MailWasher Pro

[colman]

MailWasher Pro has been working fine for the past year.

Mailwasher has added reporting spam to Spamcop as an extra feature to the software.

There are over one hundred spams per day sent to my university email account.

Filtering the daily spam with Mailwasher Pro has freed up the time that was spent deleting spam. However, this has done nothing to reduce the amount of daily spam.

Spamcop is doing a great service by attacking the problem.

Nevertheless, reporting spam with Spamcop is taking up too much of my time:

Spamcop AutoResponder sends about one hundred emails everyday to my university email address. Each Spamcop Auto response has links to finish spam reporting. Therefore, I have one hundred spam reports to process daily.

How can I reduce my workload?

[Miss Betsy]

You can only report the most recent spam (or some other criteria that makes it easier for you - like only financial spam or porn spam).

If you use Outlook Express, you can forward as attachment several (there is another recent topic that gives more detail). You can also filter all auto-responses to the trash and go to the web site and just work through the Unreported spam there.

After you have used spamcop for a while, you can request quick reporting. However, I don't recommend it. IMHO, reporting as many of the most recent as is convenient for you is more effective and less prone to error.

Miss Betsy

[colman]

reporting as many of the most recent as is convenient for you is more effective and less prone to error.

Miss Betsy

23192[/snapback]

Processing one hundred NEW spam messeges per day takes me about two hours. And it is not convenient.

[StevenUnderwood]

Nobody is asking you to burn yourself out reporting every single spam. Report the ten most recent, or only the porn, or only the 419's, etc. Whatever you can do that IS convienient.

[Miss Betsy]

'Most recent' means the most recent received - say only the ones received in the last two hours. Or as Steven U. suggests just report the last 10 received. Chances are someone else will report the others.

Miss Betsy

[petzl]

MailWasher is becoming outdated as a defence against spammers

For around the price of MailWasher (US$30) you could get a full SpamCop email account which will not only block all spammers, but report them all as well with one, two maybe three clicks of your mouse

SpamCop accurately holds all spam in a Very Easy to Report folder called VER©

Only legitimate mail is downloaded to your inbox from all your existing accounts

SpamCop is the only email address you will ever need

[elind]

Processing  one hundred NEW spam messeges  per day takes me about two hours.  And it is not convenient.

23245[/snapback]

I'm curious and trying to understand this. Why does it take two hours? Why can't you quickly scan the messages to see if there is a real one there? Since the spammers now just use, conveniently, quite specific spam subjects AND random letter sender names it takes me 10 or 15 seconds or less to scan a full screen and quick report them all.

99.99% of the time it's all spam and I think I have only been bleary eyed and missreported about twice in some 14000 submissions.

[Miss Betsy]

I am not sure, but I don't think quick reporting is an automatic option.

Miss Betsy

[AlphaCentauri]

The problem with blocking using the spam Cop blocking list is that so many legitimate users are on Road Runner or Comcast and get blocked when some newbie's computer gets infected with a virus and allows spammers to use it to send spam. Mailwasher will indicate whether the sender is listed (mouse over) but there are false positives. Someone at a university who is getting mail from people they don't know, maybe even from APNIC area users, can't automatically rely on a blocklist.

[elind]

The problem with blocking using the spam Cop blocking list is that so many legitimate users are on Road Runner or Comcast and get blocked when some newbie's computer gets infected with a virus and allows spammers to use it to send spam. Mailwasher will indicate whether the sender is listed (mouse over) but there are false positives. Someone at a university who is getting mail from people they don't know, maybe even from APNIC area users, can't automatically rely on a blocklist.

23883[/snapback]

I see the problem, for some. However it still seems to me that 90+% of spam can be quickly and easily identified from subject or send address (garbled name or otherwise) and the balance forwarded with or without whitelisting.

I also thought that in most cases it's to everyone's advantage if all hijacked PCs are reported consistently. If a real email is missed, won't the sender receive a notification to that effect, and they can then correct and resend if it was important?

Sure it's inconvenient, but it's already inconvenient.

[Merlyn]

The problem with blocking using the spam Cop blocking list is that so many legitimate users are on Road Runner or Comcast and get blocked when some newbie's computer gets infected with a virus and allows spammers to use it to send spam.

