Spamcop Alternatives?

[petzl]

Does anyone know of a provider who offers the ability to use blacklists to filter mail, like CESmail did? As long as I'm contributing to the SC blacklist it would be nice to be able to use it as well to filter my incoming mail.

IF you POP email

MailWasher can be set-up to do this

[Spamnophobic]

IF you POP email

MailWasher can be set-up to do this

Thanks Petzl, Mailwasher looks like a good extra option, I'll give it a try.

I've opened a trial account with Runbox. They are mentioned earlier in this thread, but also in a very apposite Bits of Freedom blog page, which however only seems to exist in Dutch.

Dutch, but I suspect if you run it through a translate facility it will be easy to interpret. It reviews good simple e-mail services from a freedom and privacy point of view. It's a bit too long (with all comments and updates) to do a full translation here, but if anyone needs detailed explanation of part of it, please post and I'll do my best to provide custom translations.

[svanslyck]

FastMail imported all of my SpamCop emails. Not necessarily into the correct folders (I did not see any utility in patience and testing and whatnot), but it grabbed all of them nicely including attachments.

Complaints?

1. You damn well better write down your password (DUH!) and set up a recovery email address - and they don't have you do it at account setup. If you don't do that, and forget your password, you'll be left with a help page that tells you to file a support ticket to recover your lost password, but you can't file that support ticket WITHOUT a password and a recovery email address.

2. No telephone support. OK, fine, but no same-day email support eether! I'm EST-5 (NYC) and my email responses come in in the middle of the night.

But FastMail looks pretty slick. I just hope they are as good to me as SpamCop was. I will truly miss the little shots of oxytocin I got every day quick reporting spam via http://www.spamcop.net/reportheld. O! but if only I could get a spamhaus address!

You are wiser than me. A word to the wise is sufficient. You've been worded.

--

"I'm a man. But I can change. If I have to. I guess." Just get me a damn ansible!

[davem4]

An outage or two back, I stopped forwarding my email to spamcop and pointed my email client at the place that used to forward. The change was transparent to myself and people sending to me. 10 years ago, spamcop really cut down the spam but that hasn't been true for me for some time. Besides, Thunderbird's Bayesian spam filtering is very good - far more accurate than anything I've seen from Spamcop in years. So when the spamcop email system came back up, I just never switched it back. Which I guess saved me from switching it back back.

[petzl]

An outage or two back, I stopped forwarding my email to spamcop and pointed my email client at the place that used to forward. The change was transparent to myself and people sending to me. 10 years ago, spamcop really cut down the spam but that hasn't been true for me for some time. Besides, Thunderbird's Bayesian spam filtering is very good - far more accurate than anything I've seen from Spamcop in years. So when the spamcop email system came back up, I just never switched it back. Which I guess saved me from switching it back back.

Point 8. in the first post in http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14280

Means to me that CISCO will filter your email as it is Forwarded to a email address of your choice.

Which means you shouldn't see spam at all or ever again. CISCO spam filtering is state of art. In my experience has no false positives and exceptionally reliable

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/secu...spam_index.html

Also check

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/secu..._rep_index.html

Might pay to hang off with concerns?

[email_support]

as a FYI - I opened a trial mailstore account at pobox.com and asked it to do a one time import of my spamcop email account. It imported all the mail and kept the folder structure intact with all the emails. The webmail access looks to be OK.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interest in pobox.com. I have not looked at or tried the other services mentioned elsewhere in this thread. pobox may or may not provide the features and functions that you require in an email service.

[victory3x3]

It was with a heavy heart that I finished the moving/purging/archiving of all Spamcop.net email last night. Now it is a empty husk, where previously 15 years of scumbag-bashing history resided. So closes this chapter.

Over the next year, I will port over the 571 online credentials I've used my %userName%[at]Spamcop.net for, over to aliases on my own domains that I control everything on...so I don't run into this kind of catastrophic rework again.

I was relieved to find my hosting company allows for mass CSV import of forwarders in the cPanel, so that will be my process to isolate my main accounts from the disposable, temp accounts. For example instead of my %userName%[at]Spamcop.net to register with Monster.com, I'll now use monsterjobs[at]%myDomainName%.com. Easy to turn off, easy to redirect, and my main account(s) remain insulated.

