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[Resolved] Web Mail -- Filters -- Action Options -- Report as spam


waugh

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The webmail tool has a filtering system that can classify e-mail based on a number of constraints that can be set by the customer. The customer can combine constraints using some Boolean expressions (albeit limited in depth). For messages that meet these constraints, the customer can choose "move to folder . . .", for example, as one of the possible actions for the system to apply to those messages. This is already very useful.

This is to suggest the addition of another action option beside "move to folder . . .", namely, "report as spam".

If I had this feature, I could cause certain spams to be reported with much less delay than currently happens because all reporting from my account has to be mediated manually by me.

I would still take responsibility for the accuracy of the reports. I know that traffic coming on certain addresses is all spam. In the case of each of these addresses, the spammers got it and I retired it from legitimate use. In each case, it was a disposable e-mail address given to a commercial firm and I have since given the firm (via their web site) a new address via which to reach me, and I have verified that they are using the new address. So I know that anything coming on the old one is spam.

Thank you for considering my suggestion.

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I have nothing to do with the development of code for the e-mail system, but will note that the "Report as spam" action is generally known as the VER interface, which was described years ago as no longer being worked on/improved/whatever.

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Is there a more appropriate place for this suggestion?
This is the appropriate place I think Jack. It has to be said that there is little/no evidence of the entries being eagerly plumbed by either side of the SC duumvirate in any event. You could write to JT at support[at]spamcop.net but, as Wazoo has said, it is the impression that development has halted.

Your situation of being able to take responsibility for reports without reviewing each spam due to the unique addresses is fairly uncommon (and not entirely uncompromising, as we have seen). I don't think your situation fits the "spamtrap" category (addresses have seen regular use) otherwise that would be another way to automate/streamline reporting beyond the VER facility. But of course you could always ask the deputies - it's their call vide http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/402.html

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Fully automated filtering that sends messages direct to reporting without review of so much as the subject line is generally a bad idea for individual users IMNSHO.

Then are you against "honeypots"?

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Then are you against "honeypots"?

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Honeypots are 100% illicit. If you want to report those, and get more than 2k daily, sc admins want to know about your spamtrap.

I can predict with some degree of certainty that sc will not add functionality that will automate the reporting of spam any more than it is for individual users. There are too many opportunities for error.

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Fully automated filtering that sends messages direct to reporting without review of so much as the subject line is generally a bad idea for individual users IMNSHO.

Then are you against "honeypots"?

Thanks for that reference; it helps me understand under what conditions Spamcop's experts believe that automatic reporting is worthwhile.

I'm thinking that terms and defiitions are not quite matching up. "Hoeypot" is niwhere near the same thing as a "spamtrap" .... SpamCop.net's use of a "spamtrap" is not really amywhere close to "automatic reporting"

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OK, I eventually looked up "honeypot" and "spamtrap" on Wikipedia.

I am a client of TD Ameritrade, a stock broker. The address I originally registered with them started to receive spam some time ago, all of which specifically had to do with investment scams. I think at least half the spam I receive today that is not filtered via the blacklist, comes on my original address for Ameritrade. I never published that address nor gave it to anyone else (this time I'm sure). I eventually registered a new address with Ameritrade. The new address has never received any spam. I received a notice (by paper mail!) that Ameritrade had been sued in class action, and lost, for having leaked many of their clients' addresses to the spam industry. So, now I know an address that cannot be used for any legitimate purpose. Anything that arrives on it is spam for sure. Evidently it is good to report spam, and the faster the better. However, I have to intervene manually for every case of receiving spam on that address, before the spam can be reported on my behalf via Spamcop.

But I suppose the basic lesson of this thread is that if Spamcop offered an easy way for clients who have not studied these matters carefully to set up automatic reporting of any class of mail as spam, the fear is that in too many instances clients would accidentally cause the reporting of legitimate mail as spam. And of course that would run counter to our common purpose of defeating the purposes of the spammers.

Let me take this opportunity to thank Spamcop and all the volunteers who help them for their dilligence in working to wipe out the social ill that spamming is.

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Message Filter activity: The message "Get an upgrade of Adobe Creative Suite right now for only $179,95." from ""[censored] |former Ameritrade|" <[censored]t[at]sneakemail.com>" has been moved to the folder "INBOX.Trash".

