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Reporting forwarded spam?


jmontana

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99% of my spam goes to my Yahoo account. I use YoSucker to download my Yahoo mail to my machine at home. It then gets forwarded to another account, where I read it.

When I report the Yahoo spam, the received: headers contain information about my machine at home, which is attached to a Comcast cable modem.

This means that spamcop wants to include me in the reports, because it thinks (I guess) that the spam came from something in the Comcast network. I don't want to get my own IP address blacklisted!

I think I can just remove the offending "received" lines before emailing the spam to SpamCop, but that's extra work, and I don't want to do that for every spam that comes in.

Is there an easy way to deal with this?

thanks!

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Here's another bit of a gripe, I suppose. You mention all this movement of e-mail, but make no reference to the tools involved in the handling. You suck the Yahoo e-mail down to the home, then forward it once again???? Are you using technical terms, using a fancy word but actually meaning something like filtering/rulesets/ something else???? Are you running a, e-mail server on the house machine or is all this fance stuff done via an e-mail client? If it's already at "the house" why must it be "moved" yet again?

One could suggest heading over and taking a look at Mail-Host configuration, but .... from the strange and detail deprived story thus far, I don't see anyway to guess as to whether the Mail-Host thing would be the answer or not.

Something much more helpful (of course, that suggests that you spend time poking around and looking for information) would have been the inclusion of a Tracking URL of one of these "problem" e-mails such that the specific headers could be seen. This guessing at things really gets old.

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<snip>

Something much more helpful <snip>would have been the inclusion of a Tracking URL of one of these "problem" e-mails such that the specific headers could be seen.  <snip>

16210[/snapback]

1. The above could be your stock answer.

2. Above the "Tracking URL" there could be a label that says: "This is your TRACKING URL: Please submit this TRACKING URL with all help requests".

Can you please ask the powers that be to add such a label to the Reporting Page right above the "Tracking URL"?

Right now there is nothing there called a "Tracking URL". :)

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Hi, jmontana!

...Let me see if I understand this:

  • E-mail comes into your Yahoo!Mail account (for ease of reference, let's call this account jmontana <at> yahoo.com)
  • you download your e-mail from Yahoo!Mail to your machine at home
  • you forward it to another account (again, for ease of reference, let's call this account jmontana <at> othermail.com)

If this is correct, then note that your problem (at least from my naive understanding of how SpamCop works) is that you as jmontana <at> othermail.com is trying to report spam that was sent to an entirely different user, jmontana <at> yahoo.com but that was not sent directly to jmontana <at> othermail.com. This is, IIUC, a violation of SpamCop policy (or at least a violation of an assumption that the SpamCop parser makes). In other words (again, IIUC), you should not do this -- either you should report the spam directly from your Yahoo!Mail account or you should eliminate the Yahoo!Mail account entirely in favor of jmontana <at> othermail.com.

I think I can just remove the offending "received" lines before emailing the spam to SpamCop, but that's extra work, and I don't want to do that for every spam that comes in.
...You are correct, you could, but then you would definitely be violating SpamCop policy because that is considered to be a "material change" (see SpamCop FAQ: Material changes to spam). Although what you propose is not explicitly mentioned in the FAQ I reference, several of us have had our hands slapped by the SpamCop deputies for doing exactly that.
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Here's another bit of a gripe, I suppose.  You mention all this movement of e-mail, but make no reference to the tools involved in the handling.  You suck the Yahoo e-mail down to the home, then forward it once again????  Are you using technical terms, using a fancy word but actually meaning something like filtering/rulesets/ something else????  Are you running a, e-mail server on the house machine or is all this fance stuff done via an e-mail client?  If it's already at "the house" why must it be "moved" yet again?

Wow. Sorry if I was too vague.

Here's what happens:

1. Email gets sent to Yahoo.

2. YoSucker (an open source perl scri_pt which downloads Yahoo mail -- see http://yosucker.sourceforge.net ) downloads the Yahoo mail every fifteen minutes.

3. This mail is then handed off in turn to procmail, which forwards it to a POP3 account.

4. I run Thunderbird, an open source email client, which downloads the mail.

5. I read it.

The house machine is an OS X box, running PostFix, which sends the email on to me, but no, I'm not running a POP3 server on the box.

One could suggest heading over and taking a look at Mail-Host configuration, but .... from the strange and detail deprived story thus far, I don't see anyway to guess as to whether the Mail-Host thing would be the answer or not.

