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Spam getting through to Inbox


martind

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Posted

Hi - I'm getting an increasing number of spam messages slipping through the spam Cop filters into my In Box. Why is this? I've set up the additional Mailhosts information but this seems to have no effect on reducing the number of Spams getting through. They now represent about 1-3% of the total Spams I receive (the remainder are captured to Held Mail). Should I report the messages that get through to my In Box differently? Is there anything I can do to reduce the number of spam messages reaching my In Box? - Thanks in anticipation of your answers and suggestions.

Posted

My thinking on this is these are the spams to definately report!

Because they have made it through the blacklist, it means they aren't on the blacklist. As soon as you report it... it's on the blacklist.

Spammers are constantly evolving and coming up with new ways to get around spam filters. Because the blacklist is simply a long list of known spammers, there is no way for it to know what some of the new spammers are.

FYI: It's also a good idea to check your held mail to make sure that good email isn't being labled as spam.

¢¢

Posted
Hi - I'm getting an increasing number of spam messages slipping through the spam Cop filters into my In Box.  Why is this?  I've set up the additional Mailhosts information but this seems to have no effect on reducing the number of Spams getting through.  They now represent about 1-3% of the total Spams I receive (the remainder are captured to Held Mail).  Should I report the messages that get through to my In Box differently?  Is there anything I can do to reduce the number of spam messages reaching my In Box? - Thanks in anticipation of your answers and suggestions.

Either I don't understand you, or I don't understand the problem.

You seem to be saying that 1 ~ 3% of your total spams manage to evade the filters but I don't see how a 97% (or greater) success rate can be seen as a problem - even though it's not quite ideal 100% effective.

In any event, whatever spams that do get by the filters are the most important for you to report. The spams that get diverted to the "held" folder have already appeared on the radar (have already been reported by others), the spams that do make it to your inbox haven't triggered the blocklist's algorithm yet - thus they get delivered to your inbox.

Reporting the spams that make it to your inbox helps keep the same spams out of other people's inboxes, and others reporting spams that make it to their inboxes helps keep the spam out of your inbox. It's a cooperative effort.

Posted

Yes - I understand that a 97% success rate in detecting spam is good (I'm not complaining about the 1-3% spam that get through) My question is to try and understand why the number of these spams that make through the SpamCop filters appears to be increasing. To begin with (for the first couple of weeks using SpamCop) I had the reporting option for 'mole' seleted (no spam reports sent just record reported spam within SpamCop). The increase in spams making it into my inbox appears to correlate to changing my options to the standard (default?) 'send munged reports'. Could it be that these reports (even though the recipient information is "munged") have somehow made it back to the spammers so that they can construct headers that evade the SpamCop filters?

My question about 'special' reporting of spam that makes through to my Inbox was to check whether or not there is a special reporting route within SpamCop to highlight spam that evades the SpamCop filters?

On a related point is there any value (benefit to the SpamCop community and/or web adminsistrators seeking to minimise spam) in reporting as spam - spam that is detected and posted to 'Held Mail' or shoud I simply delete it?

Posted

My guess would be that your address has been added to a list used by a spammer that sends multiple copies of his spewage, using different open proxies/relays, in hopes that at least one of the copies doesn't get caught in filters.

While it is possible that a spammer (or more than one) has identified your account as being filtered so they have increased the number of routes they use in an attempt to get their spewage delivered, my personal experience says differently.

Today my spamtrap address has received 6 spams sent 3 times each, and one spam sent 4 times - and that address is not used to report spam through SpamCop or manually.

My conclusion is that spammy is just assuming there is filtering so he's trying to avoid it while at the same time increasing the chances that at least one of them will get through to your inbox and be opened.

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