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the value of reporting v. hindering reporting


reciprocity

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What value is there to reporting?

I don't use the email service, but I do use the blocklist. I figure any spam reporting I do can only help to improve the blocklist, right? Though it works great even if I don't report anything.

So if I'm helping the blocklist by putting in the effort of reporting, I'm wondering why there are any impediments at all to reporting, like the nag screen?

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<snip>

I don't use the email service, but I do use the blocklist. I figure any spam reporting I do can only help to improve the blocklist, right?

...Yes, that's the principal direct benefit to you (which also benefits others using the blocklist). In addition, SpamCop offers to report the spam, without identifying you directly, to the appropriate abuse address of the spam source, some of whom take action against the perpetrators. You can also use the Preferences | "Report Handling Options" | "Public standard report recipients" feature to send to other authorities, such as spam[at]uce.gov and reportphishing[at]antiphishing.org, where appropriate, to further simplify your contacting appropriate parties who might take action.
Though it works great even if I don't report anything.
...Yes, your single reports have only marginal impact on the BL -- see SpamCop FAQ (link near top left of all SpamCop Forum pages] item labeled "What is on the list?" for (rather technical) details.
So if I'm helping the blocklist by putting in the effort of reporting, I'm wondering why there are any impediments at all to reporting, like the nag screen?
...Probably as an encouragement to for you to buy "fuel" or an e-mail account.
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Yes, it seems bit of a mixed message, doesn't it? But IIRC the nag screen doesn't affect those making e-mail spam submissions with their free accounts (there's just an "ambush" link in the batch return notification for those making "full" submissions, nothing at all for those making "quick" submissions AFAIK). I guess many reporters are so fed-up with spam that they probably don't mind very much anyway and just like the notion of contributing - but not necessarily with money.

Member reports are a long-term feature of the SpamCop service and are particularly effective in picking up spam sent to personal address lists hacked from compromised computers. I think that kind of list is usually in a minority and maybe SC helps keep it that way. It seems to me that most of the blocklist entries result from spamtrap hits. It takes a lot of member reports to list an IP address of a high-volume, mostly spam-free email service provider, which many of those spammers' lists are sending from, most of the time. That's where the spamtraps come into their own. So we reporters are appreciated, even essential in the big picture, but not necessarily enough so at the individual level to forgo the opportunity for a modest income.

Just my thoughts on it.

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But IIRC the nag screen doesn't affect those making e-mail spam submissions with their free accounts (there's just an "ambush" link in the batch return notification for those making "full" submissions, nothing at all for those making "quick" submissions AFAIK).

I don't know what a quick v. full submission is.

I use email submission for reporting (followed by confirmation at a web page). If I get to the web page too quickly I see a page that makes me wait 4 seconds before sending me to the real confirmation page, and it tells me that if I want to bypass the delay I should subscribe.

I guess many reporters are so fed-up with spam that they probably don't mind very much anyway and just like the notion of contributing - but not necessarily with money.

My anti-spam setup works pretty well. A not insubstantial part of that is the SCBL. Mine's a small site, so I'm sure it's little load on the SpamCop (DNS) system. But rather than merely free ride I thought I'd help out. I have more time than money, so I thought I could contribute by improving the list by reporting spam. I found it weird that my contribution was being discouraged.

I don't expect substantial personal benefit from reporting, just a "many hands make light work" kind of incremental value being given back to SpamCop, for the SpamCop corporation and for all SpamCop's email and DNSBL users. If I were aiming to substantially reduce my own spam by handling individual spams, I would use a different method.

So we reporters are appreciated, even essential in the big picture, but not necessarily enough so at the individual level to forgo the opportunity for a modest income.

I guess there's an assumption that reporters have SpamCop email accounts? And they expect substantial personal benefit from reporting? Maybe SpamCop email accounts use, in addition to the blocklist and antivirus filtering, a distinct mechanism for cutting down spam to a particular account based on that individual user's reports? I wouldn't expect much benefit otherwise. Certainly not enough to bother paying for it.

The calculation confuses me. I would expect, for the sake of making SpamCop's filtering more powerful, that reporting would be encouraged. Maybe even get you a discount on your email account subscription.

But maybe people are also gratified to vent their anger at spam and spammers by reporting. Maybe folks get a sense of action, of doing something about spam, a sense of efficacy, thus relieving frustration. And maybe those feelings are desirable enough for folks to want to pay money to get them. And maybe SpamCop knows this and so they encourage users to give SpamCop money to do reporting, rather than paying the users for the reports.