Something much more helpful (of course, that suggests that you spend time poking around and looking for information) would have been the inclusion of a Tracking URL of one of these "problem" e-mails such that the specific headers could be seen.  This guessing at things really gets old.

16210[/snapback]

I'm just asking for help. There's no need to belittle me. If you could inform me where I could find a Tracking URL I'd be happy to send it to you.

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1. The above could be your stock answer.

You know, with all the typing I've done today, I don't think I've said it more than a couple of times in today's efforts at support. But, as I state in this Topic, trying to guess at things that are undefined, unknown, misrepresented, or wrongly defined is just needless effort. If one goes with your statement, then one would also have to agree that with those words used so often, it shouldn't take folks more than looking at a Topic or two to come across them, see what one looks like, sya "Hey, I've seen one of those", and prevent those words from appearing again ...????

2. Above the "Tracking URL" there could be a label that says: "This is your TRACKING URL: Please submit this TRACKING URL with all help requests".

We've been here before. Those parsing engine pages are all Julian's .. end of story. Now I remember where the "this isn't the place to teach how to use a browser" conversation was ...

Can you please ask the powers that be to add such a label to the Reporting Page right above the "Tracking URL"?

There are numerous postings littered all over the place hinting, if not outright stating that I've got loads of outstanding requests for things to happen, questions that don't get answered, situations that aren't explained ....

Right now there is nothing there called a "Tracking URL".  :)

Except, as you've indicated, as found in the thousands and thousands of my postings <g>

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then note that your problem (at least from my naive understanding of how SpamCop works) is that you as jmontana <at> othermail.com is trying to report spam that was sent to an entirely different user, jmontana <at> yahoo.com but that was not sent directly to jmontana <at> othermail.com.  This is, IIUC, a violation of SpamCop policy (or at least a violation of an assumption that the SpamCop parser makes).  In other words (again, IIUC), you should not do this -- either you should report the spam directly from your Yahoo!Mail account or you should eliminate the Yahoo!Mail account entirely in favor of jmontana <at> othermail.com.

Ah ha! That makes sense. And that sounds like the Correct Thing to Do. I just hate browser-based email, so I was hoping to avoid going that route. Given that the majority of my spam is hitting the yahoo account, I'm kind of in favor of keeping it all in one place.

I certainly don't want to violate anything. Good to know.

Thanks a lot!

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99% of my spam goes to my Yahoo account. I use YoSucker to download my Yahoo mail to my machine at home. It then gets forwarded to another account, where I read it.

When I report the Yahoo spam, the received: headers contain information about my machine at home, which is attached to a Comcast cable modem.

This means that spamcop wants to include me in the reports, because it thinks (I guess) that the spam came from something in the Comcast network. I don't want to get my own IP address blacklisted!

I think I can just remove the offending "received" lines before emailing the spam to SpamCop, but that's extra work, and I don't want to do that for every spam that comes in.

Is there an easy way to deal with this?

thanks!

16207[/snapback]

Don't remove the received headers; send me the tracking url from a parse and let me look at it.

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Wow.  Sorry if I was too vague.

Again, there's no way to try to answer your original query because all the details needed were not provided.

Here's what happens:

1. Email gets sent to Yahoo.

2. YoSucker (an open source perl scri_pt which downloads Yahoo mail -- see http://yosucker.sourceforge.net ) downloads the Yahoo mail every fifteen minutes.

3. This mail is then handed off in turn to procmail, which forwards it to a POP3 account.

One would now have to jump in and say that this is probably where the "failure" mode is ... probably non-RFC compliant header lines which are causing the SpamCop parsing engine to see that there's a break in the chain of events/servers handling the e-mail, and thusly selects your IP as the last "known good" server, saying that anything prior is forged. A Tracking URL of a problem spam already parsed (or you running through a paste-your-spam-in-the-box page with Technical Details turned on) would have shown this "break" in the flow.

4. I run Thunderbird, an open source email client, which downloads the mail.

5. I read it.

Technically, you could have snagged one of these problem header sets and provided that to show the problem (but a Tracking URL would save so much space, only being one line long)

I'm just asking for help. There's no need to belittle me.

Not sure just what you grok that was a "belittle" you thing. If there are any bad thoughts involved, they would be the ones about the lack of your "lurk before posting" process ... but you're not the first and surely won't be the last.

