Is spamcop useless?

[Miss Betsy]

Miss Betsy

The big advantage of blocklists that reject at the server level with a code message is that the sender gets a bounce message saying that hir email didn't go thru and why. Any other sort of filtering does not tell the sender why hir email didn't make it.

depauw

Personally my system handles enough traffic without having to increase my bandwidth useage to include telling people I deleted there junk becouse it was spam.

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=140&st=0 is a better answer than I can give on the costs of spam. The way I understand it is that if you reject it at the server, it doesn't cost as much as accepting it and determining if it is spam.

However, my ISP said that it would cost them too much to upgrade the servers that connect to the internet to reject there.

Since I am not a server admin, I really can't comment on whether it is really cost effective to reject spam rather than accept it and then delete it.

Like you said the return addresses are usually spoofed or inocent servers misconfigured to relay.

Yes, it is really, really bad to send an email to the return path of a spam because they are usually forged. Unfortunately, if you accept the spam, then you have to parse it the way spamcop does to find out if it is an "innocent" (I prefer incompetent though people do make mistakes so that may be unfair) proxy or relay. IME, most people who are the unwitting cause of causing other people inconvenience are usually most grateful to be told that so that they can fix it. Often people have expressed the same sentiment when they discover they have an open relay, open proxy, or compromised machine on their network thru a spamcop report. And if you have accepted the spam, it is too labor intensive (unless you use spamcop) to do that. It is sort of like being such an inattentive driver that you can't stop safely to help someone with a flat tire because you see it too late.

Miss Betsy

Many ISP's do have virus filtering in place. There is no need to ban attachments. Occasionally, one gets thru before the av is updated so customers need to be diligent anyway.

dePauw

Heh maybe I need to come live in your neck of the woods becouse I cannot name one in this state that does. Well maybe AOL but I beleive that handle that client side with the software they provide.

I don't have virus filtering provided by my ISP, but I am envious of those who do.

Miss Betsy

Then you need additional training in how to communicate. Any person with any intelligence at all can understand that the *sender* is responsible for choosing a reliable email carrier and that, like other methods of communication, there are occasional interruptions of service.

dePauw

Hold the phone here. It does not matter who sends it once it reaches my server and my settings mark it as spam and it puts in a folder with 100 other spam messages and they miss a productions report it's my fault no matter how you cut the cake.

Didn't you say before that you didn't want to "censor" email for someone else? If you accept spam, then of course, you are responsible for sorting it and if you miss something, it is your fault. But if you refuse to accept email from irresponsible servers, then it is not your fault. My favorite way of explaining it: If someone sent you a package by offline carrier and when it arrived, the carrier insisted that you also accept several dirty, greasy packages crawling with bugs, would you? If the sender heard about it, would he be mad at you for not accepting it? No, he would be horrified and would find another way to send the package and complain about the bad service.

I can understand some businesses wanting to accept any email that comes to a sales address, for instance, or a support address so that they do not miss a customer. Then it is worth the labor to be sure that there are no false positives.

But production schedules? They surely should be using a white hat server and if there is a glitch (which happens), then they should be aware that they can send it another way. Do I get all bent out of shape when computers go down at the bank or the store and I have to wait or help the clerk add my purchases up by hand? I may not be happy, but that's life and I don't stop using that store because their computer went down.

dePauw

My bosses hired me (a techie by education, training, experance, and sure love of it) to make that kind of decision for the company becouse they do not know or do not want to know about the subject. It's my call.

Then you should tell them what the limitations of email are and what being a good netizen is.

depauw

You are impling that I have no way of blocking spam but to use blacklist personally I beleive we get a good 80%+ of it all spam with 100% of the real mail getting though. Which in my case is better then 99% of the spam getting caught with a 1% margin of error.