But that sounds kind of sinister. I'm just going to have to go with the idea that SpamCop email users get substantial personal benefit from reporting. And that blocklist users aren't benefited enough to warrant paying, waiting for nag screens, or maybe even reporting at all.

Really, I'm just trying to help out. I thought I was paying, in a sense, by putting in effort to report. *shrug* I may continue reporting regardless of the mixed message, because I believe it helps the greater community.

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I don't know what a quick v. full submission is.
...That's why we have a SpamCop FAQ (link near top left of each SpamCop Forum page) and a SpamCop.net Glossary (link available in drop-down list you see when you click the label "FAQs & Words" near the top left of each SpamCop Forum page), as well as the SPAMCOPWIKI, aka SCWiki (links near top center-right of each SpamCop Forum page)! :) <g>
<snip>

I found it weird that my contribution was being discouraged.

...Please see my above, 79009[/snapback] following the last "QUOTE" of your first post.
<snip>

I guess there's an assumption that reporters have SpamCop email accounts?

...Not that I'm aware, just an assumption that those who have the money available will be willing to contribute; those of us that don't are assumed to be willing to endure a few seconds wait when we report.
And they expect substantial personal benefit from reporting?
...Not necessarily. I gain no direct benefit at all, since neither I nor my e-mail providers use the SCBL (as far as I know).
Maybe SpamCop email accounts use, in addition to the blocklist and antivirus filtering, a distinct mechanism for cutting down spam to a particular account based on that individual user's reports? I wouldn't expect much benefit otherwise. Certainly not enough to bother paying for it.
...From others' accounts, it's a fairly good e-mail service, as well as providing fairly easy access to tools to direct spam away from of the Inbox.
<snip>

But maybe people are also gratified to vent their anger at spam and spammers by reporting.

...That's where I am! Plus there's the occasional cream of reporting to an e-mail admin who cares enough to do something about the spam.
<snip>

And maybe SpamCop knows this and so they encourage users to give SpamCop money to do reporting, rather than paying the users for the reports. But that sounds kind of sinister.

...It costs something to provide the SpamCop service, and one way the company recoups some of their expenditure is by collecting (voluntarily) from members.
<snip>

Really, I'm just trying to help out. I thought I was paying, in a sense, by putting in effort to report. *shrug* I may continue reporting regardless of the mixed message, because I believe it helps the greater community.

...And I, for one, appreciate that!
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I don't know what a quick v. full submission is.
...That's why we have a SpamCop FAQ (link near top left of each SpamCop Forum page) and a SpamCop.net Glossary (link available in drop-down list you see when you click the label "FAQs & Words" near the top left of each SpamCop Forum page), as well as the SPAMCOPWIKI, aka SCWiki (links near top center-right of each SpamCop Forum page)! :) <g>
I apologize for continuing to sound so negative — hopefully my positive intentions are clear — but please let me point out that the help documentation is problematic. I'm sure that comes as a surprise. Doubtlessly the documentation is understood to be extensive, which I agree is the case, but it is fragmented.

The first step I have to take when looking for answers to my questions is to understand the variety of documentation sources. You listed three. I think there may be more than that? How do I know what the number is? There isn't a definitive list. I have to count up the number as I'm looking around, and I'm left with the vaguely uneasy feeling that I may have missed some, or that I may have double counted some because they were listed twice with different names. Of the ones I've seen, I have to understand their nature — which topics they cover, and whether they're discussions I'll have to mine to see if they clearly address the topic of my interest, or whether they're staff write-ups or user write-ups. Once I've got an understanding of the variety of documentation sources I can begin to competently look for answers.

The actual looking requires that I determine which sources are likely to include my topic by iterating over the uncertain list. Then I delve into each that seems appropriate, as far as I can tell, and maybe I have to read through forum posts that link again to more FAQs, with such formatting that I can't tell where one document is delimited from the next.

The documentation does seem to me to be rich and extensive. Staff and users are to be commended for their efforts in answering questions and putting together these resources. There's a lot out there. As a new user, I find the variety of kinds and locations of documentation confusing enough that after my first couple attempts at looking for answers (I have spent some time traversing doc links — I honestly take being a good community member seriously) I (unconsciously) decided that the least costly route was not to know.

Assuming the point behind the extensiveness of the documentation, and of having documentation at all, is that the already spent effort of answering questions be not repeated, I'm guessing that the complexity of how the documentation is presented is counterproductive.