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<snip>

<snip> from the strange and detail deprived story thus far <snip>

Something much more helpful (of course, that suggests that you spend time poking around and looking for information) <snip>  This guessing at things really gets old.

I'm just asking for help. There's no need to belittle me. If you could inform me where I could find a Tracking URL I'd be happy to send it to you.

16218[/snapback]

<snip>

Not sure just what you grok that was a "belittle" you thing.  If there are any bad thoughts involved, they would be the ones about the lack of your "lurk before posting" process ... but you're not the first and surely won't be the last.

16223[/snapback]

...At first, I couldn't grok it, either, but after re-reading the exchange I can! :) <g>
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Wazoo:

I'm trying to be helpful. Newbies come here and get chastised for not posting a tracking URL and are told to fetch a tracking URL, but nowhere are they told what a tracking URL is or where to find it.

Here's what's at the top of the reporting page:

spam Header
This page may be saved for future reference:
http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z638265254z9ab6a9174be6c00z053c00da68e6bf6bz
Skip to Reports

There is nothing there giving it the nomenclature of "Tracking URL".

You cannot expect newbies to come here and:

1. Know that they should bring a Tracking URL.

2. Know what it is and where to find it once they get here.

You don't give them enough clues, nor does Julian.

I would suggest that your stock answer should look something like this:

We cannot help you without a TRACKING URL. Please post the TRACKING URL(s) for the spam(s) in question. You will find the tracking URL on the Reporting Page write under the "spam Header" headline. The tracking URL will look something like this:

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z638265254z9a...3c00da68e6bf6bz

Post your Tracking URL(s) and then we can assist you further (copy and paste them from the reporting page). Until then we cannot help you.

IMHO that would be a lot more helpful and productive than chastising everybody for lacking a tracking URL and it would be more helpful than long drawn out explanations of how defective their post is without a Tracking URL and that should have had the sense to read some post before posting here, etc.

Your mileage may vary. Happy trails :)

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<snip>

I would suggest that your stock answer should look something like this:

We cannot help you without a TRACKING URL. Please post the TRACKING URL(s) for the spam(s) in question. You will find the tracking URL on the Reporting Page write under the "spam Header" headline. The tracking URL will look something like this:

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z638265254z9a...3c00da68e6bf6bz

Post your Tracking URL(s) and then we can assist you further (copy and paste them from the reporting page). Until then we cannot help you.

IMHO that would be a lot more helpful and productive than chastising everybody for lacking a tracking URL and it would be more helpful than long drawn out explanations of how defective their post is without a Tracking URL and that should have had the sense to read some post before posting here, etc.

Your mileage may vary. Happy trails :)

16238[/snapback]

...Or put it in a pinned entry where you (and the rest of us) could refer to it directly!
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Wazoo:

I'm trying to be helpful. Newbies come here and get chastised for not posting a tracking URL and are told to fetch a tracking URL, but nowhere are they told what a tracking URL is or where to find it.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Anyway, I'm now happily reporting spam directly from Yahoo. Seems the extra forwarding is just mucking up the process.

Thanks for the help!

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<snip>

I'm now happily reporting spam directly from Yahoo. Seems the extra forwarding is just mucking up the process.

Thanks for the help!

16288[/snapback]

...Thanks for taking the time to let us know you've got it working! :) <g>
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  • 2 weeks later...
1. The above could be your stock answer.

2. Above the "Tracking URL" there could be a label that says: "This is your TRACKING URL: Please submit this TRACKING URL with all help requests".

Can you please ask the powers that be to add such a label to the Reporting Page right above the "Tracking URL"?

Right now there is nothing there called a "Tracking URL".  :)

16216[/snapback]

Did you notice the change? Parsing page now reads;

spam Header

Here is your TRACKING URL - it may be saved for future reference:

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=biglongnumberalphasequence

Skip to Reports

I don't recall you ever saying anything about the addition of a Glossary to the FAQ to try to handle all your objections ... now I have to go figure out what to do there ... seems silly to have to explain the term now that the parse page has been changed ...

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Agreed.  That specific comment was to one of my most ardent fans, recalling the numerous times I was clobbered for not "explaining" the term Tracking URL

17175[/snapback]

Ardent fan I yam.

Yes, the Tracking URL clarification is a good thing :P

How did that come up in this thread?

[Edit add: OK, now I see this is a two page mobius strip groundhog day black hole thread]

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