SpamCop reports with no info about a URL

[James Merrill]

When SpamCop's parser finds the URL of an apparently-spamvertised site, it normally reports that it has resolved the domain name to an IP (and gives info about the responsible party) or it says that the domain name cannot be resolved.

I understand the issue that SpamCop has to worry about taking too long to resolve the domain name to an IP, so that sometimes there won't be info about the URL but a re-report could get info about the same URL. (If there were a database-based caching mechanism that's filled in asynchronously by the requests, that might help. But that gets into all sorts of issues about making sure that already-shut-down spamvertised sites don't cause there to be more reports to the responsive ISP who has already taken the correct action to shut down the spamvertised site, while there are lots of still-unread spams advertising it.)

I'm talking about a situation that seems far too common -- the parser sees a URL and is doing the domain name lookup, but there is no result of the lookup. It's not successful in finding the IP (as it doesn't display the result), nor does it report that the name could not be resolved. There's just no info about what's happened, and the report continues as if the name could not be resolved. Here's a sample:

[start sample]

Finding links in message body

Parsing text part

Resolving link obfuscation

http://md-white.com

Please make sure this email IS spam:

[end sample]

In this particular case, as the previous 3 spams I reported this morning were all spamvertising the same site, I knew to click the "report spam" link and re-process the same spam. This time it said

[start sample]

Resolving link obfuscation

http://md-white.com

Host md-white.com (checking ip) = 221.11.133.147

host 221.11.133.147 (getting name) no name

[end sample]

so the report went to the (non-responsive Chinese) responsible ISP.

Is it known what causes this? In pretty much every case I can recall, if I don't Cancel but go back again to the Report spam page and get SpamCop to repeat the parse (as I did here), it displays a result of the lookup. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Wazoo]

Thos was posted into SpamCop Discussion > Discussions & Observations > How to use .... > SpamCop Reporting ..... which wa created and described as;

How to Instructions Only - Problems and issues belong in the other specific Forum sections

Thus moved the post into the Reporting Help Forum. Probably should merge this into one of the many existing Discussions that cover this ground, but ...???

PM sent to at least advise of the move ....

[Wazoo]

There is some PM traffic going on .. user is not being ignored ...