None of this is to say that the effort that staff and community have put in is worthless, or that either group is behaving poorly or inadequately. I'm saying that the valuable nuggets of gold you all have produced are prohibitively hidden, when instead a clear and unified documentation structure would make the wealth readily available to newbies, and would reduce their asking FAQs.

But maybe people are also gratified to vent their anger at spam and spammers by reporting.
That's where I am! Plus there's the occasional cream of reporting to an e-mail admin who cares enough to do something about the spam....
Ah. This surprises me some (that someone would pay to report, without substantial personal practical benefit), but I suppose I did guess at the possibility.

It costs something to provide the SpamCop service, and one way the company recoups some of their expenditure is by collecting (voluntarily) from members.
Well, I assume that SpamCop has both costs and revenue. And also that revenue exceeds costs, so that the company is solvent. Indeed, even so that the company is valuable, valuable enough to be sold to and bought by IronPort. And profitable enough for Cisco to keep it when they got IronPort.

My guess is that revenue from email accounts alone offsets the costs of operation, with a healthy buffer. I wouldn't expect the service to be running in the red with only user donations standing between it and going broke. (And have that service bought by another company.) Which means that donations must be icing. Which makes it even more confusing to me. Not only are donations pushed by hindering reporting, which reduces the quality of the DNSBL, but they are sought for only marginal profit.

Huh. Seems more likely that my estimations are off somewhere than that SpamCop's executives are missing the big picture. It would make more sense to me if SpamCop made reporting easier (maybe even crediting email accounts when you report), rewarded users with status and thanks for reports — helping them get the emotional gratification that reporting can bring — and if they started a business tier to sell their DNSBL. But I guess the system works well enough?

Really, it's the high quality DNSBL that's the reason I'm here at all. I did a pretty thorough investigation of DNSBLs a few years back and SpamCop was one of the top. I only use two DNSBLs in my antispam system now, and SCBL is one of them.

So thank you, SpamCop reporters, for making SCBL higher quality. Sorry to have talked your ear off. Thanks for hearing me out. I'll leave you to your good work.

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I only use two DNSBLs in my antispam system now, and SCBL is one of them.

Is the other one the Spamhaus "Zen" BL? That's the *only* one I use, even though I'm a paying SC email account customer and I report spam to SC. Unfortunately, I encounter too many false positives on the SCBL, so I have disabled it on my servers (in multiple locations). Had I not done so, I'd have to be frequently fishing through various spam/junk folders and whitelisting too many innocent senders (including Constant Contact and a bunch of valid stuff from BlueState Digital's servers, for example--political list stuff), but that must not be the case for you.

As for your speculations about the business SC model/finances, I don't think that the payments for SC email accounts go through/to IronPort/Cisco at all. That's a separate operation run by Corporate Email Services in Georgia. There's some connection, in that we have direct access to the reporting system, but I think that's about it.

DT

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Hi, reciprocity,

...First: you make some very good polemical points and are more than gracious with your expressions of appreciation for us reporters -- thank you!

I don't know what a quick v. full submission is.
...That's why we have a SpamCop FAQ (link near top left of each SpamCop Forum page) and a SpamCop.net Glossary (link available in drop-down list you see when you click the label "FAQs & Words" near the top left of each SpamCop Forum page), as well as the SPAMCOPWIKI, aka SCWiki (links near top center-right of each SpamCop Forum page)! :) <g>
II apologize for continuing to sound so negative — hopefully my positive intentions are clear — but please let me point out that the help documentation is problematic. I'm sure that comes as a surprise. Doubtlessly the documentation is understood to be extensive, which I agree is the case, but it is fragmented.

<snip other very good points>

...Indeed! IMHO that is due at least in part to a wish to provide alternate sources to accommodate individual preferences in both providing and consuming information (prefer Forum format? prefer Wiki format? prefer Glossary?); in terms of definitions (quick submission vs full submission, for example), the different sources are pretty much redundant. There are no doubt places where the different sources are not entirely redundant and, if someone had the time to find those, they should be fixed. Guess when that will happen? :) <g>
and I'm left with the vaguely uneasy feeling that I may have missed some

<snip>

...Seems that the worst that can happen is you miss something or are left not understanding something, in which case you can just post a follow-up for clarification (of course, if you missed something, this assumes you are able to realize it! :) <g>).
Once I've got an understanding of the variety of documentation sources I can begin to competently look for answers.

