Reporting question

[mrmaxx]

I just received an email thanking me for confirming my email address and notifying me that the person had changed their email address... thing is I never sent any response to an email challenge, at least not in the past few weeks...

To me this smacks of someone attempting to confirm MY address is "live." What do y'all think? Can it be reported as spam? It's not bulk (at least as far as I can tell... it appears to have been sent only to me) and it's not commercial, but it is unsolicited.

[Spambo]

You might try a Google search using keywords in the Subject and/or message body looking for similar emails being sent to others. My personal opinion is if you can find others who have received (and posted) essentially identical emails then you have established that the email is "bulk".

If that fails you can probably determine if the email is reportable spam by looking for the presence of forged headers, hashbusters, or invalid HTML tags (a number of them to be sure its not a 'legitimate' error by the sender). Legitimate emails shouldn't have any bad data or hashbusters.

[mrmaxx]

You might try a Google search using keywords in the Subject and/or message body looking for similar emails being sent to others.  My personal opinion is if you can find others who have received (and posted) essentially identical emails then you have established that the email is "bulk".

If that fails you can probably determine if the email is reportable spam by looking for the presence of forged headers, hashbusters, or invalid HTML tags (a number of them to be sure its not a 'legitimate' error by the sender).  Legitimate emails shouldn't have any bad data or hashbusters.

Thanks, Spambo. I'll have to take a look at that. I'm just suspicous and tempted to report anything that is unsolicited. Heck, I'd be tempted to report the Red Cross if they sent me something unsolicited.

[mrmaxx]

Looking at it further, I'm not sure if it's a challenge response confirmation or just a an autoresponse from someone who got an email with my email address in the reply-to field stating that they have a new email address. Here's the body of the message I got (Not really spammy):

Merci de bien vouloir noter que votre correspondant a changé d'adresse E-Mail.

Vous pouvez désormais lui envoyer à l'adresse agami.assurland[at]swisslife.fr

Votre message a néanmoins été acheminé.

Thanks for agreeing to note that your correspondent changed his mail address

You can from now on send your messages to him to the address agami.assurland[at]swisslife.fr

Your message was nevertheless convoyed.

The subject was "Re:re: delivery protection" which is what led me to believe that it was a confirmation from a challenge/response system...

I would appreciate any thoughts you or anyone else has on whether this is "reportable" or not.

[turetzsr]

Looking at it further, I'm not sure if it's a challenge response confirmation or just a an autoresponse from someone who got an email with my email address in the reply-to field stating that they have a new email address. Here's the body of the message I got (Not really spammy):

Merci de bien vouloir noter que votre correspondant a changé d'adresse E-Mail.

Vous pouvez désormais lui envoyer à l'adresse agami.assurland[at]swisslife.fr

Votre message a néanmoins été acheminé.

Thanks for agreeing to note that your correspondent changed his mail address

You can from now on send your messages to him to the address agami.assurland[at]swisslife.fr

Your message was nevertheless convoyed.

The subject was "Re:re: delivery protection" which is what led me to believe that it was a confirmation from a challenge/response system...

I would appreciate any thoughts you or anyone else has on whether this is "reportable" or not.

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you. But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

[mrmaxx]

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you.  But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

And there's the rub... which is why I was kinda hoping an admin or deputy would happen along and give me an "official" answer. I realize it's kinda in the "grey" area, so I thought I'd ask... /me shrugs

[dra007]

if you really don't know who agami.assurland is, there goes one more reson to be suspicious, I would go though a manual parse of headers and see if you recognize the IP, if it comes from China, Korea or Brazil, one more reason to be suspicious...

[turetzsr]

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you.  But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

And there's the rub... which is why I was kinda hoping an admin or deputy would happen along and give me an "official" answer. I realize it's kinda in the "grey" area, so I thought I'd ask... /me shrugs

...An "official" answer would probably run along the lines of Ellen's reply in SpamCop will not report virus spams.

[mrmaxx]

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you.  But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

Ahh...re-reading the rules, I'm going to assume that the message I got was an auto-response to a spam message with my email address forged. I still think it looks like a challenge-response confirmation, but I'm going to work on the assumption, instead, that it's an auto-notify from a spam with my email address forged as the reply address.

Looking at the headers, the first *verifiable* IP address is a Ripe IP address, so it's probably genuine as it goes from there to Postini (my ISP subscribes to them and they clean our mail of viruses and some spam...everything else gets reported here! ) to my ISP's mail server to me.

So, again, it looks like an autoresponse to a spam message, probably, and thus, is not reportable under SpamCop rules.

[turetzsr]

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you.  But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

Ahh...re-reading the rules, I'm going to assume that the message I got was an auto-response to a spam message with my email address forged. I still think it looks like a challenge-response confirmation, but I'm going to work on the assumption, instead, that it's an auto-notify from a spam with my email address forged as the reply address.

Looking at the headers, the first *verifiable* IP address is a Ripe IP address, so it's probably genuine as it goes from there to Postini (my ISP subscribes to them and they clean our mail of viruses and some spam...everything else gets reported here! ) to my ISP's mail server to me.

So, again, it looks like an autoresponse to a spam message, probably, and thus, is not reportable under SpamCop rules.

...But you may use the parser to find the right addresses to use, then construct your own message. Just be sure to cancel the report....

[Spambo]

Thanks, Spambo. I'll have to take a look at that. I'm just suspicous and tempted to report anything that is unsolicited. Heck, I'd be tempted to report the Red Cross if they sent me something unsolicited.

I did a Google search in nanae & nanas using a number of different keyword combinations (both in English & French) and didn't get any hits that even remotely resembled the message body.

Assuming that there is no bogosity or hash busters in the source code, I'd say you probably shouldn't report through SpamCop.

If it were me I might LART manually. It's unlikely that a provider would terminate a customer if only one complaint is received (especially considering what the content says), and if others also report the email then you'd be helping to establish that the email was bulk.

[mrmaxx]

If it were me I might LART manually.  It's unlikely that a provider would terminate a customer if only one complaint is received (especially considering what the content says), and if others also report the email then you'd be helping to establish that the email was bulk.

Yeah... I don't think I'll bother. If it was bulk, the sender sure did a good job of hiding it.

'Preciate the input. I think I'll just circular-file this one.

[Ellen]

...According to the SpamCop rules at FAQ: On what type of email should I (not) use SpamCop?, it would only be spam if it has been sent to others besides you.  But I personally wouldn't slap you down for reporting it if it were I enforcing the rules.

And there's the rub... which is why I was kinda hoping an admin or deputy would happen along and give me an "official" answer. I realize it's kinda in the "grey" area, so I thought I'd ask... /me shrugs

happening along .... personally I would ignore it as misdirected mail which even in this day of spam deluges does occur.

[mrmaxx]

happening along .... personally I would ignore it as misdirected mail which even in this day of spam deluges does occur.

Yeah.. that's what I decided to do. Thanks, Ellen... :-)