constant gateway timeouts

[rdgrimes]

For weeks now, every report of more than about 6 held mails will result in a gateway timeout error. When reporting a bunch of mails, I will get the timeout but some of the mails get reported anyway.

Apart from the reporting being VERY slow, this is getting to be more of a hastle than it's worth.

[dhanna]

I have seen a few of these as well. I have yet to notice how many email I have reported when this happens. I do know I have to navigate back to my held mail and sometimes all have been reported and sometimes all but one or two have made it through.

I usually report two to three times a day when I can, hopefully enough to keep my numbers down per batch.

[cats]

For weeks now, every report of more than about 6 held mails will result in a gateway timeout error. When reporting a bunch of mails, I will get the timeout but some of the mails get reported anyway.

Apart from the reporting being VERY slow, this is getting to be more of a hastle than it's worth.

Same here. I have stopped reporting from the Held Mail page because it takes too long. Shoot, it takes too long to even delete the messages so I may start ignoring that, too. It's all I can do to scan the recent held messages for false negatives--very few which is good. Not the most functional system, though.

[StevenUnderwood]

Have any of you tried reporting from the webmail application? I find it very easy with none of the timeouts you are mentioning.

Also, it has been mentioned before that if you have too many messages in your trash folder, it will realy slow down the whole account.

Hope this helps

[dhanna]

Didn't know about the trash tip. I checked and as of tonight I had 396 in my trash. I try and empty trash every time I am in the webmail, but that is maybe once a week.

See, I have it set to retrieve from account A, filter, send to account B. So I only check my held folder a few times a day and never make it to the webmail interface.

Maybe we can get an empty trash link on the held mail page, for people who have email accounts?? Just a thought.

[StevenUnderwood]

Maybe we can get an empty trash link on the held mail page, for people who have email accounts??

I doubt that will happen as JT has stated that all development is being done on reporting from within webmail and that VER would be going away eventually. How long that is, could be anybody's guess.

[rdgrimes]

Webmail isn't really a good solution. I don't really have the time or inclination to log into webmail and navigate the screens there. Reporting needs to be quick and simple, or it isn't worth the trouble. The end result of these problems will be that I don't do anything at all and just let the spam accumulate.

If Spamcop expects people to pay for service, then actually providing service would be a good step.

[StevenUnderwood]

Personally, I find it much quicker than VER.

I have webmail setup to enter my Held Mail folder on login. I then hit the box to checkmark all messages. I scan down making sure they all need to be reported, unchecking those that do not. When I get to the bottom, I hit the Report as spam button and accept. DONE.

I can forward and whitelist any messages that are there incorrectly.

[Jeff G.]

Personally, I find it much quicker than VER.

I have webmail setup to enter my Held Mail folder on login.  I then hit the box to checkmark all messages.  I scan down making sure they all need to be reported, unchecking those that do not.  When I get to the bottom, I hit the Report as spam button and accept.  DONE.

I can forward and whitelist any messages that are there incorrectly.

I do it a little differently. I scan through my Held Mail Folder in Webmail, immediately processing any that aren't spam. When I hit the bottom, I hold Alt, tap K to "Mark All", tap E to highlight "Report as spam", release Alt, tap Enter to activate "Report as spam", and tap Enter again to confirm my intent.

[cats]

I do it a little differently.  I scan through my Held Mail Folder in Webmail, immediately processing any that aren't spam.  When I hit the bottom, I hold Alt, tap K to "Mark All", tap E to highlight "Report as spam", release Alt, tap Enter to activate "Report as spam", and tap Enter again to confirm my intent.

Alt-key does not work on either the Mac or Treo keypads. The webmail system seems quite powerful with lots of options but I'm not really comfortable with its appearance and complexity, that I have to leave my email client to access it, and its clumsiness on a small PDA screen. I appreciate that you are trying to please the majority of users who do not use the Mac or Palm OS. However, a more universal approach would be better IMO.

[StevenUnderwood]

Palm has been mentioned as a problem in the past but I have not heard many complaints from Mac users.