<snip>

...That seems far more than is expected (at least, by us). You may not find the "best" answer or you may not find an answer at all; in the former case, you still know more than you did when you started and in the latter case you just post a follow-up question.
I honestly take being a good community member seriously) I (unconsciously) decided that the least costly route was not to know.
...Hm, here is my one quibble with what you wrote -- I don't see that being a helpful conclusion to reach, at all! IMHO, being a good community member means making at least a small effort to find answers to your own questions before posting them. If you don't find the answer or feel that the articles you do find don't completely answer your question and you need to ask a follow-up, you may meet with a small bit of what seems to be ridicule for not finding or understanding the full answer but you (should) get "credit" for having made the attempt! :) <g>
Assuming the point behind the extensiveness of the documentation, and of having documentation at all, is that the already spent effort of answering questions be not repeated, I'm guessing that the complexity of how the documentation is presented is counterproductive.

<snip>

...Excellent point -- but, again, the complexity is largely due to choices given to both providers and consumers of the information, not because there are widely different answers posted in multiple places.
It costs something to provide the SpamCop service, and one way the company recoups some of their expenditure is by collecting (voluntarily) from members.
Well, I assume that SpamCop has both costs and revenue. And also that revenue exceeds costs, so that the company is solvent. Indeed, even so that the company is valuable, valuable enough to be sold to and bought by IronPort. And profitable enough for Cisco to keep it when they got IronPort.

<snip>

...Now you are delving deeply into what accounts for the current situation. SpamCop started out as an informal public implementation of a personal capability written by Julian Haight, then grew somewhat by the addition of the "e-mail" side. Julian later sold to IronPort, likely to support other IronPort business. I suspect the "fuel" feature was from the Julian-on-his-own days and is what prompted the "hindering" we currently see, not removed by either IronPort or Cisco due mostly because of inertia, not because there's a serious need for reporter support of SpamCop activity. But who knows for sure? :) <g>

<snip>

Which means that donations must be icing. Which makes it even more confusing to me. Not only are donations pushed by hindering reporting, which reduces the quality of the DNSBL, but they are sought for only marginal profit.

...You argue as though the "hindering" were a serious inconvenience that made it quite difficult to report. If that's your feeling then, for certain, you should reduce or stop your reporting. Myself, I very quickly stopped even noticing it (except for the rare occasions when the "please wait" time grow to minutes :) <g>).
Sorry to have talked your ear off. Thanks for hearing me out. I'll leave you to your good work.
...Not at all! To repeat what I said in an earlier reply: I, for one, appreciate your feedback!
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Hm, here is my one quibble with what you wrote -- I don't see that being a helpful conclusion to reach, at all! IMHO, being a good community member means making at least a small effort to find answers to your own questions before posting them.
That's a valid point. I was frustrated with the documentation and chose not to specifically ask what quick v. full submission was, but I think I still should have tried to figure it out, and pointing out that I didn't know is really just about the same thing as asking. My bad.

Now you are delving deeply into what accounts for the current situation. SpamCop started out as an informal public implementation of a personal capability written by Julian Haight, then grew somewhat by the addition of the "e-mail" side. Julian later sold to IronPort, likely to support other IronPort business. I suspect the "fuel" feature was from the Julian-on-his-own days and is what prompted the "hindering" we currently see, not removed by either IronPort or Cisco due mostly because of inertia, not because there's a serious need for reporter support of SpamCop activity. But who knows for sure? :) <g>
Ah, very enlightening. Thank you for the insights.

You argue as though the "hindering" were a serious inconvenience that made it quite difficult to report. If that's your feeling then, for certain, you should reduce or stop your reporting. Myself, I very quickly stopped even noticing it (except for the rare occasions when the "please wait" time grow to minutes :) <g>)
Well, to be sure, the nagging per se hasn't been a great enough hurdle to put me off the beneficent/charitable effort. The thing that made me start to sour on reporting was the idea that the beneficiaries who run the service (SpamCop/IronPort/Cisco) appeared to have the attitude that they were doing me a favor. I suppose I should rein in my emotional reaction to that and be more rational in my decision about whether to contribute to the list. I think in the end the real benefit is to the larger SCBL-using community, and that's a worthy cause, regardless of whether my effort is acknowledged or appreciated by the administrators, or indeed anyone. Though I thank you for your earlier recognition.
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Is the other one the Spamhaus "Zen" BL?
Close. It's the Spamhaus XBL. I don't philosophically agree with the PBL, and since that's included in the Zen list, I opted not to use it. XBL was something I understood well and could philosophically get behind, and it had great results. Especially combined with SCBL. (I did a lot of "set union" testing to see which DNSBLs worked well together.)

