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trisha506

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My understanding was that the reporting options that are already checked by the SpamCop parser are ones that are nearly guaranteed safe bets, and that the unchecked items are the ones that really require a decision.  Thus, as someone not too knowledgable about tracing e-mails, I've always just submitted my reports without checking or unchecking anything. Is this a bad practice?

And -- my newbie-ness is about to really manifest itself here -- please elaborate:  by making sure you're not reporting "your own ISP", what exactly do you mean?  Does that mean simply making sure it's not sending a report to an "earthlink.com" address if you subscribe with them?  Or is there some IP address I need to be looking out for in the "RE:" line above each list of report recipients?  (And if so, how does one find out what that is?)

I'm just a mole so don't have the decisions on check boxes but would assume the reassurance in the FAQ How should I select the recipients for my spam report? is essentially correct and that confirms what you have been doing is the norm/expected.

As for reporting your own ISP, it would depend on your set-up whether that is likely or even possible but yes, keep an eye out for abuse[at].. or postmaster[at].. (...your own service). I confess I had to send myself emails to collect the outgoing server names and numeric IP addresses because I know no other way to get them. That was actually to refute virus accusations but it would also help to pick up anything untoward in the headers of spam reports. If there are ways more clever to do all this stuff then there are now at least *two* of us eager to learn.

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I confess I had to send myself emails to collect the outgoing server names and numeric IP addresses because I know no other way to get them. ....  If there are ways more clever to do all this stuff then there are now at least *two* of us eager to learn.

No, that's the best way in most cases. If you're using a small, local ISP, they probably only have a single e-mail server, but throwing things like IP addresses at a new user probably isn't a normal practice, but if asked, the IP would probably be a front-desk answer. These larger ISPs may have a farm of servers, or servers distributed around the country, and even then, redirection can be done for maintenance / performance reason, so your e-mail may not be handled by the "same" e-mail server every day.

So sending an e-mail from your ISP account to a HotMail account and looking at the full headers would give you a specific answer in the case of a smaller ISP or at least give you a "ballpark" reading in the case of a larger ISP. And once you have the IP address(es) involved and the domain names involved, you'd know what to look for in the "don't report myself" checking the reports mode.

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<snip>

My understanding was that the reporting options that are already checked by the SpamCop parser are ones that are nearly guaranteed safe bets, and that the unchecked items are the ones that really require a decision.  Thus, as someone not too knowledgable about tracing e-mails, I've always just submitted my reports without checking or unchecking anything. Is this a bad practice?

...Yes, I (and several others) have almost or actually reported our own e-mail providers or ISPs because of this! And that's exactly what was meant by

making sure you're not reporting "your own ISP"
That is, looking at the checked items and making sure your own ISP isn't there!
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  • 3 months later...

There's only one time of week that I KNOW spamcop will send me a response on spam that I have submitted. Sunday morning at around 5. Don't ask me why. I submit spam to them every single day of the week. The only time I get a response is Sunday morning. I am making an assumption it is the only time they don't have actual bodies there doing things and therefore things proceed smoothly.

HOWEVER, there's a new wrinkle. What they feed me back on Sunday morning is stuff that I have submitted from earlier in the week. So that means I am getting my spam reports back saying that the spam is too old and cannot be processed.

I pay for this service. This is definitely deja vu all over again. I stopped sending stuff for a long time because I got so sick of not having it processed. I thought I'd give it another try. Looks like I made a mistake again. This is such crap.

The problem is not with my internet provider. If it were, I wouldn't be getting any returns; and the returns I got certainly would not be those submitted much earlier in the week (and not all of what I submitted either.)

Again. I submit spam to spamcop 7 days a week. I submit fresh spam when it shows up. I am NOT delinquent in sending through spam. I get a response from spamcop one day a week - SUNDAY. I do NOT get a response on all of the spam I have sent through the week. But now what I do get a response to is old spam.

Did I already say that this is such crap? Pretty elementary stuff unfortunately raised to the level of rocket science.

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I submit my spam to Spamcop by email by attachment (with full email headers) using my super secret Spamcop email submission address found on the Spamcop.net homepage after I log in.

Once I submit spam with the email link it takes about three minutes for Spamcop to process it. Then the "Report Now" link shows up on the web page. Once I click on the "Report Now" link it takes about two seconds for Spamcop to display the details page. I click on the "Send spam Reports Now" button and it's done.

