Adding mailhost confusion

[PktLoss]

Hi,

I'm currently reporting mail under the 'new' system, where spamcop knows which mailhosts are mine/trustworthy. This works great for all the mail that gets sent directly there.

However, I have an email account with my University, mail that gets sent there is automatically forwarded to an email account on my mail server.

When I ask spamcop to send the "learn a new mailhost" message, it gets sent to the university fine, but never gets forwarded (which is odd), and contains information only pertaining to the university mail server.

How can I teach spamcop about my forwarding settings, and help it learn that the university and my server are both in fact trustworthy.

[Wazoo]

And here I thought yesterday was over ....

Let me very blunt .... there is a whole specific Forum section devoted to the "MailHost Configuration" ... conveniently titled Mailhost System Configuration .. further described as Configure your reporting account(s) with your e-mail host(s) identification

Whereas, the place you chose to post this query is titled SpamCop Reporting Help ...

When one entered (any) of the Forum sections, there is an Announcement that one must scroll past to lok at any existing Topics/Discussions titled Announcement: [How-to] Post a Question .. in which there is a paragragh that reads;

Where to post?

The Forum layout should be pretty self-explanatory when it comes where to post your question. Having problems with a bad parse result? Post in the support topic for SpamCop Reporting Help. Setting up your SpamCop filtered e-mail account confusing? Post in the SpamCop Flat-Rate Email Account Setup support forum. Want some feedback on a Blocklist issue? Try the SpamCop Blocklist Help section. There's a How to Use ... Forum, a place to get geeky, even the Lounge For general / other stuff.

This is not a "personal attack" ... it is simply a moment of pure frustration at the amazing stream of mis-posted items over the last 48 hours .... and yet, not a single one of these specific people have responded with any kind of a meaningful response when asked "what the h*&^ else needs to be done to make the specific Forum section titles and descriptions any more clearer?" This moving posts from one section to the "correct" one is something that should not be a daily/hourly event. Yet ...????

The next level of frustration would be that apparently the FAQ was not researched, that you posted into the wrong forum suggests that all the data in the Pinned entries wasn't seen, all the previous "I have problems" discussions were not even peeked at ....

And all this on top of the recent effort in trying to develop a MailHost Configuration Process Problems FAQ (found at http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5153 .... )

However, I have an email account with my University, mail that gets sent there is automatically forwarded to an email account on my mail server.

When I ask spamcop to send the "learn a new mailhost" message, it gets sent to the university fine, but never gets forwarded (which is odd), and contains information only pertaining to the university mail server.

"never gets forwarded" ....??? is it deleted, does it remain in place, can you "handle" it while there ...????

"only contains data pertaining to the university" .... so what else would it contain?

Does the cut/paste option entry do you any good (or do you know anything about that?) ... I'm moving this to the "correct" Forum ....

[StevenUnderwood]

However, I have an email account with my University, mail that gets sent there is automatically forwarded to an email account on my mail server.

When I ask spamcop to send the "learn a new mailhost" message, it gets sent to the university fine, but never gets forwarded (which is odd), and contains information only pertaining to the university mail server.

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You are saying that spam is being forwarded from your University account to your mail server but the spamcop probe is not? Is ALL email sent from the internet to your University account supposed to be forwarded, or is there some kind of forwarding rule in use.

You should be able to register that message from the University account if you can forward it with headers from there directly or as Wazoo mentioned, use the copy/paste method. As usual, after changing mailhosts, be sure to check the output of all reporting very closely.

[PktLoss]

and yet, not a single one of these specific people have responded with any kind of a meaningful response when asked "what the h*&^ else needs to be done to make the specific Forum section titles and descriptions any more clearer?"

Upon being asked to re-examine the different forums, yes this one looks to be exactly the one I was looking for. The forum title however Mailhost System Configuration reads (to me) like "Mail server configuration", which isn't what it means, or what I was looking for, which is why I passed over it. Its presence underneath the paid services also added to my confusion, I presumed that under some paid services I would do some special mail server configuration. The mail path terminology used in the FAQ makes sense, and if used universally might be more clear.

Yes, obviously if I posted in the wrong forum, I missed the FAQs visible there. Presently there's 14 threads Announced or Pinned, that's a lot.

A -> B -> C

In this example, you need to configure account A completely first, then account B then finally acount C, basically adding a set of received headers at a time to the message. When you configure B, the headers for A are already recognized by the mailhost system.

In my instance it's just A -> B, I've registered B already, I'm working on A. Is the FAQ right? There's discussion about it later in the thread. The A, then B, then C recomendation contridicts this thread: http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4068

Never Gets Forwarded:

The message from the spamcop robot appears fine in the University webmail system, however unlike the messages that come before and after it, it is never forwarded on to my non-university account. I've checked my local spam filter and grep'd maillog, it never gets forwarded. I presumed that spamcop was using some special tag that marked the message as don't foward or something.

Only contains data pertaining to the university:

The email contains (trimmed):

Special codes follow:

################################################################

X-SpamCop-Mx: pmails1.uwindsor.ca.

X-SpamCop-Mh-Name: University%20of%20Windsor

....

