ViRGE
-
Posts
114 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by ViRGE
-
-
Thank you for the update.
And if any of the Cisco staff are reading this, cheers to you for taking care of us. I don't imagine modifying the reporting site just for this is a simple task.
-
That assumes the decision was made before the outages began. Which is a possibility, but far from a sure thing.At least we now have an explanation for the outages. It was known that the system was going away, so there was no reason to waste resources on fixing it.
-
I don't wish to come off as boorish or hostile, but I'm not sure everyone here appreciates the current situationBasically, there is very little value left in the proposition of offer. And really I would expect a much longer notice period for a change of this type.
- CESmail as a service is on death's bed. If that wasn't already apparent after the service troubles we've had over the past year, then last week's should make it clear.
- Though it's not clear whether the shutdown is CES's call or Cisco's, the shutdown is a complex matter for both parties because there's more to Spamcop than just the paid email. Spamcop email addresses are also used by Cisco as part of operating the Spamcop RBL, so the shutdown impacts them as well. Even if the paid email service is going away, someone still needs to be operating Spamcop.net mail servers.
Based on comments from Support, Cisco, and the original announcement, what appears to be happening is that they're pulling the plug on all CESmail services entirely on the 30th. At which point Cisco updates the Spamcop.net MX records to point to their own servers, and they begin handling all Spamcop.net email. This is also why all Spamcop.net held email and reporting integration goes away, as those systems will no longer be in place.
While I don't think we should simply roll over and be happy with this, it's important to recognize that this is Cisco throwing us a bone here. Cisco clearly doesn't want to be in the paid email hosting business (which is why CES has run it all these years), but they're going to ease the transition for long-time users by doing mail forwarding so that we don't lose the use our Spamcop.net email addresses right away. The Cisco takeover isn't meant to be a replacement for the CESmail service, it's meant to offer a stop-gap solution for email address continuity.
If you're expecting anything more than that, then those are going to be unrealistic expectations. While it would certainly be nice to have a proper continuation of the Spamcop paid email service, that's clearly not in the cards. This forwarding system is the best we can realistically hope for.
You should plan for it to not be delivered. Since we'll be going through Cisco's email servers and won't have mailboxes to store held mail, Cisco will likely be dropping all held mail (otherwise Cisco would not be going out of their way to inform us that we can't opt out of their spam filtering).I still have no idea how any legit mail caught by the spam filters is going to be handled.
- CESmail as a service is on death's bed. If that wasn't already apparent after the service troubles we've had over the past year, then last week's should make it clear.
-
Presumably it's like any other filtering service at that point: it gets discarded. Unless they're going to send everything through and just tag it as spam.That makes me wonder what happens to legit mail identified as spam? If that tab wont work then there wont be any way to clear it. Surely that's a mistake and he means only in the webmail client?
-
As far as any of us can tell, the CESmail user base is miniscule, which is part of the reason why the service has become non-viable. While I'm sure CESmail users are reporting and improving the blacklist, I would find it highly unlikely that we're a major source of spam reports. Otherwise Spamcop would never be seeing enough email to be an effective blacklist.So the question is, what percentage of the total spam reports came from email subscribers? Is it a large portion? Or is it small compared to the spam traps and other reporting sources?
Functionally that's just another interface to our email accounts. Admittedly I'm reading into the announcement and taking the most literal/worst-case assumption, but it looks like they're getting rid of email hosting entirely. If they were still storing any of our email then shutting off the email service would be pointless since they'd still need to run all of the servers involved.If you log on to http://mailsc.spamcop.net (same as your webmail log on - looks like no https) there is an option to see the held mail and forward those that are wrongly caught. Now the question who generates the emails about held emails as I rely on that to check incorrectly caught emails
Though this does raise a an interesting question. Previous discussions and problems with the service have hinted that CESmail already has a large number of users who are using the service to wash their email (email forwarding), and that as a result the bulk of the servers are dedicated towards receiving and forwarding email rather than storing it. In other words, most of the service is the MXes and their associated hardware. So I'm curious as to just what portion of CESmail's ongoing costs from hosting, as getting rid of hosting and becoming a filter-only service may not make the service much cheaper to run (e.g. if they aren't discontinuing the service entirely, then it may still be $30/year and for good reason).
-
At the end of the day you already have all the tools you need to migrate to another provider, so no matter what CESmail does you will still be okay. CESmail is still providing email forwarding, and you can use IMAP to copy all of your mail out to another system.If this is all genuine it would be nice if the webmail providers can offer to migrate accounts to another provider.
Good news: you can. We have permission from the mods, so I've gone ahead and started a thread.I know we shouldn't really be discussing competing services here but it would be nice if we could.
