Submitted spam - no response anymore

[w.bohle]

Submitting spam I used to get a response that it was ready for reporting. Since some time I don't get that response anymore. My member site remains empty as well. What could be wrong?

[Lking]

My member site remains empty as well. What could be wrong?

There are two possibilities and you need to talk with your ISP in both cases.

1. After you submit a report to SpamCop, log into your account at spamcop.net and look in "Past Reports." If the reported spam does not appear after a few minutes, your ISP could be blocking your outgoing submit messages because it "looks like spam." ISPs change their spam filtering methods all the time trying to keep ahead of the changing spam threat.

2. If when you looked in "Past Reports" you see the spam you have reported, with "No reports Filed" your ISP is filter the return messages from SC. This also happens when ISPs change their spam filtering approach. Without using a whitelist, messages from SC do "look like" spam. Multi messages, same source, similar subject and content - looks like spam.

[Miss Betsy]

I am not sure what you are asking.

If you can access your member account, but there is no spam to be reported, the most common reason is that your internet email service provider is filtering outgoing email for spam.

If you submit a spam, never get a response, and the Report Now link

is never activated, then the Submission is not getting delivered to SpamCop's Application Servers.

To find out why it is not being delivered, submit the spam via the web site cut-and-paste method. If the spam parses correctly, then the problem is that your spam submission is not getting to spamcop. If it does not parse correctly, keep in mind that the limits of 50,000 bytes per Submitted spam and 100,000 bytes per Submission Email are still in effect.

To confirm that your outgoing email is being filtered for spam, try to send another e-mail submittal, but this time copy the submittal to yourself at Yahoo, HotMail, etc. or any other email address that is not located at your internet service provider (ISP). If that copy arrives, then your ISP is not filtering/deleting spam. Post here again and we can look at other reasons why your spam submission is not getting to spamcop. If that copy does not arrive, then talk to your ISP to see if they are filtering outgoing email for spam.

Let us know what you find out!

Miss Betsy

[Wazoo]

Submitting spam I used to get a response that it was ready for reporting. Since some time I don't get that response anymore. My member site remains empty as well. What could be wrong?

At the top of this very page, follow one of the multiple links to the SpamCop FAQ

Scroll/jump down to the Reporting section, look for the following and follow the links provided;

E-mail Submittal Problems / Issues

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

Emailed spam Submissions Disappearing? No Confirmation e-mails?

[w.bohle]

Thanks for your quick response! Gave me some leads to think about and test for.

By that I was partly able to track down the reason. It turns out to be an Apple SMTP server problem.

Here is what I tested:

* Forwarded a received spam email to myself again, using smtp.mac.com. Email was sent, never arrived back.

* Forwarded that same spam email to myself using another (non-Apple) email account, through the smtp server connected to that account. Was sent and arrived back properly.

Conclusion: problem related to the Apple smtp.mac.com server.

I searched the Apple discussion forums on “spamcop†and found the following topic: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...82 in which it was reported that email to spamcop was not delivered when using the smtp.mac.com server. Instead, smtp.me.com should be used with port 587.

Switched to that server and tried first to sent myself a simple test email. No problems, went out and arrived back a few seconds later. Then sent the spam email to spamcop using that same smtp server. Went out, no response from spamcop (did not arrive again apparently). Bad luck, I had hoped that it would be OK now.

Finally I forwarded the spam email to spamcop using that other non-Apple email account. No problems. Within a few minutes I received an email from the spamcop server that my spam email was ready for reporting.

What exactly is wrong with the Apple smtp servers in this respect: I don’t have a clue! Apparently emails to spamcop are blocked. If so, spamcop should complain! In retrospective: according to my memory this problem started more or less when Apple was switching from dotMac to MobileMe. What surprises me is that not many more spamcop users are reporting this kind of problem.

Further help or hints are much appreciated.

[agsteele]

What exactly is wrong with the Apple smtp servers in this respect: I don’t have a clue! Apparently emails to spamcop are blocked. If so, spamcop should complain! In retrospective: according to my memory this problem started more or less when Apple was switching from dotMac to MobileMe. What surprises me is that not many more spamcop users are reporting this kind of problem.

It is highly likely that smtp.mac.com employs a filtering process on outgoing message content. It sees that attached spam and recognises the content as junk and so drops it straight into oblivion. Since you weren't able to forward examples to yourself that would suggest that there is not a targetting of Spamcop as a destination any more than any other destination.

Many ISPs are employing outgoing filtering to prevent their users getting their servers blacklisted.

I doubt you'll persuade mac.com to add your SC reporting Email address to a white list of any sort so your only option if you wish to continue reporting looks likely to be using a different SMTP server or reporting manually via the web interface.

Andrew

[zacpack]

Moderator Edit: Moved this from the SpamCop E-mail System & Accounts Forum section and merged it into this existing Topic/Discussion as it covers the same ground. (specifically, it does not appear to be a 'problem' with a SpamCop/CES e-mail account/system) PM sent to advise of this action.