As I said, I can understand that for sales and support companies. However, JHD (just hit delete) and any filters for accepted email is just automated JHD, is not going to solve the spam problem. It may make the filter developers rich. And it is slowly changing the face of the internet from the wide open spaces to gated communities. And I wonder about 100% of the real mail. I know I have deleted real emails thinking they were spam particularly if they were in the middle of a bunch of spam. Perhaps you never make a mistake, but what about those ignorant people you forward the spam to? And how do they find out that a mistake has been made? Not by a return email that alerts the sender to a problem and which he can fix easily, but when that mistake has created its own problem.

This is a debate - not an attack on your personal decisions. I find the development of Internet culture fascinating and I am willing to listen to the "other" side.

Miss Betsy

[yourbuddy]

One view from "the other side" ...

SpamCop are like little old ladies peeking out from behind their window blinds,

(the reporters and moles) and reporting everything secretly to the Police (spam

Cops), who will then put the whole neighborhod in jail (backlist a whole ISP) and

refuse to say who the secret informant (mole) is, or provide copies of evidence.

Mass paranoia over what can be handled by rational individuals.

[Miss Betsy]

I am not so sure I approve of "mole" reporting though, since most ISP's are now clearly on one side of the fence or the other, it does make sense.

However, spamcop still does not put anyone "in jail" Although an ISP may not receive a spamcop report and receives "notification" by complaints from users not being able to email certain people, a responsible ISP can still get to the bottom of the problem fairly quickly. And the *sender's* ISP is the only one who can. SpamCop can't, the reporter (the person who is receiving spam) can't, the recipient who doesn't get an email can't. An innocent sender has several choices of ways to contact the person he wants to contact. He knows immediately that his email has not gone through whereas if it is caught by a content filter, he may not know until the lack of email becomes a real problem.

IMHO, a known whitehat ISP, should get credit and age off the bl faster, but if people were serious about fighting spam, they would not get so huffy about delays caused by trying to stop spam. What did people think about those who refused to "inconvenience" themselves by using blackout curtains? Selfish, inconsiderate, endangering their neighbors.

And what is your solution? What is the rational solution? And Just Hit Delete is not rational.

Miss Betsy

[turetzsr]

Miss Betsy,

...Please don't feed the trolls!

[Miss Betsy]

Hey, anything goes in this forum! except profanity and nasty personal attacks.

And yourbuddy has not interfered too much with the help forum - that's trollish -since it was explained to him - . True, he hasn't given very many real arguments, but maybe we(tinw) have not given him enough encouragement to explain his side.

dePauw has a different point of view - one that is common among ISP's. It should be an interesting debate.

Miss Betsy

[turetzsr]

Hi, Miss Betsy,

Hey, anything goes in this forum!  except profanity and nasty personal attacks.

And yourbuddy has not interfered too much with the help forum - that's trollish -since it was explained to him - .  True, he hasn't given very many real arguments, but maybe we(tinw) have not given him enough encouragement to explain his side.

...yourbuddy is more than welcome, IMHO, to post anything (s)he wants here. But (s)he has shown a predilection towards unfounded accusations against SpamCop.Net without making any apparent effort to understand what is really happening. And it gets worse, rather than better, with each of our replies.

dePauw has a different point of view - one that is common among ISP's.  It should be an interesting debate.

...DePauw is a totally different personality and seems to be engaging in a dialog as opposed to simply trying to aggravate us for the fun of it....

[yourbuddy]

Possibly the reason you see it as "aggravation" is because it's "reason"

You have the right to be "aggravated", when you realize the extensive

damage done to innocent email senders - by the actions of SpamCop.

spam can very conveniently be taken care of at the PC level

[WB8TYW]

If a someone in a company is depending on reliable e-mail or they could lose money, or a contract, it is likely that they will lose money and contracts.

The corporate level managers that I know of would be more likely to fire someone who did not get their job done because of an e-mail did not get delivered, then they would to take action against someone operating the spam blocking that may have blocked the message.

