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Missing submit messages


funinatl

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For the past couple days I've noticed a problem when sending reports of spam. The emails seem to go out ok with no errors at all. But I noticed that I wasn't receiving the usual SpamCop AutoResponder emails back. When I go to spa,cop.net there isn't any apam there to process. It's like my emails aren't getting to SpamCop. The last one they received was on 11/5/07 but I've sent several since then. Is anyone else having that problem or can someone point me in the right direction? In case it matters, I'm on Comcast. Thanks

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Hi!

...SpamCop FAQ (see link near top left of any SpamCop Forum page) article "Emailed spam Submissions Disappearing? No Confirmation e-mails?" would be a good place to start.

...Please let us know whether or not any of the content there looks helpful in your case.

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This appears to be a Comcast issue. I am on Comcast (my area was taken over by Comcast from Time Warner / Road Runner) and am experiencing the exact same problem.

I can manually cut and paste a spam email into the submission box and have it process normally.

All spam emails I attempt to forward to my reporting address never reach spamcop.net.

I've also attempted to forward those same spam emails to another email address that I use with the same results.

I'm not sure what the heck someone at Comcast is doing or how we should get it resolved, but this is really annoying as I submit upwards of 200-500 spam emails per day.

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I can manually cut and paste a spam email into the submission box and have it process normally.

All spam emails I attempt to forward to my reporting address never reach spamcop.net.

I've also attempted to forward those same spam emails to another email address that I use with the same results.

I'm not sure what the heck someone at Comcast is doing or how we should get it resolved, but this is really annoying as I submit upwards of 200-500 spam emails per day.

This situation would most likely be addressed in the 'next' item in the exact same section of the SpamCop FAQ as found 'here' ....

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This situation would most likely be addressed in the 'next' item in the exact same section of the SpamCop FAQ as found 'here' ....

I don't see any links in your reply, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

To further clarify what I'm experiencing, the Comcast SMTP server I use for outgoing emails is accepting the emails without trouble, but somewhere further along they are silently being dropped. I've tried forwarding the same spam emails to 3 other unfiltered email accounts that I operate with the exact same results. I can forward other non-spam emails to those same email accounts and have them get there without any troubles at all.

I can get a response from spamcop.net when I send a non-spam email to my reporting address. Only true spam emails are not getting through Comcast's SMTP servers.

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I don't see any links in your reply, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

To further clarify what I'm experiencing, the Comcast SMTP server I use for outgoing emails is accepting the emails without trouble, but somewhere further along they are silently being dropped. I've tried forwarding the same spam emails to 3 other unfiltered email accounts that I operate with the exact same results. I can forward other non-spam emails to those same email accounts and have them get there without any troubles at all.

I can get a response from spamcop.net when I send a non-spam email to my reporting address. Only true spam emails are not getting through Comcast's SMTP servers.

Exact same experience for me for past two days. Only one of my emailed submissions was successful today out of 10 or so attempts, but both the emailed Spamcop reply and the "Report Now" option did not come for approx six hours after I submitted spam to Spamcop.

I'm a long time Comcast user but I don't believe that the problem is with Comcast's SMTP servers. No other email problems, no bounces and all expected emails are coming and going as they should, with Spamcop emailed spam reporting as the only known exception.

Copy and paste works fine. I also checked the "Problem Resolutions for Reporters" workouts in FAQs and passed all tests. As an FYI, I've been a registered Spamcop user for over five years.

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I don't see any links in your reply, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Saw no need to provide the link, as you allegedly had 'just/recently' been there following up on SteveT's reply.

E-mail Submittal Problems / Issues

E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP? Updated!

Emailed spam Submissions Disappearing? No Confirmation e-mails?

He suggested the second link, I suggested the other. ComCast is on that list .. and based on the various discussion points, posts in various places, it appears that as ComCast replaces/upgrades servers, new people get impacted by the changes.

To further clarify what I'm experiencing, the Comcast SMTP server I use for outgoing emails is accepting the emails without trouble, but somewhere further along they are silently being dropped. I've tried forwarding the same spam emails to 3 other unfiltered email accounts that I operate with the exact same results. I can forward other non-spam emails to those same email accounts and have them get there without any troubles at all.