I've been having a few problems with people who are on MobileMe (me.com) and try to send me emails directly to my Spamcop account.

The emails would never arrived. I thought the issue was Mobileme.com, until I signed up for a free trial account to test.

When I send an email from the web interface of mobileme (me.com) it arrives successfully.

If I send an email via Mobileme SMTP server (smtp.me.com) to my spamcop address it does not arrive. However if I send this to all my other email accounts it arrives successfully.

Is anyone else having the same issue?

[avjudge]

If I send an email via Mobileme SMTP server (smtp.me.com) to my spamcop address it does not arrive. However if I send this to all my other email accounts it arrives successfully. Is anyone else having the same issue?

I haven't seen this specifically with Mobileme (not meaning it doesn't happen, meaning I haven't known of any mail sent to my spamcop address from there).

However, I have run into a similar issue with some other senders. I don't remember specifically, but I know I've registered for some sites with my spamcop address and could not receive confirmation or password reset emails - not in my inbox, not in my held mail folder, nowhere. If I reregistered with my main address (which forwards to spamcop), I got them fine. I had this happen with a couple sites.

Anne

[turetzsr]

<snip>

Apparently emails to spamcop are blocked. If so, spamcop should complain!

<snip>

...IMHO, not really.

• Who is inconvenienced by this? Not SpamCop.
  
• Who has a (user/customer) relationship with Apple and therefore has at least some chance of affecting Apple? Not SpamCop.
  

Further help or hints are much appreciated.

...My suggestion would be that you let Apple know that you're dissatisfied with what they are doing and, if they do not correct the behavior, seek an alternate SMTP service provider on whom to shower your hard-earned wealth.

...Good luck!

[zacpack]

So is there anything from the spamcop side which is stopping the email?

[zacpack]

Just spoken to Apple Mobileme support about this problem

As I can send email via the web portal and it arrives successfully, the problem lies with connections via smtp.me.com. The web portal does not use this server to send email.

Apple have confirmed that they can see Spamcop is not allowing connection from mobileme email servers and 'blocking them'

They suspect this a problem with Spamcop. However all IPs are not within Spamcops blocklist.

Any thoughts?

[Miss Betsy]

If any IPs are on the spamcop blocklist, then they have been sending spam. I don't know very much about the spamcop email service or smtp servers, but the spamcop blocklist doesn't, itself, block anyone. Somebody has to use it as a filtering device for spam.

I believe that each user of the spamcop email service can tweak the filters to accept whatever email they want. Also, the spamcop blocklist is not used by the spamcop email service to block or drop email, but to tag it and put it in the Held mail box.

Since I am not a server admin, I don't know what else can be the problem. I do know that some server admins will not accept email from IP addresses that have MX problems (or is it DNS problems?). Anyway, it is doubtful that it has anything to do with the spamcop blocklist, IMHO.

Did the Apple tech know why spamcop was blocking email from mobileme? If not, then I would question how much s/he really knows or is allowed to say. It may still be some kind of internal blocking on their end. Perhaps they don't allow email to spamcop servers. As well as those other sites where email disappeared. That would account for email being delivered to non-spamcop accounts, but not the spamcop account.

Hope someone who is more technically minded can figure it out!

Miss Betsy

[agsteele]

So is there anything from the spamcop side which is stopping the email?

WE may be talking about two different scenarios...

1. General Email sent through the mac.com/MobileMe service which destined for a spamcop.net Email address. If an IP address in the mac.com/MobileMe range is listed because some spam has been sent through it then it will be removed from the list when the spam stops. Such a listing could be caused by the normal range of spam efforts.

2. spam reports sent from a mac.com/MobileMe user destined for the SC reporting service using a reporting address. The OP of this thread noted that he/she could not send these reports to their own address nor to the SC reporting address. This suggests that there may be outgoing mail filtering in place on the mac.com smtp servers. Clearly SpamCop will not be blocking such reports since these are the essence of what the service is about.

The OP was referring specifically to spam reports sent via smtp.mac.com but subsequent conversation seems to be about ordinary Email sent from users of smtp.me.com to users of the SC Email service.

I think these might be two separate issues.

Andrew

[StevenUnderwood]

And in both of those situations, there is no blocking on the SpamCop side... Please have MobileMe support provide you the logs that are showing that.

The spamcop submit server rejects nothing according to posts by the duputies.

The spamcop email system does (or used to) reject a couple of spam only domains, but the vast majority are not rejected because spamcop wants to accept, categorize, and report any spam that is sent. The only other thing that is not delivered to the email service is messages found to contain viruses.

[SpamCopAdmin]

Apple have confirmed that they can see Spamcop is not allowing connection from mobileme email servers and 'blocking them'

SpamCop does not block ANY email at all that is sent to spam.spamcop.net addresses. We do not use our own blocking list. We might bounce emails to certain addresses, but we do not block anything that comes our way.

