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Reporting is too darn slow (rant)


scuser627

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I've been a paid spamcop user on and off for awhile. Recently I've been spending too darn much time reporting spam, much reported as being associated with myvirpus.com , and want the SpamCop reporting system improved please.

Roughly 4 times a day, I notice 10 spams in my Outlook junk folder. I scan them to make sure they are really spam, select all, and click SpamGrabber to report them. A few minutes later I get ten emails from SpamCop notifying me they have been received and processed. These emails are unnecessary. Then I visit the spamcop website and the time consuming process begins.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.
Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

This repeats 4 times each day and 365 days each year, cumulatively taking hours and days out of my life.

My suggestions are as follows:
* Since I've already verified that 10 spams are to be reported, allow me to click only once per visit on a button to "Report all 10 spams"
* If the above proposal is not possible, at least cut my reporting time in half by requiring only one click and browser refresh per spam instead of two clicks per spam.
* Allow me to turn off the report acknowledgement emails I am receiving, or even make no emails the default, I don't need them and for my use they waste time and resources.

Thanks for considering my feedback and suggestions.

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Yes, before posting this rant I looked at Preferences | Report Handling Options, but did not notice any settings to reduce the confirmation emails from spamcop to the reporting user, nor to speed up nor batch the report submissions.

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scuser627 has a point.

But let me start by saying that I think we're all volunteers here, y'all have my respect!

The spamcop.net site and procedures are ancient. The FAQ seems still centered around the founder of spamcop, the site desperately needs a full overhaul.

The user is expected to contribute an amount of money, in return the nagging and page delay would be lifted.

Those operating spamcop.net should acknowledge the fact that we, as users, are just as much volunteer contributors in combatting spam.

We.don't.get.anything.out.of.it. There is no service delivered to the user.

So, yeah. Think about it...

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I've been a paid spamcop user on and off for awhile. Recently I've been spending too darn much time reporting spam, much reported as being associated with myvirpus.com , and want the SpamCop reporting system improved please.

Roughly 4 times a day, I notice 10 spams in my Outlook junk folder. I scan them to make sure they are really spam, select all, and click SpamGrabber to report them. A few minutes later I get ten emails from SpamCop notifying me they have been received and processed. These emails are unnecessary. Then I visit the spamcop website and the time consuming process begins.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

Click "Report Now". Wait for browser. Reverify spam. Click "Send spam Report(s) Now". Wait for browser.

This repeats 4 times each day and 365 days each year, cumulatively taking hours and days out of my life.

My suggestions are as follows:

* Since I've already verified that 10 spams are to be reported, allow me to click only once per visit on a button to "Report all 10 spams"

* If the above proposal is not possible, at least cut my reporting time in half by requiring only one click and browser refresh per spam instead of two clicks per spam.

* Allow me to turn off the report acknowledgement emails I am receiving, or even make no emails the default, I don't need them and for my use they waste time and resources.

Thanks for considering my feedback and suggestions.

Scan your machine for Malware?

I'm in Australia and not had issues of slow reporting since Ironport then Cisco took over?

If you use windows make sure "Windows Defender" is on unless you have paid for a "private brand" and it's up to date.

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First off thank you to the volunteers who keep SC running, and thank you to anyone taking the time to read my rant, yes we are all volunteers in this, thank you. There are no signs of malware on my system other than spamcop requiring twice as many clicks as it would with a more efficient design. I am running on 2 yr old hardware with private brand antivirus/antispyware and it is up to date. My connection today is a 3M DSL with ping 19ms, 2.8M down, 0.46 up, and yes I could throw money at this problem by buying a faster connection but that is not the point of my rant. EVERY paid user using spamcop appears to be clicking at least twice as many times as they would on a more efficiently designed system, and it seems to me that spamcop is contributing excess email by generating reports that are often not needed for many users. If necessary I will keep suffering with the current system design, and chalk it up to wrist exercise, but it sure seems to me that the two tweaks in the spamcop system design I am requesting would make life a bit more efficient for all of us. Thanks again for your time spent reading and thinking about my rant.

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First off thank you to the volunteers who keep SC running, and thank you to anyone taking the time to read my rant, yes we are all volunteers in this, thank you. There are no signs of malware on my system other than spamcop requiring twice as many clicks as it would with a more efficient design. I am running on 2 yr old hardware with private brand antivirus/antispyware and it is up to date. My connection today is a 3M DSL with ping 19ms, 2.8M down, 0.46 up, and yes I could throw money at this problem by buying a faster connection but that is not the point of my rant. EVERY paid user using spamcop appears to be clicking at least twice as many times as they would on a more efficiently designed system, and it seems to me that spamcop is contributing excess email by generating reports that are often not needed for many users. If necessary I will keep suffering with the current system design, and chalk it up to wrist exercise, but it sure seems to me that the two tweaks in the spamcop system design I am requesting would make life a bit more efficient for all of us. Thanks again for your time spent reading and thinking about my rant.

SpamCop is not slow for me?

My internet speed is never amazing around your speed a little less

http://www.speedtest.net/result/5206292575.png

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How about your wrist speed? Wouldn't you prefer to be able to report the same amount of spam in a single click on the site??

if you want you can as long as your mailhost is set-up with out reporting your self

it's called "quick" reporting which just targets the IP for the spam source

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Since the time is mostly taken up with "Wait for browser", I'd suggest a faster working method. Submit as normal, or indeed forward multiple emails so that you only get one back from SpamCop with all the reporting links. In your email client, click on each of the reporting links so that they each open in a new tab in your default browser (or if you haven't been able to configure an email client and have to use a webmail system, I suppose you can middle-click to open a new tab).

