issue, not that I get a commission or anything, but there are fewer delays with paid reporting than with free reporting.

[jwq]

I had looked at Quick Reporting and thought that it was only for SpamCop Email System Customers, which I am not (and don't really feel the need to be). But I read that "Email-based Quick Reporting is a feature of the SpamCop Parsing and Reporting System which may be allowed on a case-by-case basis by Deputies or Admins." Does this mean that I can have email-based quick reporting activated for my reporting-only account?

I'm using Mozilla's tabbed browsing facilities to submit and report spam in parallel - i.e. without waiting for each spam to be processed sequentially. It actually saves quite a bit of time but the unavoidable mouse clicking is still the time-consuming part and the amount of time I spend reporting spam is still significant.

A "Report and Go to Next" button would help, but not a lot. Rather than one spam per page, having multiple spams per page (in rows) with a "Report All" button would speed things up immensely. It should also reduce the load on the Spamcop servers by reducing the amount of information, in which I'm not interested, that it currently provides per spam (even with technical details omitted).

As it stands at the moment, reporting large volumes of spam is so time consuming that I'm seriously considering not reporting the spam to Spamcop.

[Wazoo]

Does this mean that I can have email-based quick reporting activated for my reporting-only account?

see http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...indpost&p=28061

[Miss Betsy]

A "Report and Go to Next" button would help, but not a lot. Rather than one spam per page, having multiple spams per page (in rows) with a "Report All" button would speed things up immensely. It should also reduce the load on the Spamcop servers by reducing the amount of information, in which I'm not interested, that it currently provides per spam (even with technical details omitted).

As it stands at the moment, reporting large volumes of spam is so time consuming that I'm seriously considering not reporting the spam to Spamcop.

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IMHO, a page of subject lines & report addresses that can be unchecked (without the spamvertized addresses) and then approved for sending would be a big improvement on quickreporting. It would reduce the amount of errors. It might take more time than quick reporting, but a conscientious reporter looks at the 'reports sent' which, to me, is time consuming. If something looked as though it were reported by mistake, then one could click on the link and see the entire parse.

Many people only report the last 10 (or whatever number is convenient). The newest ones are the ones not likely to have already been reported by someone else and so may trigger the blocklist or awaken an ISP to problems.

Miss Betsy

[StevenUnderwood]

IMHO, a page of subject lines & report addresses that can be unchecked (without the spamvertized addresses) and then approved for sending would be a big improvement on quickreporting.  It would reduce the amount of errors.  It might take more time than quick reporting, but a conscientious reporter looks at the 'reports sent' which, to me, is time consuming.  If something looked as though it were reported by mistake, then one could click on the link and see the entire parse.

28161[/snapback]

This is NOT an official response of any kind because I don't know what the code looks like, but it would seem that solution would put a much greater load on the parsing servers because you would either need to parse every report as it was emailed in and cache that information somewhere or you would have to preform X parses (one for every messages waiting) every time someone accessed that page or even refreshed the screen. Right now, only the source message is stored and the parse is regenerated each time the link is accessed.

If the whole process were to be reworked, that would be a great idea to implement, but I don't think it is an "add-on" type of fix.

To scan the quick reports, I search for "spam report id" and look at the recipient.