What is your workflow like? :rolleyes:

It takes me only a few minutes to process fifty spams using Pine.

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Assuming you have an email type account, it sounds like you are describing the Held Mail reports that you receive on the day(s) you decide in your Options

http://webmail.spamcop.net/horde/imp/spamcop/preferences.php

This list shows you what messages are in your Held Mail page (VER) or Held mail folder (webmail) needing to be submitted for reporting.

Depending on how you submit your messages, you will NOT get an email confirmation of waiting messages. Submitting via VER (http://mailsc.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog/) for instance will submit the messages for you to complete the process but will not generate an email.

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As others have said, How are you submitting the spam?

Now regardless of how, do you ever try logging in to your spamcop account to see if there are reports to be processed?

I personally find all the return messages saying I have spam ready to report a bit anoying (but that is besides the point) They are there for a reason, but I just delete them. It is easier for me to simply log in with the browser with stored password info and just start reporting until it stops saying I have more to report.

A question to others:

Is there a way to turn off the email acknowledgement? or set it for not more that 1 per 'X' hours? By the way, yes I do know about the other ways to report that do not generate the messages which I do use as well. But if you submit 10 messages via email as forwarded as attachement, you will get 10 email replies and I am sure the there are some or many who like it that way. But this is definately NOT a big deal. Just wondering.

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If you send 1 email with 10 messages attached, you will get 1 return email with the 10 links within.

The only time this is not true is if you are using one of the add-in type programs for Outlook that sends a separate email for each message. In that case, bring it up with the program author.

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A question to others:

Is there a way to turn off the email acknowledgement? or set it for not more that 1 per 'X' hours?  By the way, yes I do know about the other ways to report that do not generate the messages which I do use as well.  But if you submit 10 messages via email as forwarded as attachement, you will get 10 email replies and I am sure the there are some or many who like it that way.  But this is definately NOT a big deal.  Just wondering.

15234[/snapback]

I use a procmail scri_pt on the Linux mail server to shunt those messages to /tmp/somefile, and a cron job to age that file and delete after a week. Just in case I ever find a need to look at those messages.

The same stash is a convenient way to hold spams which are forwarded as attachments to my SC submit address. This way I always have an unmodified copy of a spam (at least for a week), untouched by a browser or MUA. The procmail recipe just cats the email to the tempfile, so it's as closed to untouched as it could possibly get.

If you have shell access to your email server, I highly recommend procmail for performing all kinds of automated processing of your incoming email.

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Most email readers have a way to sort incoming mail to various folders. I think that's what most people do if they don't have a server.

Also, if you forward email by attachment, most email programs allow you to attach several at one time so that only one auto responder comes back - or at least it used to. When I submit spam to spamcop, I usually do it through the web page nowadays.

Miss Betsy

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Hi, trisha506,

<snip>

The problem is not with my internet provider.  If it were, I wouldn't be getting any returns; and the returns I got certainly would not be those submitted much earlier in the week (and not all of what I submitted either.)

<snip>

Again.  I submit spam to spamcop 7 days a week.  I submit fresh spam when it shows up.  I am NOT delinquent in sending through spam.  I get a response from spamcop one day a week - SUNDAY.  I do NOT get a response on all of the spam I have sent through the week.  But now what I do get a response to is old spam.

Did I already say that this is such crap?  Pretty elementary stuff unfortunately raised to the level of rocket science.

15227[/snapback]

...Seems like you're jumping to an unjustified conclusion. Given what you've described and the lack of anyone else describing similar behavior, I would think that the most likely problem is your provider. Perhaps SpamCop is sending replies within an hour to your provider but your provider isn't delivering them to your Inbox until the following Sunday. Unfortunately, I know of no way for you to check on that other than to ask your provider and hope you'll get a truthful answer. Perhaps you could set up a Hotmail account, sign up for some service that might get your Hotmail account on a list that will result in your receiving spam there and reporting that spam?
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. Unfortunately, I know of no way for you to check on that other than to ask your provider and hope you'll get a truthful answer
One thing you can do is check the headers on the replies and pay close attention to the time stamps. It should provide some insight as to what is going on.
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Sorry folks, but trisha506's issues are more than a bit clarified over in http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1095 .... and if she'd take the time to actually scroll down the first page, she'd have seen the "missing" suggestions, make it to the second page and she'd find the "real" answer .... maybe she'll jump back into this Topic and catch this significant bit of detail?????

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