I am glad I have a year to get through this mountain of labor and logistics.

I've chosen to use GMail as my mail service provider (everything forwards to it).

Logic:

• Great up time.
  
• 25 GB space (on my account...for some reason).
  
• Free.
  
• Allows aliases.
  
• Plenty of programs that IMAP seamlessly (I'm using eM Client, Thunderbird previously. Mailstore Home 8 for redundant archiving).
  
• Not likely to have its plug pulled anytime soon.
  
• Web interface when on the road is full featured, and integrated with calendar/contacts.
  
• Seamlessly integrates with my Android devices.
  

I'd be interested in hearing why people are reluctant to use GMail in previous posts, to see if I have overlooked anything. NSA concerns? I have trouble thinking any mainstream product is immune though.

Spamcop and Spamcop Forums (previously...The Newsgroups), it's been a long ride, with both ups and downs; I hope for those sticking around, that the reporting side remains somewhat relevant, and that it fixes its RIPE lookups some year.

Adieu.

"Peace, and Long Life."

[Dave_L]

I'd be interested in hearing why people are reluctant to use GMail in previous posts, to see if I have overlooked anything. NSA concerns? I have trouble thinking any mainstream product is immune though.

My personal objection to GMail is that I don't trust Google or other big businesses. They'll misuse my personal information and throw advertising at me without regard to my interests, as long as it means more money for them.

Your opinion may differ.

[turetzsr]

<snip>

I'd be interested in hearing why people are reluctant to use GMail

<snip>

...victory3x3 is probably already aware of this but for the benefit of others, petzl has replied in SpamCop Forum Topic "Forwarding and FAQ update."

[turetzsr]

My personal objection to GMail is that I don't trust Google or other big businesses. They'll misuse my personal information and throw advertising at me without regard to my interests, as long as it means more money for them.

<snip>

...With all due respect to your opinion, to which you are very much entitled and is very likely true of some "big businesses," I don't see as much correlation between size of company and misuse of personal information or irrelevant advertising as your statement suggests. That behavior seems to me to be more related to the business model: in GMail's case they are providing a lot of "free" services that are paid for by ads and (per petzl) by mining users' information and online activity. A very large firm with which I am very familiar (as a former employee and current contractor) has a well-communicated policy of protecting its stakeholders' (including customers) personal information and, since it only sells to other (mostly large) companies and government entities has not directed very much, if any, advertizing at individuals.

[anyone8]

I'd be interested in hearing why people are reluctant to use GMail in previous posts, to see if I have overlooked anything. NSA concerns? I have trouble thinking any mainstream product is immune though.

My move away from gmail was because of spam getting past the spam filters and into the inbox, and not being able to find any settings to fix it. At least some other services have an option to set the junk filter to "exclusive" so nothing gets past. I've tried a couple, but both seem to have to be told several times that a certain sender is OK before their messages actually make it to the inbox. I'm currently looking into runbox as I've heard it's possible to set it to use a whitelist, which should work for me.

[rswinder]

Another alternative I haven't seen mentioned yet is gmx mail (gmx.com) I've used it occasionally and haven't haven't had any issues with it. Basic features- mobile/webmail access, unlimited email storage, 50Mb attachment size limit, 2 Gb free file storage, mail collector function, ability to create folders, blacklist creation, spam/virus filtering, etc. I've had my spamcop address since 2001. What a bummer spending a weekend migrating various accounts to a new address. I guess all good things come to an end.

[silentlarry]

FYI, Some initial impressions on Pobox.com

I shopped through some of the mentions in this thread; FastMail, vfemail.net, Pobox.com. I settled on pobox.com. They only have one hosted mailbox option ("Mailstore"), but it offers much more storage than the similar price point options from the other two.

The "pros" list has hit all of my must-have requirements, and the "cons" have not broken the deal - so far.


