Forwarding Problems

[acasas]

Hello All,

Recently I've been having problems with spamcop forwarding e-mail.

I have a heavily spammed e-mail account that forwards to spamcop. After filtering, spamcop then forwards to another "safer" account (on the same server as the first account).

Today, no messages forwarded from spamcop have been going through (either forwarded manually through the web client or as automatically set in options/fowarding). I have even tried composing a message directly to no avail.

Is there something wrong with the spamcop mail server?

I've tried e-mailing my "safe" account from other accounts directly with success. It's just when a message is relayed through spamcop it gets lost.

Any ideas? I would prefer to keep my current system of relaying/filtering and not have to access my e-mail via the web.

Thanks in advance,

Arvin

PS - I have also been receiving several spam e-mails using my primary e-mail address as sender. Could this be related to the above mentioned forwarding problems? (FYI - When I do send from my primary to my spamcop account, it does show up as received and not filtered out.)

[StevenUnderwood]

Some things to look at/try:

Are the messages being filtered into your held mail folder? Perhaps your server has made one of the blocklsts and everything is being held.

Have you tried turning off the forwarding out of spamcop to see if the messages are reacing the spamcop servers?

Have you tried turning off the forwarding of the first account to see if mail is collecting there?

Have you contacted your ISP about this situation?

Have you contacted JT (the spamcop email administrator) at support<at>spamcop.net with some specific test data so he can check the logs and see if messages have reached the server?

[acasas]

Thanks very much for the response Steven!

It turns out that my "safe" account had indeed been blocking mails forwarded from the spamcop server.

I wasn't aware of it, but my service had recently implemented their own spam filtering, automatically blocking by IP address queued messages I'd deleted (spam that had slipped past spamcop's filter).

Because of the forward, spamcop's IP was seen as the spamming server!

Irony, no?

Thanks again for the advice.

[Wazoo]

It turns out that my "safe" account had indeed been blocking mails forwarded from the spamcop server. 

I wasn't aware of it, but my service had recently implemented their own spam filtering, automatically blocking by IP address queued messages I'd deleted (spam that had slipped past spamcop's filter). 

Because of the forward, spamcop's IP was seen as the spamming server!

Irony, no?

Any way to get more data on this situation?

Is this filter 'universal' .... meaning do I need to come up with some Announcement or FAQ entry, hopefully getting ahead of the flood of other ComCast users arriving with the same query.

Thinking that I'd like to be a bit more clear on where and conditions of your phrase "queued messages I'd deleted ..." ... I'm thinking that HotMail once upon a time was adding details from unread e-mail founf in the Trash folder (and no idea of this is still done or not) ... but that's making a flying assumption, as I'm not totally sure what you actually said there.

Up until your response, the issue had only been ISPs placing filters on outbound e-mail, such that some folks were not able to actually submit their spam for reporting as the ISP was silently deleting it because it looked like spam .... and I did add in a FAQ entry for that situation.

User PM'd . Deputies and JT given a heads-up.

[acasas]

Any way to get more data on this situation?

Is this filter 'universal' .... meaning do I need to come up with some Announcement or FAQ entry, hopefully getting ahead of the flood of other ComCast users arriving with the same query.

Thinking that I'd like to be a bit more clear on where and conditions of your phrase "queued messages I'd deleted ..." ... I'm thinking that HotMail once upon a time was adding details from unread e-mail founf in the Trash folder (and no idea of this is still done or not) ... but that's making a flying assumption, as I'm not totally sure what you actually said there.

Up until your response, the issue had only been ISPs placing filters on outbound e-mail, such that some folks were not able to actually submit their spam for reporting as the ISP was silently deleting it because it looked like spam .... and I did add in a FAQ entry for that situation.

User PM'd . Deputies and JT given a heads-up.

21719[/snapback]

I have an account with pathlink.com tied in with a web site hosting plan. They have implemented as part of their e-mail service something called spam Hippo, which is essentially a spam blocking service for inbound messages.

spam Hippo works with whitelists, holding in queue messages from those who do not respond to an automatically sent e-mail prompting them to confirm. When received, the original sender has the option to click a link on the e-mail to verify he or she is "human" and not a spam machine. In doing so, they remove their messages from the queue.

After a certain amount of time, if messages are not responded to and released, they are deleted from the queue and recorded as possible spam. (The administrator can also manually delete them.)

These deleted entries now become candidates for their newly implemented blacklist.

When a user-defined number of deleted entires is recorded, the IP address is added to a black list, further blocking any messages received from the offending IP.

Essentially, spam Hippo is working from the assumption that if someone tries to e-mail you several times without responding to the prompt to confirm, the message must be spam.

The problem I was running into was that, since some spam slipped past spamcop and eventually made its way to my blacklist, spamcop's IP was recorded as the source of the spam (not the originating IP). That's why my forwarded messages were being blocked.

Hope this helps! It is a result of spam Hippo and not Comcast.

[Wazoo]

Thanks for the feedback.

However, a Challenge/Response system ... (please see FAQ and search for MailBlocks within this Forum structure) .... basic scenario, great for you, bad for the rest of the world .. most C/R systems become known "here" because of the bounces created and sent to forged addresses ...

Anyway, what I'm not sure of yet .. was the block only on your account or applied to the ISP's e-mail server to 'protect' everyone? Do you have the option to white-list? Do I need to amend the e-mail I've got started to include that possible contact needs to be made with this ISP?

[acasas]

The block was on my account. I do have the option to whitelist, but by address, not IP.

[Wazoo]

Thanks again.