I got a lot of my research data from Al Iverson's website, now defunct (stats.dnsbl.com). His results showed minimal false positives for SCBL. Originally he had been a detractor, but he wrote an article update saying how he thought SCBL had cleaned up its act. http://www.dnsbl.com/2007/05/spamcop-bl-an...s-accurate.html Interestingly, he says in this article that SCBL's prior poor performance was his motivation for starting the whole DNSBL stats effort in the first place.

According to his then (2007) results, SCBL performed even better than Zen, regarding false positives. Interesting to hear your reports on false positives now. Makes me wish Al were running his stats again.

I'm not getting any false positives, that I know of. Mine is a tiny site, really. Only 12K MTA connections in a month. (My personal account's ratio of ham:spam is about 23:1; generally, though, my antispam system misses about 1 in 143 spams. I don't know what the false positive rate is.)

As for your speculations about the business SC model/finances, I don't think that the payments for SC email accounts go through/to IronPort/Cisco at all. That's a separate operation run by Corporate Email Services in Georgia. There's some connection, in that we have direct access to the reporting system, but I think that's about it.
Oh, huh. But the donations go to SC?
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<snip>

As for your speculations about the business SC model/finances, I don't think that the payments for SC email accounts go through/to IronPort/Cisco at all. That's a separate operation run by Corporate Email Services in Georgia. There's some connection, in that we have direct access to the reporting system, but I think that's about it.
Oh, huh. But the donations go to SC?
...The price ($30/yr, I think) of the e-mail system goes to CES (Corporate Email Services), as I understand it. I believe that donations (payments for fuel) go to SC.
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Oh, huh. But the donations go to SC?

Part of the US$30 subscription goes for SpamCop reporting.

All "blocked" spam/false positives go to held folder for, upon verification, allows "Very Easy Reporting" (VER).

The benefit of reporting is that SpamCop tries to notify the offending ISP of a security problem. Most find this very effective in reducing spam attacks on one's email address. I have been using this as my main email address since last millennium used to use SpamCop email address in my Newsreader to attract spammers have found it very effective. Gwtting a bit dated though in that it only allow 10 meg in sending email no limit on receiving. I think JT (owner) has lost interest in keeping SpamCop email ahead of the rest

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"Reciprocity"

Those 2007 results are too old to be of much value, IMO. In the last few years, there appear to have been (successful) malicious attempts at getting valid senders listed, including many of whom I receive from. An then there are sources like this one that are not listed:

184.173.117.72

From: "IT Service Desk" (bogus email address omitted)

Subject: Scheduled Maintenance & Upgrade

It's a classic phishing scam, asking for user login credentials, and the source has been reported to SC at least 10 times in the last 24 hours but hasn't yet been listed. However, they're listed on all of these other BLs:

problems.dnsbl.sorbs.net

safe.dnsbl.sorbs.net

ips.backscatterer.org

ix.dnsbl.manitu.net

dnsbl.sorbs.net

spam.dnsbl.sorbs.net

dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net

(from robtex.com lookup)

but then SORBS tends to have lots of false positives as well. What's frustrating to me is when the source of a message I know to come from a responsible sender gets on the SCBL and I look at recent reports and see that other SC reporters have reported the messages as spam, even though they are likely valid subscribers to the lists in question. We're having a similar problem with that on a choral music website, because some of the site members with AOL addresses have mistakenly used their "this is spam" buttons for pretty much everything in their inboxes, and so now other users with AOL addresses aren't receiving their subscription-based messages due to AOL having classified the server/sender as bad.

When I check the IPs of the Constant Contact and BlueStateDigital servers on SpamHaus that get listed on the SCBL, they show up as clean--they also typically show up with "Good" reputations on SenderBase--thus my conclusion that I can't support the use of SCBL, even though I feed it with my reports.

DT

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Those 2007 results are too old to be of much value, IMO. In the last few years, there appear to have been (successful) malicious attempts at getting valid senders listed, including many of whom I receive from. … What's frustrating to me is when the source of a message I know to come from a responsible sender gets on the SCBL and I look at recent reports and see that other SC reporters have reported the messages as spam, even though they are likely valid subscribers to the lists in question.

And here I expected SpamCop to stay good for a long time. Well, maybe 4 years is a long time.

I suppose part of the problem was that I wanted a trivially simple antispam setup, which meant doing something that DNSBL publishers typically discourage: using a list as a plenipotent authority in deciding rejections. This meant that I had to find lists that were next-to-no false positives in addition to catching lots of actual misbehaving MTAs (in addition to working well when mixed together). Also, to minimize resource consumption, I opted to use only two DNSBLs.

