Reporters can help themselves!

[centaur]

I understand why if an email is reported as spam Spamcop does not divulge the recipients email address. But, as in our case, we believe that all of the people receiving a specific email have opted in to receive that email we cannot determine who we should remove from the list.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that there is a clearly visible unsubscribe link on the email and someone obviouslly can't be bothered to use it. I believe it is the responsibility of both sender and recipient to try and reduce the number of unwanted emails travelling around the WWW and to some extent individuals can help themselves.

Is there any way a recipient can be identified so the email address can be removed?

Please could someone please tell me the criteria for a site being blocked, ie the number of spam emails reported from a single IP address.

[StevenUnderwood]

I understand why if an email is reported as spam Spamcop does not divulge the recipients email address. But, as in our case, we believe that all of the people receiving a specific email have opted in to receive that email we cannot determine who we should remove from the list.

You just answered your own question. Listwashing is NEVER an apppropriate response to a spam report.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that there is a clearly visible unsubscribe link on the email and someone obviouslly can't be bothered to use it. I believe it is the responsibility of both sender and recipient to try and reduce the number of unwanted emails travelling around the WWW and to some extent individuals can help themselves.

People are urged never to un-subscribe from something they did not subscribe to in the first place. And spam is not defined by the content of the message but rather by the consent granted by the recipient to receive the message.

If you have a closed loop confirmation system, and will be able to prove that the reporter that owns the address indeed signed up for your list, then reply to the report as indicated in the link or contact the deputies. Depending on the severity of the case, reporters will get between a warning and removal of reporting privliges. I have gotten a few warnings, mostly for things that slipped by.

[centaur]

You just answered your own question. Listwashing is NEVER an apppropriate response to a spam report.

People are urged never to un-subscribe from something they did not subscribe to in the first place. And spam is not defined by the content of the message but rather by the consent granted by the recipient to receive the message.

If you have a closed loop confirmation system, and will be able to prove that the reporter that owns the address indeed signed up for your list, then reply to the report as indicated in the link or contact the deputies. Depending on the severity of the case, reporters will get between a warning and removal of reporting privliges. I have gotten a few warnings, mostly for things that slipped by.

Thanks for the advice. In your opinion does the email asking a recipient to verify that they wish to continue receiving an email using closed loop confirmation constitute spam itself?

[StevenUnderwood]

Thanks for the advice. In your opinion does the email asking a recipient to verify that they wish to continue receiving an email using closed loop confirmation constitute spam itself?

I'm not sure how to answer that, probably because of the wording you used. Your case may be different and I can not answer without more facts, like describing your closed-loop confirmation system and exactly when this particular message was sent.

1.Closed loop confirmation would be employed only at the original registration of an email account to a specific list and the address would not get added to the list until the confirmation were received. While it could be be reported if someone other than the address owner received it, there should not be enough of these messages reported to cause a listing unless something is drastically wrong with your procedures. A listing occurs only after a specific percentage of spam/legit email is seen coming from your server. Personally, I tend not report these types of messages through spamcop, preferring to report directly to the list owner of the possible use of their signup to attack third parties using their system.

2.An email to your existing list (as long as that list was originally generated using the closed loop system above) confrming they wish to continue receiving from the list, should not be reported as spam.

[Wazoo]

I understand why if an email is reported as spam Spamcop does not divulge the recipients email address. But, as in our case, we believe that all of the people receiving a specific email have opted in to receive that email we cannot determine who we should remove from the list.

You are describing a routine known as "listwashing" .... yes, the action makes perfect sense if the background is that the recipient did in fact 'subscribe' in the first place. Beyond that, if a SpamCop.net reporter did in fact subscribe and then chose to report the incoming as spam, there are ramifications for that bad reporting .... suspension, fines, banning .... However, spammers have taken so many liberties with the "you have subscribed to this opt-in list simply by having an e-mail address" (as the extreme desciption) ...

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that there is a clearly visible unsubscribe link on the email and someone obviouslly can't be bothered to use it. I believe it is the responsibility of both sender and recipient to try and reduce the number of unwanted emails travelling around the WWW and to some extent individuals can help themselves.

Sure, providing an unsubscribe link is a nice thing to do .... yet this doesn't actually address the "did the recipient actually subscribe" part of the equation. For instance, is the e-mail you send to joe[at]invalid.net actually going to the same joe[at]invalid.net that originally signed up for the e-mail? .... Or is it going to the "new" joe that was so amazed to find out that no one had used "joe" before ... when in actuality the last "joe" had abandoned that account due to receiving too much spam ...????

Is there any way a recipient can be identified so the email address can be removed?

The "report" has a link available such that the recipient can 'reply' to the user (actually sent back to the SpamCop.net Reporting system, then forwarded to the person that made the Report) so one could pose the question to the Reporter. Be advised that this is also a path/tool that has been abused in the past by "those that do not spam" .... and in fact, replies made via this way are actually so rare, that some users get excited by receiving one of these e-mails, usually asking how the spammer tracked them down ....

Please could someone please tell me the criteria for a site being blocked, ie the number of spam emails reported from a single IP address.

You are now asking for data on the SpamCopDNSBL, which has its own Forum section .... there is a Pinned entry there, also found in the SpamCop FAQ (links at the top of this very page) ... look for entries titled;

Why am I Blocked?

What is on the list?

It is not a 'number' .. rather than a ratio of 'reported' stuff as compared to 'seen' traffic from the specific IP address.

[Telarin]

Hi centaur, thanks for taking the time to try to be part of the solution to spam. If you received a report of spam with a munged email address, you should still have been provided at least partial headers. Using the partial MessageID, it should be a trivial matter for your mail server admin to search the logs and find the message that was reported. From there, you can either simply remove that individual, or report them to the deputies if you have good proof that they did indeed subscribe. Usually the following is what they would look for:

Date/Time of Subscription

IP address subscribed from

Website where they entered their email address

A copy of the subscription confirmation email

Date/Time that they confirmed the subscription

IP address that they confirmed the subscription from

Most decent subscription systems should maintain this information as standard practice, so once you pull the email address from your server logs, it shouldn't be too difficult to look up.