Message Filter activity: The message "FW: Global job vacancy-apply now" from ""[censored]-at-sneakemail.com |former Ameritrade|" <[censored]t[at]sneakemail.com>" has been moved to the folder "INBOX.Held Mail".

Message Filter activity: The message "FW: Global job vacancy-apply now" from ""[censored]-at-sneakemail.com |former Ameritrade|" <[censored]t[at]sneakemail.com>" has been moved to the folder "INBOX.Held Mail".

The above greeted me immediately when I returned to my mailbox after having posted my message here of a couple of minutes ago. The message that went to my trash did so because it came from source that is already blacklisted, and that's how I set up my filters. The ones that went to my held mail are about to be reported as spam by me. They came on my former Ameritrade address, and from sources not currently on the Spamcop blacklist.

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The above greeted me immediately when I returned to my mailbox after having posted my message here of a couple of minutes ago. The message that went to my trash did so because it came from source that is already blacklisted, and that's how I set up my filters. The ones that went to my held mail are about to be reported as spam by me. They came on my former Ameritrade address, and from sources not currently on the Spamcop blacklist.

Not really seeing your point as spam don't get through my SpamCop filter set-up (I pop)

If you check the "Click here to enable greylisting" box and push submit it means only email servers will get to SpamCop email account at all

Disadvantages are that non-Whitelisted addresses will take around 30 minutes to get to your inbox

I have found the only country that use email servers to spam without stopping it are Brazil

(which are usually blocked by the Brazil blacklist)

Whitelists always override blacklists and greylisting

The only other email service that seem as good maybe better is Gmail who don't use Greylisting just an effective "spam radar" like SpamCop blocklist used to do (users click "report spam" and as spam is sent it is blocked. Not sure how long spam sources are blocked by Gmail and they don't allow others to use it). Gmail have a 7 gig folder allowance and 25 meg to post & receive email

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petzl,

I wasn't arguing a point, just remarking about how typical it is for me to get spam that I would like to report automatically.

Thank you for reporting how well greylisting works for you. I will turn greylisting on for more of my addresses.

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waugh's original post suggested the use of SC Webmail's tool 'filter'

With no enhancements this would require

Procedure 1

go to Inbox or held mail

Filter

all containing /something/ move to folder name1

go to folder name1

select all emails

report {selected} as spam

There is an alternative using the SC Webmail's tool 'search'

search selected folders for /something/

Save the search as virtual folder vname1

Procedure 2

Subsequently just go to vname1

select all emails

report {selected} as spam

which is one or two steps less and more flexible.

--

Wandering from the topic a bit but still on "how I use SC Webmail"

I currently use this technique to show me all Held emails which

{a} that have low SpamAssassin scores and thus also those that a Block list or Blocked Russian or a personal black list has stopped.

I can thus review what may need more attention

I have a search {b} which is the inverse of this to show me only those held emails not in {a} which get only a rapid scan.

Of a day's 100 odd Spams, 88 are in {b}, 12 in {a} and 1 to 4 leakers in my inbox.

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I have seen the system forget virtual folders, not very long ago.

Not having looked at that part of the Horde code, admit that this is just a guess at the moment, but ... the 'name' of 'virtual' suggests that this is a temp/scratch file, probably going away based on things like system resources/load, re-booting, etc. .. thigs that also include the action of 'cleaning up the system/file structure'

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Not having looked at that part of the Horde code, admit that this is just a guess at the moment, but ... the 'name' of 'virtual' suggests that this is a temp/scratch file, probably going away based on things like system resources/load, re-booting, etc. .. thigs that also include the action of 'cleaning up the system/file structure'

I have virtual folders more than a year old which show no sign of vanishing.

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10163

I think that 'virtual' here means there is no actual folder but instead the recipe (saved search) is remembered.

Note that folders or virtual folders can be accessed from either the Folders menu item or the Open Folder pull down.

quotes from Horde Help ===

Virtual Folders: Virtual Inbox

Virutal Inbox is a saved search that does away with the need to search every mailbox for messages marked as new. Instead, all currently subscribed mailboxes are searched for new messages and the results are displayed in a single mailbox.