E-mail travels in and out of company e-mail systems to the SMTP network of the public internet through "Gateways". Internal e-mail does not go through these gateways.

It the times that I have had to do troubleshooting on company SMTP e-mail problems, these gateways were usually the trouble point. And with the some of them, particulary some on the "cheaper" platforms, the only recovery action was to delete all messages in the queue. To prevent spying/tampering, there was no way to look at these messages to determine who they were going to, or what their content was. We could notify the local sender that the loss occurred, but when the failure happened at night, they would not get the failure message until the next business day.

And that is just one point of SMTP e-mail failures. SMTP E-mail delivery can fail silently at any relay point or gateway. And while SMTP e-mail tries to achieve timely delivery or notice of non-delivery, there is no guarantee of a notice. And it can take days for the notice of non-delivery to reach the sender.

All of that means that if an e-mail is important and does not arived, it needs to be followed up on by other means.

In separating the spam from the ham, it is a matter of risk assessment.

Doing nothing has risks of the real mail getting lost in the spam.

Content filters can be effective for a limited amount of people, but the more people that share one, the more errors it will make. And if it is accurate most of the time, it is more likely that when it accidently catches a real e-mail by mistake, that message will be lost.

And if you are large enough in your network connection, then what you are paying a metered rate for it, and the amount of spam let in can show up in the buget if it was broken out separately, as does the extra mail server capacity to deal with it.

So you look at the risks and benefits:

Do nothing. Most costly, and most error prone method.

Try to filter on content. Even more costly, and not really that much better on errors in the long term on any mail server I have seen that is doing this.

Lets look at some stats for today from a real ISP from analyis of their e-mail.

http://abuse.easynet.nl/spamstats.html

The majority of spamj is blocked by using a DYNAMIC host blocking list. This does have risks, because some networks will change their allocations, or make their static I.P. addresses look like dynamic. So while this will block the majority of spam, you might get a few rejects of real e-mail. How many depends on company.

But many mail servers are using the SORBS list, and are reporting a very low false positive rate, potentially lower than the error rate from either manual deletions or content filtering. And you can "whitelist" when you find someone is improperly listed until their ISP gets things straigtened out. There is also the commercial MAPS-DUL list, but that list seems to be missing many of the major spam producing dynamic pools.

In the various forums where the SORBS list (or it's former easynet version) has been mentioned, I have seen less than a dozen public reports of a erroneous listings. SORBS has apparently implemented a less stringent delisting procedure than easynet has. If the owner of the listed server can show an rDNS entry pointing to their domain name, they are willing to delist. According to recent posts on news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail and/or .blocklisting SORBS is currently running about an 8 week backlog on requests.

But keep reading....

The next source of spam coming in is Open Proxies. And open proxy is guaranteed to send you spam. It might also be a real mail server, but the odds are highly against this.

The open proxy lists generally do a test, but the delisting procedure varies. While it is not obvious, the cbl.abuseat.org is primarily listing open proxies.

Most of the DHCP hits are from known or unknown open proxies, so the stats at the link would probably show the first OpenProxy list check rejecting the most spam.

Next is insecure server list for dsbl.org. It appears to list servers that failed a relay test, so these are some sort of open relay, or possible multihop relay.

Then comes mail from non-existant domains as a spam source. I am not sure of that check, it seems to indicate that the domain the sending mail claimed to come from does not exist. That could catch a few real mail servers.

After that come the viruses in delivery attempts.

After that come the sbl.spamhaus.org. Widely used. Generally takes pains to only list the I.P. addresses controlled by spammers. But will on rare occasion list the main mail servers of a povider that is allowing excessive abuse.

And then, the open relay lists: Way in last place for rejecting spam. While spammers will use them when they find them, it is clearly open proxies that are their choice.

An open relay will still tell where it got the spam from, an open proxy will not.

And the bottom line, on this days statistics at the time this is being typed, there have been well over 75% of the incoming e-mail is either separated as spam from real e-mail.