-
Yep, you're cool. Thank you.ViRGE, haven't heard back from you yet, hope it is OK with you to share the exchange ...
-
I've put in a formal request for permission to discuss it. Let's not rock the boat quite yet, as they have previously made it clear that they need to be sure we don't jeopardize the forums.I'm assuming that the embargo on discussing alternatives to CESMail is now over, so I'd say let's have at it and woe unto the moderator that tries to stop us! :-)
-
Well it was a good run. I'd like to be able to say it's going to end as well as it started, but admittedly that's not the case. Still, I'm genuinely pleased that there's going to be an orderly wind down rather than CESmail suddenly vanishing from the Internet one day.
Ditto to this. I'm due for renewal towards the end of this month, so I'd like to know how CESmail is going to proceed in both the near term and long term. Are paid subscriptions coming to an end? Or will CESmail be a $30/year forwarding-only service? And in the case of the latter, how long would CESmail be continuing it, since I have to assume they're looking at winding all of this down?My account expires 8/18 so I'm certainly wondering how to proceed.
Public responses would be nice. Though not necessarily out of owing us anything, but because it will cut down on the amount of email back and forth between users and CESmail. It's easier to answer it once for everyone than to answer it a hundred times individually.Well, not yet, but that's because the last support ticket I filed was never graced with a response, so why should I expect any better outcome? I'll give it a try, but I'll also insist they show up here and answer the questions publicly--they owe us that.
-
Ahh, that makes sense and makes me feel a lot better. So this doesn't cause problems after all, thanks.The point being, while this is a problem when sending to yourself, it should not be a problem when sending externally, as the recipient server will see the SpamCop SMTP server as the connecting IP, not your home computers IP. -
It's entirely possible that not too many people are using the PBL, but Comcast's customer netblocks are definitely on the blacklist. Here's one such example.I've never had an issue having my messages blocked by the PBL for others.Also, I would like to see you TOS that says you can not use external SMTP servers. I know it is not against my TOS.
As for the specific TOS bit, here is what Spamhaus says. Keep in mind they're working with Comcast on this, so they didn't pull it out of thin air:
Outbound Email Policy of Comcast for this IP range:Email sent by Comcast subscribers using a mail program such as Outlook Express are required to send the email through Comcast
I'd go dredge up Comcast's full TOS, but seeing as how their DNS entries got hijacked and they're still putting things back together, their website is kind of a mess at the moment.
Edit: And actually, while I'm thinking about it, how does the PBL work exactly? My understanding of blacklists is that the source IP address is simply fed to the blacklist to see if said IP is on the list. With the PBL, you're on the list regardless. How does one blacklisting via the PBL know if the email came from a correct source or not?
-
It's not myself I'm worried about (I don't usually email myself), it's everyone else using the PBL.For me the solution was to stop using the PBL
-
I know this is a bit old, but I just found out about the SMTP service and I too had that issue. The problem is this: the PBL is designed to block all email that doesn't come from an ISP's SMTP servers, because using other SMTP servers is a TOS violation. For example, I'm on Comcast, all Comcast subscribers are supposed to send their email through Comcast's servers (and port 25 is blocked as part of this). However if I use Spamcop's SMTP server, then I'm breaking this rule and the PBL picks up on this.I can overcome the issue by switching to an alternative SMTP server but I'm wondering if there is a strange config for the SC smtp machine. Anyone have any knowledge?Of course this creates a pretty ugly problem: either I have to use Comcast's SMTP server and have my email coming from a wrong server (which indicates it may be spam), or I use the Spamcop SMTP server and have it come from the right server (complete with a SPF certificate) but then it will get shot down by blacklists by the PBL. I don't like it, I don't like it one bit, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done. From what I've read, a smarthost setup (Spamhaus' prescribed solution) doesn't solve this problem.
Spamcop could always rewrite email headers to hide the real sender's IP address, making the email look like it only came from a Spamcop server, but that's obviously dishonest.
I would like to hear from other people however (SC employees in particular) on if there's any other way around this issue besides using webmail. Although it's not really SC's problem (that falls more in to the hands of Comcast and whoever is using the PBL) I suspect SC would be the only person that can be bothered to even care about the issue, let alone come up with some resolution.
CESmail System changes
in SpamCop Email System & Accounts
Posted
"There will be a webform on the reporting site http:spamcop.net for changing your forwarding address (AFTER Sept 30) or to stop forwarding (i.e. shutdown the spamcop/cesmail/cqmail.net email address). "
You're not missing much. It's not even enabled by default due to problems with compromised accounts sending spam. CES would only enable it if you knew to request it.