Should Mailto addresses get reported?

[MisterBill]

I've recently started getting a lot of spam from a hosting company. There is no website to report but there is a mailto that they have responses going to. However, Spamcop is not sending any notice to that site. Is there a reason? Seems like an address that gets replies is going to be real, so definitely the site owner should be notified.

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z4996578016z3...7ff1799c84ceeaz

[rconner]

I've recently started getting a lot of spam from a hosting company. There is no website to report but there is a mailto that they have responses going to. However, Spamcop is not sending any notice to that site. Is there a reason? Seems like an address that gets replies is going to be real, so definitely the site owner should be notified.

Speaking strictly as a user of SpamCop, I can say that SC generally doesn't report on e-mail addresses because of the great likelihood that such reports could be misdirected (due to spammer forgeries). You can certainly report these addresses yourself outside of SpamCop -- here's a link to the Wiki that should be of some help:

http://forum.spamcop.net/scwik/ReportingEMailAddresses

-- rick

[MisterBill]

Thanks for the link. I agree that reporting email addresses in the header is useless. But that page says that reporting the address where the spammer is expecting replies can be useful. yet it does not do it. I prefer to have something like Spamcop doing the reporting because it is anonymous. If I have to send it with my real email address and find out that the spammer also owns the domain I am reporting him to (i.e., he is getting the complaint), I will likely get much more spam as a result.

[turetzsr]

<snip>

I prefer to have something like Spamcop doing the reporting because it is anonymous. If I have to send it with my real email address and find out that the spammer also owns the domain I am reporting him to (i.e., he is getting the complaint), I will likely get much more spam as a result.

...You could sign up for a free e-mail account with a service like GMail, Yahoo!Mail or Hotmail for that purpose.

[rconner]

The Wiki, as we are constantly reminded, is not an "official" organ of SpamCop, so you shouldn't take it as such (psst...I know the author of that Wiki page very well, he's me!). SpamCop was designed to deal with spam sources, and generally seeks to stick to this objective (with good results). I suspect that moving into other areas of spam investigation begins to call for human intelligence, machines and software can't always make the necessary judgments about whether an e-mail address would be reportable.

That said, it is a wise precaution not to tip your hand to spammy domains. On the other hand, if you know (or think) that the domain is truly spammy, you wouldn't want to report to them in the first place. If you find that the operator of the address' MX host is a fairly trustworthy outfit, you can always report to them. Likewise for the IP provider of the MX host.

-- rick

[SpamCopAdmin]

Maybe you could use the "User Notification" function to send a report to the host of the email address when you report the spam. That function is only available to paid subscribers.

If you enter the email address by itself into the SpamCop web form, SpamCop will tell you all it knows, including a reporting address.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

- service[at]admin.spamcop.net -

.

[Wazoo]

If you enter the email address by itself into the SpamCop web form, SpamCop will tell you all it knows, including a reporting address.

Usually .... Wiki pages have just recently been added to address those times when it doesn't <g>