Pros:

+ Server side filtering - Filtering rules applied to incoming mail regardless whether or not logged into web mail. ...Yay!
+ Send mail from any "identity" (I.e.; any From: address) on SMTP or webmail
+ Webmail was initially sluggish until changed skin to "classic". Snappier performance with Classic, better use of screen real estate, with all the functionality. Actually better functionality in message list and address book. Their choice of default skin is excessively prettied-up, high-bandwidth nonsense like all the major email web mails want to burden you with. The Classic skin is leaner and quicker, closer to the spamcop webmail.
+ Straightforward "Help" facility. Easy to find things like plainly stated mail server settings, as well as detailed walk-thru for various clients.
+ Several levels of spam filtering available (although you don't get to pick and choose RBLs, nor have I found a place where they even tell you which RBLs are applied to what filter levels.). Seems well thought out, although I'm not getting spam lately so no experience with it yet.
+ Can block by country of origin - any of them!
+ Up to 6 addresses (alias) on any of their 15 domains, 100 on your private domain.
+ Supports email "plus" addressing, and whitelisting ("Trusted Senders")
+ Import of spamcop old mail via IMAP was painless.
+ Looks like you get a month free, or at any rate the bill's not due until a month after you get on.



Cons:

- You have to wait for approval to get the account enabled. Essentially they want name, street address and phone number before they enable the account you create. My approval came the following day. I'm thinking though, this may be something of a plus if it means that it's harder for spammers to set up accounts and get the sending servers listed on RBLs.
- Server side filtering can't be applied to mail already received. No filtering in the webmail client.
- Webmail was initially sluggish; much improved by changing to "Classic" skin (see Pros). Also had missing page forward/back controls in message list (In Firefox & Seamonkey. Had to use shortcut keys.), also fixed by Classic skin.
- Webmail display of long headers is truncated (I have a lot of mail forwarded thru sneakemal.com and sometimes "From:" and other fields get real long.) Can still be displayed by viewing full headers.
- Held spam not releasable, not even viewable from webmail or IMAP. Must log into separate Pobox "Home" pages to review and deal with spam. (That's AFAIK, 'cause I've gotten no spam there yet.)
- - MITIGATING FACTOR: You can configure a spam "report" to be sent (as often as hourly) to your email when you get spam. For the infrequent spam recipient (me), this should relieve the task of frequent logging into the the "home" page to check for spam. Again, I've had no spam yet (lucky me!).

- - EFFECTIVELY RESOLVED: I finally stumbled on the RSS feed that shows list of spam being held. So, you can at least see a list (I think by Subject) of the spam held, without having to first log in to the home pages.
- Address book import from spamcop email was hellish. SC exports a .csv. file. Pobox will accept .csv (as well as .vcf) but is particular about the field header names, and of course they don't match up with spamcop. Got some good clues for manipulating the field names here:
https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail/...e_csv2vcard.php
...though never was able to get the email fields to show as anything but "Other" (instead of Home, Work). Most likely you would have better luck exporting from a .vcf source.
- They do not seem to offer a trimmed-down mobile html webmail.
- They do not seem to have a facility to POP mail hosted elsewhere into the pobox mailbox.


EDITS: removed Con re no address book sorting options. They're lurking in Settings.
Added con re no POPing from others.
Added con "mitigating factor" re spam report

Added re RSS feed of spam list

[ob1db]

Another alternative I haven't seen mentioned yet is gmx mail (gmx.com) I've used it occasionally and haven't haven't had any issues with it. Basic features- mobile/webmail access, unlimited email storage, 50Mb attachment size limit, 2 Gb free file storage, mail collector function, ability to create folders, blacklist creation, spam/virus filtering, etc. I've had my spamcop address since 2001. What a bummer spending a weekend migrating various accounts to a new address. I guess all good things come to an end.

A cautionary note: I immediately noticed that gmx.com is owned by 1 and 1. I am about to fire them as my ISP as they constantly are billing me for added hosting-related services I never ordered or agreed to. They also were bugging me regularly to upgrade in various ways, although that seems to have died down. I'm just not so sure after that experience that I am so enthusiastic about using another service they offer.

Anyone here had extensive experience with gmx (or 1 and 1)?

David

[drcocktail]

OK, I've read all of the posts on the topic, but some seem not to deal with my desires (why should they?!) and others are just too technical for my end-user mind to contemplate, so I thought I'd just state my case and see if one of you wise souls might have some advice.

