HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Share Posted February 8, 2004 Hi, all. Got a quick question. Here's a recent blurb from a SpamCop AutoResponder email I got: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE HELP SUPPORT THIS SERVICE! SpamCop is free. However, if you like the service please pay for it: http://www.spamcop.net/upgradeaccount.shtml?elided SpamCop is now ready to process your spam. Use links to finish spam reporting: http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z287208723zf3...e5fe1f31dcd951z http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z287208724ze6...32a43682247379z The email which triggered this auto-response had the following headers: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first URL under 'Use links to finish spam reporting:' leads to a web page that says there's an error in reporting. Is this a SpamCop bug, or are they setting up a new feature? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted February 8, 2004 Share Posted February 8, 2004 Here's a recent blurb from a SpamCop AutoResponder email I got: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Use links to finish spam reporting: http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z287208723zf3...e5fe1f31dcd951z http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z287208724ze6...32a43682247379z ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The first URL under 'Use links to finish spam reporting:' leads to a web page that says there's an error in reporting. Is this a SpamCop bug, or are they setting up a new feature? Although not a user of any form of the quick or e-mail submission forms, the error message I see when doing a look-up on your first link is a pretty much standard error message ... something is wrong with the spam submitted. As these link only offer the parse results, and there were no results due to a problem, you're going to have to take a look at what you actually did submit to figure out what went wrong. You'll note that the second item seems to have parsed just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff G. Posted February 8, 2004 Share Posted February 8, 2004 http://www.spamcop.net/upgradeaccount.shtml?elided Please don't post anything that can be turned into your personal reporting email or web address. I have elided what you posted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 That's just the problem... I'm only submitting one spam per email, as an attachment, in plain text format (I'm using a derivation of Leon Mayne's Outlook SpamCop Reporting tool). Although there's only one attachment per email sent, SpamCop says that it's accepted two spams for processing. The only changes I've made recently are to put some text into the body of the email message sent to SpamCop (other spam-reporting entities require this text). Could this be triggering SpamCop into thinking there's two spams being submitted? Does SpamCop look at the body of the email sent (not the attachment, the actual email that's acting as a carrier for that attachment). Does SpamCop require a blank email with the spam attachment? If so, it's incompatible with other spam-reporting entities, and I'll have to reconfigure things. Are there some guidelines somewhere that show what SpamCop is looking for in the emails sent to it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 OK, I found out that SpamCop is parsing the body of the email message I'm sending to them (the one with the spam attachment), and counting that as a spam. It's doing this because of the text I've put in the body (.HTMLBody) of the email, to meet requirements of other spam reporting entities (SpamAbuse and FTC). Is there any way to get SpamCop to ignore the text in the body of the mail message I send, so it only parses the attachment? Is there, say, a key word or something that I could put as the very first thing in the body to tell SpamCop not to parse the body of the email message, just parse the attachment? Strangely, I've been doing this (adding text to the body of the email) for a number of days before I started getting the 'SpamCop has accepted 2 emails for processing' blurb in the Subject of the AutoResponder email. So, something must have changed at SpamCop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 OK, I did a little more digging / coding... This text blurb in the body of the email sent to SpamCop triggers SpamCop to count it as a spam being reported: -------------------- UBE/UCE Submission, Recipient's State Of Residence - CA Please see the .txt format attachment. Contact Info: Name: Hills Capital Management Email Address: xxxxxxxxx[at]xxxxxxx(munged for this post) Source Info: Subject: Discounted OEM Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Corel software! z nuqtmdgz Number Of Messages: 1 Size of Archive: 14338 bytes Received: 2/8/2004 1:34:22 AM (GMT -8:00) -------------------- And this text blurb doesn't: -------------------- spam SUBMISSION Please see the .txt format attachment. Contact Info: Name: Hills Capital Management Email Address: xxxxxxxxx[at]xxxxxxx(munged for this post) Source Info: Subject: Hello! t Number Of Messages: 1 Size of Archive: 3644 bytes -------------------- Any ideas why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 Got it! I figured it out! Basically, SpamCop's running a dumb bot, it's obviously just looking for the text blurb 'Received:'. So, when I put that in (even if it was part of a string), it caught it and assumed that it was looking at a header, thus triggering SpamCop to think it was a spam submission, even when it was just the spam submission email with the spam as an attachment. So, I've reformatted my body text as follows: -------------------- UBE/UCE SUBMISSION Please see the .txt format attachment. Contact Info: Name: Hills Capital Management Email Address: xxxxxxxxxxxxx[at]xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx (munged for this post) Recipient's State Of Residence - CA Source Info: Subject: Fwd: Re: Hiya! Number Of Messages: 1 Size of Archive: 10676 bytes Receival Date/Time: 2/8/2004 6:22:36 AM (GMT -8:00) -------------------- I think it'd be best if I did this: -------------------- UBE/UCE SUBMISSION Please see the .txt format attachment. Contact Info - Name - Hills Capital Management Email Address - xxxxxxxxxxxxx[at]xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx (munged for this post) Recipient's State Of Residence - CA Source Info - Subject - Fwd: Re: Hiya! Number Of Messages - 1 Size of Archive - 10676 bytes Receival Date/Time - 2/8/2004 6:22:36 AM (GMT -8:00) -------------------- That'd avoid the issue altogether. BUT, if a spammer puts 'RECEIVED:' in the subject line, it'll cause the error again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 Now that I think about it, if a spammer were to put 'Received:' in the body of their email, SpamCop would think there was header information in the body of the email, and would throw an error. I'll have to code around that. I suggest we name this issue the 'Dumb Bot' issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HillsCap Posted February 8, 2004 Author Share Posted February 8, 2004 OK, well, I guess I was wrong... I programmagically put the 'Received:' blurb in several different spots in several different spam mails, and SpamCop didn't complain, so I guess it's just an issue if the body of the spam report email has the blurb in it. Are there any other text blurbs we should avoid putting in the body of the spam submission email? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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