And this is not applying an aggressive list like spamcop.net, which might provide better protection, with of course the higher risk of catching a real e-mail.

In comparing those public stats with the private stats that I am aware of, it confirms that the open proxy lists are stopping the most spam. If the spamcop.net list is applied as a final check, it only seems to stop less than 10 % of the spam the other blocks let through at best.

Now one of my mail server operators has to pay at least $2,300 U.S. per month for just the e-mails that they accept for delivery. They run a very aggressive blocking strategy, one that they admit will occasionally cause a false positive to keep the service on budget. If they were to pass all the e-mail through for the end user to filter, or even to content filter it, it would cost them 4 times as much, assuming that they did not have to upgrade the mail servers.

In 7 years that I have had most of my e-mail sent through them, they have rejected less real e-mail than I can count on one hand, and most of that from when they added a content filter after the DNSbls last January and it was in the early training stages.

On the other hand, my broadband ISPs have rejected incoming e-mail to me on several occassions with 5xx codes which told the sender that my e-mail address did not exist.

The more a mail server depends on content filtering, the more complaints I see from the users about spam leakage and lost e-mail, and complete outages of the mail server.

I see the least complaints about spam and lost e-mail from the mail servers that use agressive spam blocking, and they seem to have the highest availabilty.

One risk of the public DNSbls, is sometimes they dissapear with out warning, or with a bang, like Osirusoft did, listing everything.

But anything you do with e-mail is going to involve risks and costs, and you have to personally balance the risks and the benefits.

And unfortunately, many people will not stop spam coming out of their server/network, or even believe the reports in their abuse mail box are real until they find that no one is accepting their e-mail.

In most of the cases where I have looked up that someone was told by their ISP that the spamcop.net listing came unexpectedly, it turns out that the designated abuse address for that ISP had been sent complaints for at least a week before the block kicked in.

There are cases where it happened faster with a smaller mail server, but for most residential ISP's mail servers, it really takes a large quantity of spam reports to get listed.

Dnsbls seem to be the main tool in spam fighting because they are cost effective and they scale well, and errors in them are visible for correction, one way or another.

If a DNSbl does not provide what it claims to, then it will quickly fall out of favor.

From watching e-mail from servers using different spam filtering methods, the errror rate of the popular DNSbls appears to be lower than the error rate of "natural causes" of e-mail failures, and with a good choice in them removing the bulk of the spam, it can reduce the rate of "natural cause" failures to the point that the resulting system is more reliable.

For another view see: http://www.spews.org.

-John

Personal Opinion Only

[yourbuddy]

Wow John, that is extensive - thanks

We use K9 at the PC level, it uses Bayes Filtering and also allows use of

a DNS blackhole list (we use sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org), and this takes care of

over 99% of our spam (with false positives and false negatives that can be

corrected - if ever needed - by the specific PC user). It's much better than

the damage caused by SpamCop listing (perhaps mistakenly) whole ISP.

Our ISP was using SpamCop and, after being incorrectly blacklisted by

SpamCop, stoped using SpamCop - and encourages other ISP to do the

same. The main problems with SpamCop is that it is too "proactive" and

uses information from "dubious" sources, with information and sources

kept "secret" - so that it's difficult or impossible to face the "accusers".

If you must use a DNSbl, use Spamhaus - they are used by Government,

Military, large ISPs and Corporations - and perform in a careful manner.

[turetzsr]

Wow John, that is extensive - thanks 

<snip>

... You're making me start to reconsider all the nasty things I said about you in an earlier reply!

[Miss Betsy]

There are problems with the spamcop blocklist - Julian does try to keep reporters accurate, but spamcop the way it is now is too geeky for the average end user.

There are two things about spamcop, however, that are really good. It is automated and impartial. And it tells people there really *is* something that can be done about spam.