In my system, the first check went to XBL, the second check went to SCBL. So one wouldn't expect SCBL's hit rate to be very high. Of the total MTA rejections based on DNSBLs, SCBL makes about 3.6%. Spamhaus's XBL (again, being checked first) does the overwhelming majority of rejecting.

I've kept logs, so I should be able to calculate the historical performance... Though I see in my notes that even starting out I estimated SCBL's contribution would be around 4%.

Based on your anecdotal experience of SCBL's current performance, especially regarding false positives, I think I should review my use of SCBL. It may make sense just to drop it.

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Based on your anecdotal experience of SCBL's current performance, especially regarding false positives, I think I should review my use of SCBL. It may make sense just to drop it.

This is most likely a classic "YMMV" situation. If your "ham" sources haven't been attacked by bogus listing strategies, then you'll probably be OK with your current setup, but you'd want to spot check the stuff that's getting blocked/filtered/whatever to see if any of it is legitimate stuff, like the things I typically see winding up in my own SC email account's "Held" folder.

DT

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For me, the value of reporting has two parts:

1. It helps me with the sending of complaints to the right people.

2. Although on its own, one report might not have much impact on a SCBL listing, it can provide information pertinent to a potential listing: let's get the <insert epithet>!

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For me, the value of reporting has two parts:

1. It helps me with the sending of complaints to the right people.

2. Although on its own, one report might not have much impact on a SCBL listing, it can provide information pertinent to a potential listing: let's get the <insert epithet>!

The reality is that those email servers that get listed are incompetently set-up

the SCBL is a good learning tool for them and their customers

Why I always tell people NEVER allow just anyone to handle your email

Gmail is usually the best option

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The reality is that those email servers that get listed are incompetently set-up

the SCBL is a good learning tool for them and their customers

Why I always tell people NEVER allow just anyone to handle your email

Gmail is usually the best option

I got fed up with "free" email accounts a year or two back and in the interests of regaining control of my inbox I ended up setting up my own email server at home. I still have some way to go to get the settings right for blocking and filtering purposes, but it is immensely satisfying to have the amount of spam I report drop down to near zero. Consulting the SCBL and digesting the wisdom embodied in this forum have been a useful part of the process of checking incoming mail.

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The reality is that those email servers that get listed are incompetently set-up

{...}

YMMV.

As noted getting a mailing extensively reported as spam does happen, eg when it happens only once a year.

One server admin reported here that paid for mailing lists were sometimes so reported.

One mailing list had to go to the /one email per user/ Mailman option so they could tell which clueless listee has reported them to AOL this time.

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One server admin reported here that paid for mailing lists were sometimes so reported. One mailing list had to go to the /one email per user/ Mailman option so they could tell which clueless listee has reported them to AOL this time.

Exactly....lots and lots of false reporting, and SC slurps it up as if it were valid. As I've mentioned here before, I even find the spamtrap system questionable, given what I've seen--can't prove it, but I've been given plenty of reasons to be suspicious.

DT

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YMMV.

As noted getting a mailing extensively reported as spam does happen, eg when it happens only once a year.

One server admin reported here that paid for mailing lists were sometimes so reported.

One mailing list had to go to the /one email per user/ Mailman option so they could tell which clueless listee has reported them to AOL this time.

SpamCop would have sent an abuse report for every spam reported.

(SCBL would take more than one report to be listed, so why you reluctant to believe the nice paying customer? As opposed to the evil spam reportee). If possible it would be nice to see a "cite" or evidence

If these or a report was acted on the alleged SCBL would not of happened.

Often those operating/sending Mail lists are completely inane

I get all my mailing lists sent to Gmail and notice someone from years back suddenly reactivates their mailing list with changed details even name of company. They often won't recognize unsubscribe attempts, some even after acknowledging that you have unsubscribed. Then you have those that hand your email out to other "interested parties"!

One thing with Gmail I don't report but hit the Gmail spam button and notice that they don't advise the nice paying mail-list people that they are blocked. Gmail, Hotmal, Yahoo, etc, just do. I see that they just bit-bin some as well (never see Brazil spam even in my held folder).

Therefore it's good reasoning to see SpamCop send reports it means the "nice paying" mail-list operator has a chance to rectify situation. Or you think it's better there mail-lists just go to a bit-bin

You would think the best way to "unsubscribe" would be a spam/abuse report. Seriously the anti-SpamCop league need to get a clue

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