I can get a response from spamcop.net when I send a non-spam email to my reporting address. Only true spam emails are not getting through Comcast's SMTP servers.

Yes, yes, and even more yes. Outgoing spam is being 'handled' by a number of ISPs .... Thus begat the FAQ entry 'here' ...

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Saw no need to provide the link, as you allegedly had 'just/recently' been there following up on SteveT's reply.

That wasn't the link I had followed, but I've found the one you are referring to now.

I guess I should add that this is the Houston Comcast market and previously submissions worked fine with Comcast. Prior to the market takeover, they worked fine with RoadRunner here as well. Comcast did do an immediate change over (unannounced) to different email servers when they took over the market, but spam reports would still go though up until the last few days (the changeover happened I believe 3-4 months back).

I guess this means it's time for me to look into getting SMTP-AUTH & TLS working with my other email service provider so I can use them for all outgoing email.

If someone has any contact names / numbers with Comcast regarding this issue, I'd sure like to have them. I don't much fancy them filtering out anything their software assumes to be spam as it may impact my business communications if something is improperly flagged. If I find out that important emails are getting lost due to the recent and unannounced changes, things will get very ugly very fast.

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Just submitted an emailed spam at approx 11:40 pm and Spamcop reply came back at approx 12:00 pm. Went to Spamcop report page and the "Report Now" option was there also. Maybe problem has been solved?

As an experiment, I forwarded 100 spam emails one at a time to my reporting address. Out of that 100, about 7 actually made it through.

Can anyone suggest any software that I can use to split up a mbox file on a *nix box to help automate forwarding individual emails? I know I could always do it in Perl, but why reinvent the wheel? :)

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...SpamCop FAQ (see link near top left of any SpamCop Forum page) article "Emailed spam Submissions Disappearing? No Confirmation e-mails?" would be a good place to start.

...Please let us know whether or not any of the content there looks helpful in your case.

I've been thru that FAQ and nothing there helps. My mail seems to be leaving Comcast fine. I have cc'ed another address on it and it gets there fine. When it's sent there's never the REPORT NOW showing at spamcop when I check it. I can go to the spamcop page and log in fine. I can cut and paste the spam there and it works fine. It just looks like it's leaving Comcast but never getting to Spamcop.

I see that others are having the same problem with Comcast. Someone said theirs started working today. But mine doesn't seem to be.

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I've been thru that FAQ and nothing there helps. My mail seems to be leaving Comcast fine. I have cc'ed another address on it and it gets there fine.

<snip>It just looks like it's leaving Comcast but never getting to Spamcop.

<snip>

...Have you executed Wazoo's suggestion to look at the SpamCop FAQ article labeled "E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP? Updated!"? I note that only the first and last posts (especially the latter) seem relevant to your situation.
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I've been thru that FAQ and nothing there helps. My mail seems to be leaving Comcast fine. I have cc'ed another address on it and it gets there fine.

Timing could be involved here also. If you included a CC: and you say that the e-mail made it to the other place, the odds are that it also made it to the SpamCop.net system. Howver, looking at the graphic/link at the top right of this page, the Parsing & Reporting system is currently being slammed. This also feeds into the fact that e-mail submittals are handled on a lower priority than most other things. The suggestion is that (failing an outage for one reason or another) you should probably see something about this particular submittal "in a while" .... I'm not going to try to guess at what the interval might be, just suggesting that there are other issues involved at present that need to be taken into account.

Your comment "others say it started working today" isn't really clear. You were talking about a Forum discussion, but there has been no 'new' traffic in that discussion that would make the claim you state (that some others made)

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<snip>

Your comment "others say it started working today" isn't really clear. You were talking about a Forum discussion, but there has been no 'new' traffic in that discussion that would make the claim you state (that some others made)

...My assumption is that the reference was to linear post 7 and linear post 10.
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It would appear that Comcast's "filtering" of outgoing emails on this part of their network began somewhere around Nov 6 to Nov 7. I have no acceptance messages after Nov 6th until Nov 9th.

Last night I went ahead and wrote a Perl scri_pt to process a mbox format file and forward each message to my reporting address individually. Previously, I would usually submit spam emails in batches of 100 or more at a time.