The same applies for the SpamCop Email Service. However, they do use greylisting, which delays acceptance from some servers until the server tries again. Continuing to try to deliver email is standard behavior for legitimate mail servers, but not for spammer servers, which only try once and give up.

I suppose it is possible that Apple is seeing the greylisting delay when they try to send mail to spamcop.net, cqmail.net, or cesmail.net addresses and thinks it is a rejection.

Please ask your Apple contact to send me what he is seeing that makes him think we are rejecting their mail. All things are possible, so I want to make sure that something goofy is not happening on our end.

He can contact me at: service[at]admin.spamcop.net

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

.

[ViRGE]

This story made it on to TUAW today. If the story is to be believed, Apple is blocking all Spamcop-bound email in order to avoid getting blacklisted, due to accounts with misconfigured mailhosts which result in the Spamcop parser thinking the spam is coming from MobileMe and adding it to the Spamcop BL.

[Farelf]

... If the story is to be believed, Apple is blocking all Spamcop-bound email in order to avoid getting blacklisted, due to accounts with misconfigured mailhosts which result in the Spamcop parser thinking the spam is coming from MobileMe and adding it to the Spamcop BL.

That is a big deal, no matter how you look at it. If Don doesn't look in here sometime soon after the weekend I think he should be alerted to the assertion. I'm guessing he's dealt with (resolved) similar in the past.

[SpamCopAdmin]

Apple is blocking all Spamcop-bound email in order to avoid getting blacklisted,

That's truly unfortunate, but it's none of our business. Apple gets to manage their network any way they want.

If their users are not happy with the way things are run, they should complain, or vote with their feet and move to another service.

As I pointed out in this thread on November 22nd, if Apple wants to contact me, I will be happy to work with them to fix whatever issues they're having.

If there is an actual blacklist problem, I don't see where it is coming from.

http://www.senderbase.org/senderbase_queri...h_string=me.com

There are no reports against ANY of the servers that me.com is sending mail from.

17.148.16.31 smtp.me.com

17.148.20.81 smtp-mx001.me.com

17.148.20.82 smtp-mx002.me.com

17.148.20.83 smtp-mx003.me.com

17.148.20.84 smtp-mx004.me.com

17.148.20.85 smtp-mx005.me.com

17.148.20.86 smtp-mx006.me.com

17.250.248.146 webmail.me.com

17.250.248.156 web.me.com

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

.

[agsteele]

If the story is to be believed...

However, it looks like the story is based upon conjecture and guesswork.

Clearly there is an issue but there does not appear to be any confirmation from MobileMe as to what they are doing. Some users seem to suggest there is a wider filtering problem with MobileMe. But it's all fairly undefined with reasons guessed at and no confirmation...

Andrew

[Rapakiwi]

Submitting spam I used to get a response that it was ready for reporting. Since some time I don't get that response anymore. My member site remains empty as well. What could be wrong?

Step 1. Have you a local ISP? I'm given five free local accounts by mine, and my wife pays only $20 a month for our speedy 1 Mbit/second DSL. Apple, in my experience, listens to no one.

Apple I still recommend for my family, though every time an 'upgrade' appears, unhappy surprises occur to someone. (There are many hardware, software, & settings variants among Apples. One never knows who will be surprised.)

Step 2. Return to step 1.

Strangely, I had been reading about mail on the (censored) Apple Discussions after Thanksgiving, when all mail from mac.com stopped reaching my family. No one on the Board had experienced this.

When I went to .Mac (Cupertino's site), I found mac.com being changed to me.com -- and, though a developer (of free, scientific software) and security list recipient, I hadn't been told. The site now looked designed for 10.5 (hint). The site claimed my password failed, but logged me in anyway. (That's Apple!)

The two weeks of mail was there, in the Inbox. Upon logging in to .Mac, it all poured into the Apple Mail on my desk: but all into the Junk folder! I noticed something different: the server had a Junk filter that could be turned on and off. (It clearly had one before, but we weren't given this strange option.) It was off by default.

Ah! It always assumes mail from a new recipient Junk, and turning it on would teach it who was naughty & who was nice (synchronizing it with my address book and previous recipients). All would work well. Turning it on for the day blocked all my wife's incoming mail again, possibly because the IMAP account told it instead that her correspondents (now in my Junk folder, thank you) had become personae non grata, and held them there. Thank you, Apple.

Though I logged back onto .Mac and turned off the server's Junk filter (whatever that means, for I haven't seen one spam letter in six years), and I assured my Junk settings were identical on server and agent (on my desk), it has a long memory: all mail is now sent to me as Junk, despite the senders' being in my Address Book and in my 'previous recipients'. Ch*$#&!

When I have the time, I'll turn the server's 'Junk' switch back on, then mark my hordes of mail properly, manually sync the 'account settings', and see whether the server will learn to send it to me. I really doubt it.

For this reason, my advice would be to go to step 1.

Most respectfully,

Rapakiwi