I've been a Spamcop user/member for 14 years. When they introduced webmail I loved it. I could just check off spam I received and hit one button to report it via the webmail interface. With its filters in place, I could click "held mail," select all, carefully weed the few false positives out, and again, a one button submit. It's been so long since I've used direct submission (and I VERY rarely used submission via email) that I hardly remember doing it. For instance, am I able, and will I be able, to do a bulk spam report with all the spam attached to a single email submitted to Spamcop?

What I really want is some enterprising webmail host to mimic Spamcop's webmail so I can single button-multiple choice select and report spam through it and have it make the Spamcop report from it. Sound pie in the sky to you? Sigh. Me too. What's the next best alternative that'll keep me from expending extra time or thought beyond simple reportage? I'd appreciate any guidance!

Thanks! --Doc.

[petzl]

OK, I've read all of the posts on the topic, but some seem not to deal with my desires (why should they?!) and others are just too technical for my end-user mind to contemplate, so I thought I'd just state my case and see if one of you wise souls might have some advice.

I've been a Spamcop user/member for 14 years. When they introduced webmail I loved it. I could just check off spam I received and hit one button to report it via the webmail interface. With its filters in place, I could click "held mail," select all, carefully weed the few false positives out, and again, a one button submit. It's been so long since I've used direct submission (and I VERY rarely used submission via email) that I hardly remember doing it. For instance, am I able, and will I be able, to do a bulk spam report with all the spam attached to a single email submitted to Spamcop?

What I really want is some enterprising webmail host to mimic Spamcop's webmail so I can single button-multiple choice select and report spam through it and have it make the Spamcop report from it. Sound pie in the sky to you? Sigh. Me too. What's the next best alternative that'll keep me from expending extra time or thought beyond simple reportage? I'd appreciate any guidance!

Thanks! --Doc.

MailWasher does this from any POP account.

IF your email provider is configured properly you can even use Quick reporting

(why I will use/forward to Gmail)

[djporter]

For instance, am I able, and will I be able, to do a bulk spam report with all the spam attached to a single email submitted to Spamcop?

Yes, you can attach as many spam emails as desired to a single email submittal to SC.

Mailwasher, as suggested above, is a windows application which limits it's usefulness.

[turetzsr]

Yes, you can attach as many spam emails as desired to a single email submittal to SC.

<snip>

...Actually, there is a limit -- please see the SpamCop FAQ entry labeled "How do I submit spam via email?"

[anyone8]

FYI, Some initial impressions on Pobox.com

...

Pros:

...

+ Supports email "plus" addressing, and whitelisting ("Trusted Senders")

...

Cons:

...

- Webmail was initially sluggish; much improved by changing to "Classic" skin (see Pros). Also had missing page forward/back controls in message list (In Firefox & Seamonkey. Had to use shortcut keys.), also fixed by Classic skin.

...

- Held spam not releasable, not even viewable from webmail or IMAP. Must log into separate Pobox "Home" page to review and deal with spam. (That's AFAIK, 'cause I've gotten no spam there yet.)

...

Thanks for posting a detailed review. I had missed the trusted sender option in their spam filtering settings, so ended up trying Runbox first.

For anyone else considering Pobox:

The 2nd email I received simply wouldn't release no matter how many times I tried. I tried checking the box next to the message then clicking the release button (which had worked for the first email) as well as opening the message then clicking the release button on that screen. Since the screen would reload the message list every time I clicked the release button, the server obviously wasn't down. I can only assume they're running some pretty dodgy software since it stopped working the 2nd time I tried to release an email.

Regarding the slowness mentioned in the quoted message, the system was one of the slowest I've used in a long time, but I didn't get as far as anything like changing the skin, due to the problem mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, a mailing list confirmation that wasn't slow on any other system I've used recently (SpamCop, Outlook.com, Earthlink, Runbox) took several minutes to show up in Pobox, so I suspect their whole system is slow.

[mikemars]

I've ended up going for a combination of thunderbird (for access from my PC) & gmail (for the new account and also webmail, mostly because I'm an Android guy and the integration with my phone is therefore good). I've updated my various domains to forward to gmail, and moved my spamcop inbox (POPing) & sent-items (via IMAP) across. It took an afternoon.