Virtual Folders: Virtual Trash

Virtual Trash is a saved search that does away with the need for a separate Trash folder. Instead of moving messages to a centralized trash folder, messages are simply marked as deleted in the current folder they live in. When 'show deleted messages' is turned off, this results in these messages not appearing in a mailbox view. When a user clicks on Virtual Trash, *all* mailboxes all searched for messages that are flagged deleted and these messages are displayed in a single mailbox.

Also Options Server and Folder Information

Display Virtual Inbox? checkbox

end quotes ===

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When I only use the virtual folders, they don't disappear. I have seen them disappear when I attempted to add new ones. I cannot reproduce this behavior; the occurrence of it was spurious. But it happened enough that I won't invest much effort into building them for antispam purposes.

Also, the system doesn't provide a way to transfer information between the virtual folders and the "filters" (of course, both are filters). So, if I have invested effort in "filters", if I wanted to use "virtual folders" with the same predicates, I'd have to re-enter the predicates (leaf and branch) by hand. So that places before me a barrier to switching techniques.

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When I only use the virtual folders, they don't disappear. I have seen them disappear when I attempted to add new ones. I cannot reproduce this behavior; the occurrence of it was spurious. But it happened enough that I won't invest much effort into building them for antispam purposes.

Now you give more detail I do recall that when I was developing search recipes and saving with a new name so I could go back and reinstate a section I had removed I found some weird things happening when I used the same name as several steps ago.

Perhaps the old contents could reappear ?

The designer may not have got the logic right for a virtual folder name that already existed ?

Anyway I changed to using a unique name from then on and deleted the old name before using it again and had no more trouble.

As I said, once the virtual folder was in the list, all was safe.

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Continuing the side conversation about virtual folders vs. "filters" --

In a "filter", you can include a predicate that observes any arbitrary mail header you choose. That lets me filter on spam Assassin ratings. Virtual folders cannot do the same.

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[i tried to edit this post to use capitalization on both words of the name "spam Assassin".

Making an assumption, the SpamAssassin tool is not spelled out as two words.

But something seems to want to decapitalize "spam" for me.

Change to some code in this application 'here' is documented. Some folks simply couldn't understand Hormel's requests as to copyright/trademark handling, so "I" took care of it.

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Some folks simply couldn't understand Hormel's requests as to copyright/trademark handling, so "I" took care of it.

Yum, pork shoulder.

OK, thanks.

There's a great scene in the movie _The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio_, a move I highly recommend. The wife and children are eating caviar from a spree through a store that the wife won in some jingle contest (it's set in the 1950's). The husband just wants to eat Hormel pam brand canned pork shoulder.

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Continuing the side conversation about virtual folders vs. "filters" --

In a "filter", you can include a predicate that observes any arbitrary mail header you choose. That lets me filter on SpamAssassin ratings. Virtual folders cannot do the same.

As I said I do exactly that

"I currently use this technique to show me all Held emails which

{a} that have low SpamAssassin scores and thus also those that a Block list or Blocked Russian or a personal black list has stopped. ..."

looking at:-

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10163

== begin copy

If you search the Held folder for whole of message contains "hits=5. OR hits=4. OR hits=3. OR hits=2."

and save the search as virtual folder box then you would see just the likely items that should not be in Held. with very little trouble.

(This is the header line X-spam-Status: hits= but Search doesn't seem to work to find a target with embedded spaces so I just used the hits= segment)

== end copy

Note that this SA line can be missing, ie for very big emails, so "no find" should be included in the suspicious list.

HTH

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  • 2 weeks later...

Despite all the limitations I asserted (correctly or not) above about switching to using a virtual folder for highlighting spam, I now do exactly that. I don't have the redirection to "Held Mail" turned on. Everything comes to my inbox. I still have filters that send to Trash anything flagged from the Spamcop blacklist or having above a certain SpamAssassin score. These leave in my inbox the messages I really want to report.

So I go to my "spam" virtual folder, which exposes just the messages in my Inbox that came on the addresses that only spammers use. I report those messages as spam quite fast and regularly. Once that virtual folder looks empty, I can go to my Inbox and see my real mail almost free of spam.

A "Thank you" to the person who first brought up here the idea of using a virtual folder for highlighting spam to report.

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