This then means all the reporting forms are rendered simultaneously, but you still get to check the orignating IP abuse addresses and link parsing destinations - SpamCop does make mistakes, or sometimes it's useful to see when it hasn't gone to any abuse contact. After clicking "Submit form", you can use Ctrl+F4 to close the tab.

HTH.

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Thanks for your replies.

"forward multiple emails so that you only get one back from SpamCop with all the reporting links" - it is not apparent how to do this, I always get back separate individual emails for every spam reported.

Your suggestion does convert the browser delay from serial into parallel and is a good idea which I will try, thank you. But this still does not reduce the clicking time which can be large when there is a lot of spam.

Regarding "quick reporting", the related documentation seems over 10 years old! Does anyone actually use quick reporting these days and does it still work? The documentation has cautions about self reporting, is that still a real risk with quick reporting? At some point the cure is worse than the disease and filtering becomes preferable to reporting.

Thanks again for your responses.

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Regarding "quick reporting", the related documentation seems over 10 years old! Does anyone actually use quick reporting these days and does it still work? The documentation has cautions about self reporting, is that still a real risk with quick reporting? At some point the cure is worse than the disease and filtering becomes preferable to reporting.

Yes, quick reporting is still, an option. Yes, I use it. Yes, IF you do not have mailhosts set up correctly, self reporting is possible.

I think it would be good to remember that sending valid spam reports is the sender's (your) responsibility. The second step, reviewing the suggested reports, is an important operation. The only practical way to do this in a timely manner is for SpamCop to send you an email when the parsing has been completed. When your spam submission is received it is queued with the others received and processed in order. On average that processing takes less than less than 3 seconds and then you are send an email. Depending on what time of day you submit, the time in queue may vary. Considering that in the neighborhood of 230K spam are processed each day, the long pole in this tent is not queue time, but the time required for you to receive the email and respond.

Depending on your email app, I use thunderbird. After reviewing/identifying the spam in you inbox, you can highlight several of them, in one of several was. In TB with the spam highlighted, right click to see a menu; which includes "Forward" or "Forward as Attachment" Clicking on that, a new email opens with the selected email/spam as attachments; address and send.

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  • 1 month later...

Again thanks to everyone who responded.  I've been using computers since the mid 1970s and have myself designed systems that have had widespread use, so I am not exactly a newbie.  

Nevertheless adopting quick reporting appears to require more setup time, effort, and risk than I am willing to invest.  

Also it is still not clear to me exactly what I am supposed to DO when reviewing suggested reports, for years every suggested report seemed reasonable and I just press report.  If the review is to be meaningful there should be clear documentation somewhere on what to look for.

I've taken up Cedders suggestion to load browser windows in parallel and then click the links for reporting.  The click responses are now instant versus the long pauses in my initial approach.  I now have 5 times as much clicking per spam but will consider this a benefit as strong wrists have other uses.  There is now less idle time for me to cuss out the system.  And Cedders approach is free, I don't have to log in and my SpamCop account is not charged.

I must say though, this is the first online system I've seen where the free version is easier to use than the paid version.

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  • 3 weeks later...

To further explain one of the previous suggestions, if you forward 10 spams as 10 attachments to a single email, you'll get back one email with 10 links in it.  It sounds like SpamGrabber sends a separate email for each spam (MailWasher Pro does this too), so you end up getting 10 emails back.

If you use Firefox with Greasemonkey or another browser/addon that supports user scripts, https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/34417 will automate some of the submission stuff.  After you submit one report, it will automatically advance to the next one.  You'll still have to click Submit 10 times, but you shouldn't need a bunch of clicks in between them.  If you're a free user, there's still the delay, but it automatically jumps to the next Submit button with no work on your part (sometimes when I'm really impatient I'll open each link in a new tab in parallel).  There's an auto-submit option in the scri_pt, but that's a level of risk comparable to Quick Reporting.  It also highlights a few of the more important header lines in the spam on the report screen, to make it easier to see the details at a glance.

Ideally, the SpamCop report should be correct, and you just need to hit Submit to send it on its way.  You want to make sure that the IP getting reported is the proper one (and not your own ISP's relay, for example).  You're supposed to make sure that any reported links are actually spam-related.  It's possible if the spammer is disguising the link, that the SC parser might pick up the decoy text as another URL, even if the site being used as the decoy isn't really the one spamming you.  You're really just double-checking to make sure the parser didn't find something it shouldn't have.

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  • 7 months later...

I sympathize, but these confirmations are important to help avoid false positives.

This won't help everyone, but I solved this problem using my mail server - incoming mail is piped to a program I wrote to analyze the contents, and if it's a spamcop confirmation, sends the embedded url and code to another program that impersonates a browser, waits a few seconds to give spamcop servers time to catch up (as they aren't always ready), then goes to the url, clicks "Send spam Report(s) Now" and logs the results.

This happens many thousands of times every day for all the high scoring, and checked greymail I submit. (Fortunately only ever have a handful of greymail to deal with).

I spent years developing my systems to work with Spamcop's, so if they change something, I would either have a lot of work to do, or have to give up!

So far, I've submitted over 4 million spams, and also unpacked and analyzed 280,000 messages containing js, jse, wsf, vbs, infected ole attachments to expose 18,000 unique hidden urls of compromised websites so they can also be reported and help to clean up the net.

If only all ISPs around the world would actually act on these reports, the net really could be a cleaner place.

Those that don't comply could then be marginalized and be forced to comply or remain blocked.

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