Bit.ly

[StevieT123]

Hi Everyone,

I faithfully report ALL my spam email to spam cop and ALL my spam resolves to Bit.ly.com at the end (it starts from many different sites). I've reported many 1,000's of spams to them VIA spam Cop (Abuse[at]bit.ly.com) and all I get is more spam, it started out at 25 spams a day and now it's up to 175 spams a day and rising because I started using spam cop. Why do I continue to faithfully report to abuser[at]bit.ly.com through spam cop and my thanks is MORE spam, increasing daily. Like I said at the bottom line every spam resolves from bit.ly.com and 1,000 sends to them (abuse[at]bit.ly.com) only gives more spam. How else can I halt all the spam I receive? Is my situation unique in using spam cop?

Thanks for all help,

Steve

[petzl]

Hi Everyone,

I faithfully report ALL my spam email to spam cop and ALL my spam resolves to Bit.ly.com at the end (it starts from many different sites). I've reported many 1,000's of spams to them VIA spam Cop (Abuse[at]bit.ly.com) and all I get is more spam, it started out at 25 spams a day and now it's up to 175 spams a day and rising because I started using spam cop. Why do I continue to faithfully report to abuser[at]bit.ly.com through spam cop and my thanks is MORE spam, increasing daily. Like I said at the bottom line every spam resolves from bit.ly.com and 1,000 sends to them (abuse[at]bit.ly.com) only gives more spam. How else can I halt all the spam I receive? Is my situation unique in using spam cop?

Thanks for all help,

Steve

Reporting spam decreases the attacks for me?

Has done since before a millennium ago?

The best defense is always attack.

Might be you have a brainless enemy

Try to send "us" a SpamCop reporting URL o a typical spam like

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z5464403032zb...ad3bb556651199z

This may clue "us" forum members to advise better

Try MailWasher or easy reporting to SpamCop if spam becomes a problem

[turetzsr]

<snip>

I faithfully report ALL my spam email to spam cop and ALL my spam resolves to Bit.ly.com at the end (it starts from many different sites).

..."bit.ly" is a service that shortens URLs. In other words, anything that "resolves" to bit.ly is not a complete resolution because bit.ly addresses are simply shortened versions of other addresses. My guess is that you are referring to "spamvertized URLs" that are mentioned in your spam e-mails, not the actual source of the spam e-mail. Please do correct me if my guess is not correct. Note that addressing spamvertized URLs is not a major goal of SpamCop, although it does try to identify the sources and send a notice to the abuse address on your behalf. What the administrators looking at the abuse e-mails do with them is quite beyond SpamCop's ability to influence (unfortunately).

I've reported many 1,000's of spams to them VIA spam Cop (Abuse[at]bit.ly.com) and all I get is more spam

<snip>

because I started using spam cop. Why do I continue to faithfully report to abuser[at]bit.ly.com through spam cop and my thanks is MORE spam, increasing daily.

<snip>

...It is not unusual to mistakenly believe that reporting spam to SpamCop will stop your spam. In fact, once your e-mail address becomes known to spammers and you start receiving spam, for a while your spam will naturally increase, whether you report to SpamCop or not. The only way that reporting to SpamCop could reduce the spam that arrives in your inbox would be if your e-mail service provider would use SpamCop's blacklist to either block (not recommended) or direct your spam to a separate "spam" file for you to review at your leisure or ignore (sometimes there are "false positives," so looking at the contents of such a "spam" file is good practice because you will sometimes finds good e-mail misclassified as spam).

...Thank you for joining us in reporting spam!

[alvarnell]

I faithfully report ALL my spam email to spam cop and ALL my spam resolves to Bit.ly.com at the end (it starts from many different sites).

Seems to me that you should be complaining to bit.ly about their failure to take any action. The one nice thing about tinyurl is that they allow you to preview the actual url without going to the site, which means SpamCop can resolve the shortened version to the actual, so the reports can go directly to the real site, bypassing tinyurl. Seems to me that bit.ly could do this if they were interested in helping the community.

[InvisiBill]

Seems to me that you should be complaining to bit.ly about their failure to take any action. The one nice thing about tinyurl is that they allow you to preview the actual url without going to the site, which means SpamCop can resolve the shortened version to the actual, so the reports can go directly to the real site, bypassing tinyurl. Seems to me that bit.ly could do this if they were interested in helping the community.

Bit.ly lets you see details about a shortened URL by adding a "+" on the end. For example, http://bit.ly/6wgJO becomes http://bit.ly/6wgJO+. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to handle bit.ly abuse other than manually emailing them about each one.

SpamCop has also said that they specifically don't try to resolve forwarded URLs like this. They alert the host doing the forwarding, which should be motivation for them to come up with a good way of handling abuse. On the other hand, if SpamCop is able to parse through forwarders to the true spam URL, it hits the spammers directly that they can't simply hide behind forwarders to obfuscate their spam links.

Hmmmm... After previewing the message, my first bit.ly URL is automatically converted to the actual link. It appears SpamCop (at least the forum) has the ability to resolve obfuscated bit.ly URLs.

[petzl]

The OP said site as a porn site (probably child porn, under 18)

NOT "bit.ly" had a ".com" after it?

[elind]

bit.ly or bitly.com are the same I believe.

I regularly receive spam with bitly links and they confirm receipt claiming they have "flagged" this link, even though there is typically more than one bitly link in the spam.

However I doubt they do anything because all the spam I receive has the same MO and is certainly the same spammer and easily recognized simply by the fact that it is no shortener at all, and instead is long like ".ly/1%35irksC#durg/tkfgn".

If they are in business to provide shorteners, why do they allow lengtheners, which could easily be identified or simply prevented?

Secondly, the few times I tried using the bitly claimed "+" operator to view the spam URL, it didn't work and instead went direct to the spam site (typically Russian drugs).

Bitly has been advised of this many times, but never answered, nor acted obviously. I have to suspect that bitly profits from spammers.