A funny thing?

[Ilgaz]

A funny thing potentially. Why? User got potentially lamely administered ISP mail host so he purchased mail service from spamcop.

Scenario:

1) Lame ISP opens its relay worldwide during software update

2) User, not aware... As a good netizen using the spamcop service reports all spam he gets

3) Lame ISP gets into all the RBL lists you can imagine

4) Next day, poor user tries to send an importmant mail. He gets no response from recipient. Sends again, no response

5) It turns out poor user did evil to himself. He uses his "big" and lamely administered ISP's SMTP and he managed to put it in RBL worldwide.

Sounds fiction? Think again. I am a guy who had to tweak very advanced, undocumented settings of Eudora client since my SMTP advertised the features it doesn't have. Thank god its not open relay.. YET

[Jeff G.]

If that ISP is in the US, or it's mailserver is in the US, you and the FTC may be able to get them to stop advertising falsely.

[DavidT]

2) User, not aware... As a good netizen using the spamcop service reports all spam he gets

Just a moment...are you saying that you accidentally were reporting your own ISP? If yes, then perhaps you haven't used the "Mailhosts" method that SpamCop offers to avoid doing that? Are you reporting all that spam in some sort of "batch" mode, in which you don't check where the reports are going to be sent *before* sending them?

DT

[Wazoo]

This Topic was created by splitting out this portion of something that was originally posted into JeffG's Hotspot Pinned item .. I was not able to figure out the connection, so split the postings out and placed that discussion here.

[Ilgaz]

Hi,

Sorry if my post created confusion, I am not a native english speaker. No, I don't report my ISP but in case I had mail from their relays to my yahoo plus (what a joke) account, I'd of course report them to spamcop.

In this case, as a Spamcop email holder, I'd not be able to send mail as they were blocked from all RBLs.

E.g. imagine, you work at Korea and buy mail from spamcop. You have only Kornet as SMTP option. Got the trick? You became victim of your own reports, can'T send mail

Well, hopely spamcop will provide a smtp service later.

BTW feel free to delete this post if off topic.

Just a moment...are you saying that you accidentally were reporting your own ISP? If yes, then perhaps you haven't used the "Mailhosts" method that SpamCop offers to avoid doing that? Are you reporting all that spam in some sort of "batch" mode, in which you don't check where the reports are going to be sent *before* sending them?

[Wazoo]

Not off topic here at present ... but you may be giving too much 'power' to SpamCop in your scenario suggestions. There is nothing to prevent you from sending any e-mail. Your 'blocking' issue on;y comes into play when attempting to send an e-mail to someone that uses an ISP that has added and configured the SpamCopDNSBL as a mail rejection 'filter' ... This is far from a universal standard.

Your suggested example of Korea/Kornet isn't really a good case due to the years of constant spew coming from their IP blocks. If they were a bit cleaner, and you were to do some self-reporting, one also goes back to the mathematical formula used in generating a SpamCopDNSBL listing/de-listing ..... your "few" reports shouldn't normally be enough to cause a listing to begin with ....

[Miss Betsy]

However, if you were Korean and were studying or working in the US, you might find it difficult to get email from your friends in Korea. Or to correspond with your US friends when you returned.

If you used the spamcop email service, you could whitelist your correspondents - say that email from this person is ok. All the rest of your email from Korea which is spam would go to the Held mail. However, many people do not have correspondents in Korea. Those people don't even want to see any email from Korea because it is always spam.

Also, there are many anti-spam people who can only get broadband from Comcast (who is almost as bad as Kornet). They do not use Comcast for email. They use a webmail like spamcop or some other paid email service to send and receive email.

Miss Betsy

[Ilgaz]

I can't express myself right I guess.

I bought Spamcop mail, OK, I say "I was warned" but not providing SMTP for end users purchasing mail system does NOT sound right to me.

If I liked the service my ISP, naming Kablonet from Turkey, a unjustified monopoly if you want cable in this area, I wouldn't buy spamcop mail.

There is no TLS configured, they are too close to current (closet) fundementalist goverment of Turkey, its a badly configured, mishandled and potentially can be relay to all spammers in next software upgrade without reading the readme. Happened once.

I guess I am clear this time

About the Kornet example. I gave that example on purpose. Currently, if a user is mad about the reputation of their ISP and buys Spamcop mail with a legit credit card, he/she is still bound to that evil ISP's smtp.

So he/she goes and buys overpriced, no features Yahoo / Hotmail.

[StevenUnderwood]

I bought Spamcop mail, OK, I say "I was warned" but not providing SMTP for end users purchasing mail system does NOT sound right to me.

Most webmail systems that I am aware of also do not provide external SMTP. That is really what spamcop is, a filtering service with webmail access. Many of the other filtering services do not provide webmail access.

I'm not saying I would not like if they do provide it. I would find it very useful, especially for my laptop.

There are always alternative SMTP services available. JeffG maintains a list here in the pinned items of the Lounge of such services.

Pinned: Jeff G.'s Hotspot SMTP-Auth Provider Status Report