There is a theory about the "tipping point" - that there is a point where opinion shifts when enough people know about a particular opinion and agree with it. IMHO, a lot of the problem in controlling spam is because ISP's try to do it all by themselves. They need to involve their customers in supporting the use of blocklists and promoting the idea that it is the *sender* who is responsible for choosing a reliable email service. They need to raise consumer consciousness about the use of blocklists and do comparison shopping among ISP's who use different ones.

Since the internet is run by etiquette, the solutions for problems are probably found in the etiquette books. The "cut direct" is etiquette's solution for those who contravene society's standards. Blocking (rejecting at the server) is the internet equivalent. After acceptance filtering is like the butler and is useful also, but doesn't prevent anything the way blocking does.

Now that most ISP's are clearly white hat or black hat, IMHO, the focus of rejecting should be on incompetence and irresponsibility rather than spamming. Open proxies and compromised machines are not "innocent" any more. And mistakes do happen. So people need to be aware and be able to judge whether this is just one of those things that happen or whether it is incompetence or irresponsibility.

Miss Betsy

[StevenUnderwood]

It's much better than the damage caused by SpamCop listing (perhaps mistakenly) whole ISP.

The more I read your posts, the more I think you are complaining about another list. Spamcop does not list a whole ISP unless all outgoing messages from that ISP go through the same server and that server is listed. It lists ONLY the IP addresses of individual servers that have been reported (by people or spamtraps). It does not expand listings due non-action, though that has been requested in the past.

Also, if administrators use the list as it is stated on the site, it will not be used for blocking but for diverting to a held mail area (with false positives and false negatives that can be corrected - if ever needed - by the specific PC user) just as your configuration is. This is what the list was created for. This is how it is used in many cases (including SpamCop's own system).

Any DNS BL has the same limitations if an address is listed.

SpamCop clearly states that it is more aggressive than most lists, but it is also more responsive once the reports stop. If the administrator blocks on the list, it is their decision.

Blocking at the PC level, to me, is the most inefficient use of all resources, especially for a company. The message has already traveled the entire route, incurring costs to someone at each step of the trip. It has required extra storage space at every step of the trip. That software needs to be purchased for each installation. It requires extra computing cycles to run that software, needing stronger computers on every desktop, again costing money. It is much better, in my opinion, to stop the flow further upstream, where it is more centralized, but still under the control of the end user.

[WB8TYW]

If you have either a small operation, or have money to burn, you can accept all e-mail and tag it, or let the end user deal with it. But from what I have seen, that seems to cause more collateral damage than rejecting what you know is spam.

But otherwise it may be a choice between effective spam blocking or laying off an employee, or otherwise severely curtail an operation.

Consumer broadband is only cheap because the ISP knows statistically most people will not use more than a small fraction of the bandwidth that they are purchasing at a higher rate.

When the total broadband use for an ISP approaches their cost, they must either raise rates, or impose caps on their users, or take a loss.

If I were doing spam blocking for a mail server and the software available permitted it, I would be using a local block list first, the spamhaus.org next, and then open relay and open proxy lists. I would consider using the MAPS listings, but would be watching them to see how effective they are. Those spams would be immediately rejected before they went into the mail server.

Then I would check for rDNS failures. The RFCs require the rDNS to match, but many real mail servers are mis-configured. If the rDNS fails a match, and the I.P. address is listed in either spamcop.net or the SORBS DUL list, then the probability of spam is overwhelming and it would be rejected.

Many mail servers reject on rDNS failures alone.

This would probably take care of the bulk of the spam, based on the statistics that I have seen. And I have not even looked at anything subjective.

At this point the SMTP transcation could be allowed to start, and the amount of spam should leakage should be small enough that it should not impact the budget too badly.

Now after the mail server receives the body but before the SMTP transaction is complete, you can still terminate with a rejection code if you do not think it is deliverable.

Here is where you scan for viruses and issue the rejects, or otherwise check for content. Viruses would cause a notice to the abuse address of the sending I.P. if one can be determined. No more than one virus report per I.P. address would be sent per day.