################################################################

All the information in that block pertains to the University, however normally emails will hit the university server, then mine. If I set up this email account with the new mailhost configuration stuff, and only tell spamcop about the university server, won't it get confused when the messages I report contain both my mail server and my university mail server in the headers.

Does the cut/paste option entry do you any good (or do you know anything about that?) ... I'm moving this to the "correct" Forum ....

As per above, I wasn't sure if that would do more harm than good.

StevenUnderwood: Yes, all email gets forwarded to me, however for reasons unknown to me (some weird don't forward tag?) the spamcop message does not. Also, as per above, I wasn't sure what would happen if I used the copy/paste method to add the server, since the entire mail path wasn't yet included in the message.

[dbiel]

Thanks for pointing out the error in the FAQ

C is registered first, then B, then A

Even if the message does not get forwarded, using the copy, paste reply method should get it registered. You can then try to re-register it and see if it makes any difference. Doing it in the wrong order does not hurt anything, it just does not always work.

I must admit that it does seem very strange why only that message does not get forwarded.

[StevenUnderwood]

Thanks for pointing out the error in the FAQ 

C is registered first, then B, then A

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I thought I fixed all occuences of that error, but guess not. There was a recent discussion somewhere here on that error that has been around for about 6 months (and I wrote the original ).

PktLoss: Where did you find the version you quoted? The only one other than my (corrected 10/18) post is in the in process FAQ with red text under it stating it needs to be corrected.

[Wazoo]

First of all, thanks for the time/effort spent on your reply. Much appreciated.

Upon being asked to re-examine the different forums, yes this one looks to be exactly the one I was looking for. The forum title however Mailhost System Configuration reads (to me) like "Mail server configuration", which isn't what it means, or what I was looking for, which is why I passed over it. Its presence underneath the paid services also added to my confusion, I presumed that under some paid services I would do some special mail server configuration. The mail path terminology used in the FAQ makes sense, and if used universally might be more clear.

The "mail path" terminology is good, I agree, yet ... Terminology, name, etc, was created by the guy that came up with the concept of SpamCop.net, wrote the code, made it work, made it available, etc. ... kind of hard to tell him just where and how many places he screwed up <g> .... In the attempt to build the recent KnowledgeBase view to the FAQ data, there has beena tremendous amount of e-mail traffic to/from the paid staff to "fix" a lot of things .... not all of them have been, not all of them will be, some have changed in a bit of an unexpected way .... but, this is the type of feedback I'm looking for to help me help all <g>

Yes, obviously if I posted in the wrong forum, I missed the FAQs visible there. Presently there's 14 threads Announced or Pinned, that's a lot.

Thus one of the reasons I wanted to start a new FAQ on the MailHost Configuration process ... It appears that you did look a it, thus should have seen just how easy that task is when the folks "in the know" tell me that there are no FAQ type things ....???? And then you arrive and post a FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) ...

In my instance it's just A -> B, I've registered B already, I'm working on A. Is the FAQ right? There's discussion about it later in the thread. The A, then B, then C recomendation contridicts this thread: http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=4068

As above, and in an attempted explanation (somewhere) that FAQ list in process is being built from existing discussions throughout this Forum .. and you should have seen that ths very item was shallenged by the same guy that originally wrote it (learning curves for all concerned) ... but the important thing to note is that the referenced FAQ entry is far from being ready ... the only reason it's visible now is that one of the paid staff, when asked to look at it and hopefully see that there was a flaw in the "there is no FAQ type data" and then decide to help out ... said that there was an error message when they went to look at the (then) invisible post. Well, it was made "visible" for all, I've continued to plug away on it every now and then, yet .... nothing from the "folks in the know" .... I'll take the hit on any inaccuracies that exist in that item, but again pointing out, it's still under work. Again, feedback appreciated.

Never Gets Forwarded:

The message from the spamcop robot appears fine in the University webmail system, however unlike the messages that come before and after it, it is never forwarded on to my non-university account. I've checked my local spam filter and grep'd maillog, it never gets forwarded. I presumed that spamcop was using some special tag that marked the message as don't foward or something.

The thoughts I had on that were that some stupid filter was in place (see E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP? Updated! ) but also noting that in those examples, the outgoing e-mail disappears due to be deleted/dropped ... thus the questions on whether it was "still there" .... it could still be something along those lines, perhaps stuck on see the word "spam" in that e-mail, thus refusing to touch it ...???? That sounds like an issue with the e-mail server Admin at the university to sort that issue out. No, there is nothing (known) to be hiding in the headers that would somehow convince an e-mal server to do something strange.

StevenUnderwood: Yes, all email gets forwarded to me, however for reasons unknown to me (some weird don't forward tag?) the spamcop message does not. Also, as per above, I wasn't sure what would happen if I used the copy/paste method to add the server, since the entire mail path wasn't yet included in the message.

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The "easy" answer for now would be to work with the data you do have, try the web-form paste-it-in option, then try to parse a spam (that came through that account) via the paste-your-spam-in-the-box (suggest setting Preferences to "show full details) and run the parse, check the results. Then see what needs to happen next ...

If you want to take the credit (or blame) ... yet another Forum layout change was made this morning. It may not be the best way to handle what was intended, may cause yet more bitching/frustration of being yet another thing that no one reads before posting, but .... yet another attempt to make the data available ....????