Since last night, I have submitted approximately 460-480 individual emails. I've only received 145 acceptance messages for those emails. It appears that the more recent the email, the more likely it is to make it through Comcast's filtering. Probably 25-35% of those 460-480 emails that I processed were close to 48 hours old.

I can't help but wonder if whatever Comcast is using to filter outgoing emails is using data generated from the emails that we submit to Spamcop? Are these people really that clueless?

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...My assumption is that the reference was to linear post 7 and linear post 10.

Re my post (linear post 7). The timely acceptances lasted about an hour and since then only a few are getting through. At least that's apparent by the fact that only a few are actually showing up on Spamcop as "Report Now" options. Same with email responses from Spamcop ("SpamCop AutoResponder [spamCop] has accepted one email for processing). And the few that do get through are taking anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours. My guess is that the problem is on the SpamCop side.

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Re my post (linear post 7). The timely acceptances lasted about an hour and since then only a few are getting through. At least that's apparent by the fact that only a few are actually showing up on Spamcop as "Report Now" options. Same with email responses from Spamcop ("SpamCop AutoResponder [spamCop] has accepted one email for processing). And the few that do get through are taking anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours. My guess is that the problem is on the SpamCop side.

Just an update as problem still exists. As an example, received 5 acceptance emails yesterday (11/12) out of 9 submissions. Also, the same 5 were the only ones available to "report now" when logged in to SpamCop. On 11/11, only two completed their journey. Apparently, others are simply disappearing.

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Just an update as problem still exists.

<snip>

...From what application are you submitting your spam -- a web-based e-mail client, a Windows client, a Mac client ...? Copy/paste works on the ones for which you get no e-mail reply from SpamCop when you submit them via e-mail? Do you notice anything either present or missing in the headers of the ones that do not go through common to them but different from the ones that do go through?

...It is beginning to sound as if you are going to need to go directly to the SpamCop Deputies [deputies[at]admin.spamcop.net] with the problem.

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...From what application are you submitting your spam -- a web-based e-mail client, a Windows client, a Mac client ...? Copy/paste works on the ones for which you get no e-mail reply from SpamCop when you submit them via e-mail? Do you notice anything either present or missing in the headers of the ones that do not go through common to them but different from the ones that do go through?

...It is beginning to sound as if you are going to need to go directly to the SpamCop Deputies [deputies[at]admin.spamcop.net] with the problem.

Thanks for the reply. Submitting through ubiquitous Outlook Express via Comcast SMTP, same as I always have over past 5 years of SpamCop reporting. Copy/paste works fine on any and all that I submit that way. Have also gone through entire FAQ workout ("Problem Resolutions for Reporters") to verify my account and all is perfect there. Regarding headers, they are normal and look fine to me, as far as I can tell.

I sent an email to SpamCop deputies last week on Nov 8th and have yet to hear back from anyone. Problem started suddenly on the 8th, same as originator of this thread. Early suspect was a change in Comcast, but that has been debunked, I think. (All of my expected email is going and coming with no problems.)

It's interesting that copy/paste submissions resolve quickly while the few emailed submissions that do finally resolve (and since last Thursday, 50% or so of those emailed never resolve) are taking from 1 to 4 hours before receiving an emailed response from SpamCop. Meanwhile, the "Report Now" feature (which is equally slow) may become available before receiving email response. Or it may not!

Really no identifiable constant that I can discern either regarding the spams themselves or SpamCop's automated responses or lack thereof to emailed submissions.

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Thanks for the reply. Submitting through ubiquitous Outlook Express via Comcast SMTP, same as I always have over past 5 years of SpamCop reporting.
...Okay, so not Outlook but Outlook Express -- I know Outlook sometimes has problems.
Copy/paste works fine on any and all that I submit that way.

<snip>Regarding headers, they are normal and look fine to me, as far as I can tell.