Also to reject broken auto responders when they start bouncing spam / viruses or sending useless virus reports. Those will be rejected so that the abusive host is spamming their own mailboxes until their owner decides to fix them.

If the I.P. address was listed in spamcop.net or in the SORBS DUL, there is a high probability of spam, or if the rDNS is bad, the same thing. In those cases to try to avoid rejecting a real e-mail, I would do an elementary check.

I would search for links in the mail and resolve them to their I.P. addresses. If the I.P. addresses resoved to I.P. addresses that are listed in any of the DNSbls that mail is rejected from. Game over.

I would also consider rejecting e-mail with URLs that do not resolve under these conditions. Again, only if the sending I.P. was already suspicious.

None of those extra checks would be done on I.P. addresses that were not flagged as suspicious.

I would also have a procedure where end users could register what mailing lists and other senders that they expect to receive e-mail from to be put in a white-list to be exempted from other spam blocks.

And an e-mail address to report what spam/virus got through. The I.P. address the spam/virus got through would be flagged to be treated as suspicious by the mail server. until a manual check.

The reject text would have a link to a web page explaining the error codes and what they mean, and who the problem should be reported for, and provide alternate means of contacting the company.

I would expect the error rate of this to be extremely low on rejecting real e-mails, but to occasionally let a 419 or stock pump and dump spam through. And the I.P. sending those would be put on a local block list until a local user requests it to be removed.

And I would let the users know what blocks are in place, and provide statistics on what they are doing, and internally show the cost savings for the budget.

SpamAssasin does not yet have the filtering capability that I would use to check spam links, but there reportably is a project to add it.

And if the statistics show that spamcop.net flagged spam was leaking through the content checks, I would consider rejecting spamcop flagged I.P. addresses with 4xx codes. If it is a real mail server it will likely be delisted before the retry count is exceeded, and if it is urgent, the sender will get notified if possible that their e-mail is being delayed.

-John

Personal Opinion Only

[yourbuddy]

On one of my trips around "the internet", I can't remember where

(perhaps on the Microsoft website), Microsoft has a proposal that no

email be accepted on the "backbone" unless the server is "clean" and

can be identified. Good old Bill will likely run the system for a fee

[Miss Betsy]

And that's what will happen because other people are f***ing around being individuals.

Maybe in time the internet community will see that there is power in numbers - just as the settlers managed to overcome the control of the large ranch owners.

Miss Betsy

[yourbuddy]

Oh my!, "Miss Manners" ...

Disguised profanity and tacit approval of vigilante death squads.

You really do belong in the SpamCop "gang".

No further discussion with irrational "people".

[Miss Betsy]

I don't see that I "approved" of vigilantes. Some people joining together in a co-op to know who not to open the door to is not being a vigilante. Vigilantes are ones who fight fire with fire with unethical attacks.

But maybe you would rather pay Bill Gates a fee than join a co-op. And have little butterflies float around in every email we open.

(My husband, who is not interested in learning how email works, has gotten annoyed because, since I have the email set to read in plain text, the ones with background and pretty pictures and HTML, have several files showing. When I explained to him how it worked and showed him what it looked like, he grumbled about people who had to make things "pretty" I am concerned that soon we won't have that option either because we will have to have the butterflies to keep our email safe.)

Miss Betsy

PS I did not disguise "profanity" which is to take the name of God in vain. However, some people are offended by what they call obscenties so I didn't spell it out.

[yourbuddy]

I don't see that I "approved" of vigilantes. Some people joining together in a co-op to know who not to open the door to is not being a vigilante.  Vigilantes are ones who fight fire with fire with unethical attacks.

But maybe you would rather pay Bill Gates a fee  than join a co-op.  And have little butterflies float around in every email we open. 