GMail isn't as flexible with multiple domains / user names as I wanted, but it does seem to cope with 5000-odd emails in my inbox without even blinking. The main issue is my ISP which does not do email forwarding(!!?!), only POPing & IMAP. This means that there is up to an hour lag before my email is retrieved (unlike spamcop which had a reasonable polling rate).

[drcocktail]

MailWasher does this from any POP account.

IF your email provider is configured properly you can even use Quick reporting

(why I will use/forward to Gmail)

Hey, Petzl, I remember you from SC-Usenet boards! Thanks for the answer, however I wonder if you really meant MailWasher. I wonder this because I had a long conversation with Nick Bolton there, and he says it's just a select and delete function (at its most basic,) not reporting at all. He feels (probably correctly, alas,) that end user reporting was too error-prone to do.

I'm still looking....SpamCop spoiled me!

Yes, you can attach as many spam emails as desired to a single email submittal to SC.

Mailwasher, as suggested above, is a windows application which limits it's usefulness.

Thanks for the answer, DJ; it was spot-on as I am Mac-based, and is a good upvote for maintaining my SpamCop membership at some level. I will add, however, Nick at MailWasher tells me the cross-platform version (including Apple) is very, very near.

Thanks! --Doc.

[petzl]

Hey, Petzl, I remember you from SC-Usenet boards! Thanks for the answer, however I wonder if you really meant MailWasher. I wonder this because I had a long conversation with Nick Bolton there, and he says it's just a select and delete function (at its most basic,) not reporting at all. He feels (probably correctly, alas,) that end user reporting was too error-prone to do.

Thanks! --Doc.

Still here

Mailwasher is a windows program that identifies spam on the server before you start your email program

It can instantly report and delete your spam then start your email program to download whats left to your email program.

You can use the same blocksts SpamCop email does

bl.spamcop.net

sbl.spamhaus.org

korea.services.net

cn.countries.nerd.dk

ng.countries.nerd.dk

ar.countries.nerd.dk

br.countries.nerd.dk

xbl.spamhaus.org (includes CBL)

Example

settings/Origin of spam/ push "add" button

Call it SpamHaus

in "Domain" box

sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org

You can add others as well

mORE ADVICE ON SET-UP

http://forum.firetrust.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=10200

pbl.spamhaus.org

[showker]

This is all a bit depressing - been using the spamcop email since roughly 2000 (give or take, I forget the exact year).

Depressing? Is that an understatement ... I'm panicking

I used to archive email to my PC every year or so but haven't for a long while (so now I have 5 years of email online).

So I really need to find two things. Firstly a domain-friendly webmail service (ideally one which can auto-create folders based on the TO: email address, hence categorising them by each registered website), and secondly a new email client for my PC which I can use to download & archive the emails (preferably including the sent mail).

I'm looking for a service that offers a HORDE email client and can duplicate all the folders I have here. (Not being successful)

[svanslyck]

I really need to find two things. Firstly a domain-friendly webmail service (ideally one which can auto-create folders based on the TO: email address, hence categorising them by each registered website), and secondly a new email client for my PC which I can use to download & archive the emails (preferably including the sent mail).

Fastmail.fm will import and create all of your folders and of course Thunderbird is a great desktop client. Fastmail is not horde but is the first web client I've ever seen that rivals a desktop client.

[showker]

* In 1996 I hosted my first domain with, at that time, an established east cost ISP. In 2013 when they closed down, I was given 45 days notice to move 5 domains, email etc. Until that moment my total down time was a countable number. Service calls were always met with "Yes, Mr King what can we do for you today?"

in 1992 I set up everything with InterNIC. They were the only ones.

When they started charging, we were in trouble because I had registered several hundred domains. We started getting bills for $35 per domain. We let all but about 20 go dead. (Including "buy.com") ... but who knew?

I hosted my accounts via NetSol, for many years, charging clients, etc.

Then one day ... a hacker hacked our server and destroyed 8 of my hosted client sites with a radical message on the front page and some kind of hack that propagated itself. NetSol's backups backed up the hack and NONE of the sites were usable from that day forward. I was ruined.

So I understand "nothing lasts forever"