...Okay, thanks for checking those.
I sent an email to SpamCop deputies last week on Nov 8th and have yet to hear back from anyone.
...They're pretty busy folks. Be a bit patient. But not too patient. Sometimes you have to remind them after a week or so. Being as brief as you can but complete enough that they don't have to go back to you for more information seems to be the recommended (and logical) approach. You also may want to send from an account other than your Comcast account, in case that's the cause of e-mails not getting through and therefore is keeping your inquiry from reaching them.
<snip>

It's interesting that copy/paste submissions resolve quickly while the few emailed submissions that do finally resolve (and since last Thursday, 50% or so of those emailed never resolve) are taking from 1 to 4 hours before receiving an emailed response from SpamCop.

<snip>

...Not really; (as I understand it) the handling of e-mail submissions is intended to have lower priority; also (again, as I understand it), there are handoffs of e-mail submissions between and among the west coast (parsing) servers and the east coast (e-mail) servers.
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Early suspect was a change in Comcast, but that has been debunked, I think. (All of my expected email is going and coming with no problems.)

The only way to confirm this is to forward all messages to both spamcop and to another email address external to Comcast (Yahoo, gmail, work address, etc) and confirm that the messages are actually leaving the Comcast network. Comcast is known to block outgoing spam messages.

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..Okay, thanks for checking those.

Again, thanks for your reply. As an update, only one of four submissions yesterday (11/13/07) resolved and it took four hours. I don't mind the time lag so much, although until last week submissions were coming back in minutes - often as little as one or two. However, the complete "loss" of submitted spam does concern me.

Will see how it all develops. Problems in past years have always been resolved by folks at SpamCop and I'm sure this one will be diagnosed and fixed eventually.

I'll continue to post occasional updates for FYI's.

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Folks, I have to tell you that I've come to the conclusion that this is definitely a SpamCop problem. I've had several conversations with Comcast with no luck. For the past 10 days I've had about 1% of my submission emails get thru and show up in SpamCop. But here's an experiment that was very telling. I just sent a submission three different ways - one using Outlook via Comcast, another using the web based interface via Comcast and the final one via Hotmail. Guess what? None of them have been recognized by SpamCop.

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But here's an experiment that was very telling. I just sent a submission three different ways - one using Outlook via Comcast, another using the web based interface via Comcast and the final one via Hotmail. Guess what? None of them have been recognized by SpamCop.

Nothing said about copies of these things sent anywhere else .. therefore you have not demonstrated that any of these actually left a ComCast e-mail server. As stated in various troubleshooting steps provided in numerous places, getting a copy of the e-mail received elsewhere would then allow the headers to be seen, snagged, posted, provided, whatever so someone would have some definite clues as t where to check in their (in this case, one of the SpamCOp.net Parsing systems) incoming logs to see just what the issue might be. Based on all the previous user reports, tests, and results, I'm still inclined to go with that your outgoing is being dropped by the ComCast servers, based on that they 'look just like spam' .... Your test, as described, has not gone far or deep enough to prove anything, definitely not documented enough to provide any data for anyone else to work with.

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Folks, I have to tell you that I've come to the conclusion that this is definitely a SpamCop problem. I've had several conversations with Comcast with no luck. For the past 10 days I've had about 1% of my submission emails get thru and show up in SpamCop. But here's an experiment that was very telling. I just sent a submission three different ways - one using Outlook via Comcast, another using the web based interface via Comcast and the final one via Hotmail. Guess what? None of them have been recognized by SpamCop.

And yet, have you tried to cc your hotmail account on your submissions as requested? It has taken some people several levels of Comcast support before they got to someone who actually knew what was going on.

It is still possible that SpamCop is having an issue, but there are no major reports of such an issue. I have reported at least one spam via email each day for the last couple of weeks (messages that slip by spamcop's webmail filters) and while they are taking longer than they have in the past (15-60 minutes) every one has come back.

Two of your tests I would expect to fail if Comcast were filtering outgoing messages. I would always expect a small percentage of messages to make it past these filters just like I always expect a small percentage to evade incoming filters.

I can not explain the hotmail one but it is possible they are also filtering outgoing messages.

If a message is sent to your spamcop submit address and another address, arrives in the alternate address but not spamcop, then you have proof of an issue at spamcop. It is also possibly a problem with your specific submit address which could explain why you are having issues and nobody else seems to be reporting anything. That would need to be investigated by the deputies[at]admin.spamcop.net address.

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