(My husband, who is not interested in learning how email works, has gotten annoyed because, since I have the email set to read in plain text, the ones with background and pretty pictures and HTML, have several files showing.  When I explained to him how it worked and showed him what it looked like, he grumbled about people who had to make things "pretty"  I am concerned that soon we won't have that option either because we will have to have the butterflies to keep our email safe.)

Miss Betsy

PS I did not disguise "profanity" which is to take the name of God in vain.  However, some people are offended by what they call obscenties so I didn't spell it out.

Miss Betsy ...

We are all "gods children", so to use "obscenties" is also "profanity". :angry:

[Miss Betsy]

Actually I think the word I was using is considered a vulgarity, not an obscenity. If I had more time, I would look the definitions up. But it depends on your culture whether those words are a no-no or not - which is why people "bleep" them by typing ***. My mother used to say that the only reason they were considered vulgar is because they had Saxon roots instead of French roots.

And the basic point is that while individuals are JHD'ing, Bill Gates is making plans to corner the market on licensing servers. Then there won't be /real/ conversations with /real/ people when things go wrong, but 'bot replies that don't make sense.

Miss Betsy

[turetzsr]

On one of my trips around "the internet", I can't remember where

(perhaps on the Microsoft website), Microsoft has a proposal that no

email be accepted on the "backbone" unless the server is "clean" and

can be identified. Good old Bill will likely run the system for a fee 

...or maybe: Paying for E-Mail May Be Anti-spam Tactic

[yourbuddy]

On one of my trips around "the internet", I can't remember where

(perhaps on the Microsoft website), Microsoft has a proposal that no

email be accepted on the "backbone" unless the server is "clean" and

can be identified. Good old Bill will likely run the system for a fee 

...or maybe: Paying for E-Mail May Be Anti-spam Tactic

Interesting ...

but the article is paranoid people quoting paranoid people

Anyway, it could only be enforced locally, so for anyone living

other than in the USA - the whole thing would be USAless.

But it's good for a laugh

[turetzsr]

On one of my trips around "the internet", I can't remember where

(perhaps on the Microsoft website), Microsoft has a proposal that no

email be accepted on the "backbone" unless the server is "clean" and

can be identified. Good old Bill will likely run the system for a fee 

...or maybe: Paying for E-Mail May Be Anti-spam Tactic

Interesting ...

but the article is paranoid people quoting paranoid people

Anyway, it could only be enforced locally, so for anyone living

other than in the USA - the whole thing would be USAless.

But it's good for a laugh

...Bingo!

[SeanC]

PS I did not disguise "profanity" which is to take the name of God in vain.  However, some people are offended by what they call obscenties so I didn't spell it out.

Miss Betsy,

I think you are confusing "profanity" with "blasphemy" which is taking God's name in vain.

[dra007]

You have the right to be "aggravated", when you realize the extensive

damage done to innocent email senders - by the actions of SpamCop.

spam can very conveniently be taken care of at the PC level

Not when you get 100s of repeats of the same

p*nis enlargement

spam everyday.

:angry:

It seems to me that a spammer would not benefit a bit by sending the same spew to the same person on a daily basis other then anoy their target....

[Miss Betsy]

It seems to me that a spammer would not benefit a bit by sending the same spew to the same person on a daily basis other then anoy their target....

It is not a deliberate act of annoyance. It is only that sending huge numbers of emails is cheap and the returns only have to be minimal to make a profit. They simply don't care that they are annoying people who don't want their product.

OTOH, the efforts to get past filters seem to me to be attractive to the kind of mind that creates viruses. I sometimes wonder if a lot of spam is not intended to sell anything, but created just to get past filters.

And, while there may be some spammers who are really making a living at spamming (just as there are con men who make a living at doing cons), a lot of the spam are 'wannabe rich' people who fall for a barely legal product. They buy it; try it a few times (several of those times result in blank spam and other peculiar emails), discover that nothing happens and give up. But there are always others who take their place. That is my theory of why there is a lot of spam on weekends.

Miss Betsy