Lou van Wijhe Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 To me as a newbie the content of the confirmation e-mails is partly obscure. Yet I feel I need to understand them fully before I decide to release a complaint. Can anyone lead me to appropriate documentation? Thanks in advance! Lou
Merlyn Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 I am not sure there is anything written up on this. Everyone has their own idea of what they should and should not report. IMHO I believe there should be nothing but confirmation in a confirmation email. If there is advertising in it then I report it if I did not sign up. If it is nothing but a confirmation I place it in a hold folder "without" confirming and if they send something else I report it. Many spammers use this as a tactic for spamming so you must use your own judgement.
StevenUnderwood Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 I believe the OP was talking about the email confirmations. Now I don't know if they are the "you have subbmitted a spam and need to complete the process" emails or the "you have sent reports via quick reporting" emails. Lou van Wijhe: Could you explain exactly how you are reporting and at least what the subject of the confirmations is.
Lou van Wijhe Posted October 7, 2004 Author Posted October 7, 2004 I believe the OP was talking about the email confirmations. Now I don't know if they are the "you have subbmitted a spam and need to complete the process" emails or the "you have sent reports via quick reporting" emails. Lou van Wijhe: Could you explain exactly how you are reporting and at least what the subject of the confirmations is. 18415[/snapback] Steven, I was talking about the "need to complete the process" variety. I use a program called Mailwasher where I can opt to forward spam I received to SpamCop. I then receive this confirmation e-mail from SpamCop where I can decide to send the abuse report. However, if I don't fully understand what is in the SpamCop analysis I might for instance send an abuse report to the wrong party, can't I?. I can recognise spam when I receive it but I have some difficulty fully understanding the analysis and am a bit unsure about whether to release the abuse report. Lou
GraemeL Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 I was talking about the "need to complete the process" variety. I use a program called Mailwasher where I can opt to forward spam I received to SpamCop. I then receive this confirmation e-mail from SpamCop where I can decide to send the abuse report. However, if I don't fully understand what is in the SpamCop analysis I might for instance send an abuse report to the wrong party, can't I?. I can recognise spam when I receive it but I have some difficulty fully understanding the analysis and am a bit unsure about whether to release the abuse report. These days, the SpmCop parser is pretty accurate. If the confirmation request is not attempting to send the report to the abuse desk of your own ISP, it's probably correct. The chances of missreporting your own ISP are greatly reduced if you go through the "mailhosts" setup available from the SpamCop web page.
StevenUnderwood Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 At the very least, you should be checking that the reports are NOT going to the abuse desk of your ISP, wher your ISP could be defined as anyone handling your email for you. My usual suggestion is to send yourself (or have a friend) a test email and send that to the parser to determine how a normal message gets to you. You can then look at the headers of that message and see who reports should NOT go to. If you post the headers here, we can help you determine that, if necessary. You should also make sure you configure your mailhosts. This will help spamcop know who is expected to handle your messages and basically skip to the next header.
Wazoo Posted October 7, 2004 Posted October 7, 2004 There's not really all that much provided for background on this, basically as what you are asking boils down to "how to read an e-mail header" .... there are a number of sites out there that already go into this subject. For your own use, somewhere along the line, you should stumble across a line that says "Tracking URL" .... follow this link, as it shows you how the SpamCop parser made its decisions on what addresses to follow, what addresses to noify, etc. (You may want to login into the www.spamcop.net page and check your Preferences, looking for "show Technical details") Sort through a few of those and you should begin to see a pattern <g>
Lou van Wijhe Posted October 7, 2004 Author Posted October 7, 2004 Thanks a lot everybody, I'm beginning to see the light. Lou
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