23883[/snapback]

That should not be a problem at all because those systems infected are sending mail directly and no one on Road Runner or Comcast should be running a mail server.

[petzl]

The problem with blocking using the spam Cop blocking list is that so many legitimate users are on Road Runner or Comcast and get blocked when some newbie's computer gets infected with a virus and allows spammers to use it to send spam. Mailwasher will indicate whether the sender is listed (mouse over) but there are false positives. Someone at a university who is getting mail from people they don't know, maybe even from APNIC area users, can't automatically rely on a blocklist.

23883[/snapback]

ComCast have claimed they will block port 25 which would effectively stop their spew if they actually did this? (meaning mail would only be allowed through authorised mail servers

SpamCop blocks the IP (computer) that the spew comes from but only when it starts spewing spam and releases that IP when the spew stops

[swingspacers]

ComCast have claimed they will block port 25 which would effectively stop their spew if they actually did this?  (meaning mail would only be allowed through authorised mail servers

23908[/snapback]

The spammers are already catching up. New forms of malware direct hijacked computers to send spam through their ISP's official mail server rather than directly from their own IP. This means that automatic blocklists will soon list the mail servers of Comcast, SBC, and all the other major ISPs. This will reduce the usefulness of these lists for many people.

[Wazoo]

The spammers are already catching up. New forms of malware direct hijacked computers to send spam through their ISP's official mail server rather than directly from their own IP.

Kind of curious where you have developed this factoid from. I don't see it in my spam.

[swingspacers]

Kind of curious where you have developed this factoid from.  I don't see it in my spam.

23915[/snapback]

I have it from cnet, and they claim to have it from SpamHaus. See here:

http://news.com.com/Experts+Zombie+trick+s..._3-5560664.html

[StevenUnderwood]

From that report:

This means the junk mail appears to come from the ISP, making it very hard for an antispam blacklist to block it.

It is no harder for an anti-spam blacklist to list a legitimate ISP server than it is to list an end user machine. More people will complain, but that is what should happen. Until end users are inconvienienced by spam, I am convinced we are in a standoff.

If the spam is comong from that IP, it should be listed and then maybe the ISP's will do something about it. I have thought that all ISP's should have rate limiting of all outgoing messages for quite a while, maybe that will finally come to be.

And the reporter STILL got it wrong in this line:

This will cause serious problems for the e-mail infrastructure, as it is impractical to block mail with domain names from large ISPs.

Blocklists do not use doamin names.

I still think for the normal end user, blocklist (or block all) with whitelisting capabilities is the best way to go.

[AlphaCentauri]

More people will complain, but that is what should happen.  Until end users are inconvienienced by spam, I am convinced we are in a standoff.

Oh, we're real inconvenienced. We just don't know how to deal with it. I mean, if you can't bomb it or buy it, Americans are at a loss for ideas ;-)

[petzl]

The spammers are already catching up. New forms of malware direct hijacked computers to send spam through their ISP's official mail server rather than directly from their own IP. This means that automatic blocklists will soon list the mail servers of Comcast, SBC, and all the other major ISPs. This will reduce the usefulness of these lists for many people.

23914[/snapback]

Not seen any spam through a comcast mail sever yet? For that matter major majority of all Mail servers are so far spam free

SpamCop also uses logic for adding to it's exellent blocklist and knows if spam is from a mail server or not. An ISP would have plenty of warning to do something about a spammer or spam source using their email server

That said SpamCop blocklist still tries to identify the Computers IP that sends the email If the email server is competantly set-up The email server will not be listed by SpamCop. By this I mean as the spam is being sent SpamCop will often in seconds block the very computer trying to send spam (not the email server it is going through)

[colman]

I am not sure, but I don't think quick reporting is an automatic option.

Miss Betsy

23490[/snapback]

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, Quick reporting has to be set up with Spamcop and then Mailwasher Pro requires some adjustment.

After sending an email to Spamcop, the response was:

I've turned quick submit on for your account. Simply change the word in

the address you forward your spam to from "submit" to "quick", i.e.,

quick.your-code[at]spam.spamcop.net.

Problem solved.

Cheers.