[rdgrimes]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I still don't consider the process of logging into webmail to be an acceptable solution. Guess I'm too lazy.

BTW, I used the webmail to report 55 spams today, and received 55 error messages that SPamcop could not find any spam in the message. DUH!

SpamCop encountered errors while saving spam for processing:

SpamCop could not find your spam message in this email:

[dhanna]

Got one this moring, around GMT 00:20

Had less than 10 in held mail.

Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server

But when I returned to held mail, they were all gone, reported.

[rdgrimes]

I get it all the time, mostly with >10 reports. Also get lots of error messages if I report from the webmail.

[rdgrimes]

Still occurring every day, sometimes 2-3 times in a row. This morning, 4 timeouts in a row, trying to report about 20 spams, with no more than 5 spams getting reported in each session.

[Jeff G.]

webmail system ... I have to leave my email client to access it

As long as your email client is not currently doing anything that would disrupt Webmail (like removing emails within your Held Mail Folder) while you are reporting spam from your Held Mail Folder within your Webmail, you should be able to interoperate between email and Webmail. I interoperate between them on my PC often.

Also, I am typically reporting up to 180 spam emails at a time from my Held Mail Folder using Webmail's "Report as spam" Link.

[cats]

webmail system ... I have to leave my email client to access it

As long as your email client is not currently doing anything that would disrupt Webmail (like removing emails within your Held Mail Folder) while you are reporting spam from your Held Mail Folder within your Webmail, you should be able to interoperate between email and Webmail. I interoperate between them on my PC often.

Also, I am typically reporting up to 180 spam emails at a time from my Held Mail Folder using Webmail's "Report as spam" Link.

The point was that I prefer to use an email client for what it does best--email--and a web browser for what it does. I dislike having to jump back-and-forth between both to handle the email. And I really dislike using webmail.

I tried to report a few hundred spams from the Webmail Held Mail folder and it took over 15 minutes with the slow log on, mail display, reporting, error message, refresh, and repeat a couple of times. And that's with a cable modem. Too much trouble! On the road with a low-speed wireless connection, the Webmail system barely works.

SpamCop looks like a reasonable system for people who want to use it exclusively for modest amounts of mail. For those of us who rely on an email client, spam reporting is inconvenient. Thankfully, SpamCop's default filters produce few false negatives so I do not need to check the Held Mail regularly.

[Jeff G.]

error message, refresh

Please be more specific about these.

and repeat a couple of times

As I mentioned in Selecting and deleting multple held emails, you can "Adjust "Messages per page in the mailbox view" in Webmail's Options / Other Options / Display Options to 1000." 1000 is the maximum.

[StevenUnderwood]

On the road with a low-speed wireless connection, the Webmail system barely works.

I regularly (several times a year) use webmail to report the 100-150 messages I get every day using 24K dialup with no problems like you are describing.

[rdgrimes]

Just wanted to point out that this thread was never about webmail. Webmail is not an option as far as I'm concerned, I will stop using Spamcop before I use webmail. (it's the log-on that I detest) As it is, I'm close to stopping any reporting of any kind, it's just not worth the trouble. I can get webmail and similar filtering services from my ISP, don't need to pay for that here.

[cats]

error message, refresh

Please be more specific about these.

and repeat a couple of times

As I mentioned in Selecting and deleting multple held emails, you can "Adjust "Messages per page in the mailbox view" in Webmail's Options / Other Options / Display Options to 1000." 1000 is the maximum.

I have repeatedly gotten two types of errors, one having to do with message numbers not being recognized and the other with timeouts.

And, yes, I increased the message display count (to 300 I think) and that was marginally better. Webmail is simply not a very sanitary way to handle that volume of mail.

[cats]

On the road with a low-speed wireless connection, the Webmail system barely works.

I regularly (several times a year) use webmail to report the 100-150 messages I get every day using 24K dialup with no problems like you are describing.

In my case it takes several minutes for the mail listing to load. The spam reporting usually times out and requires a refresh. I don't have these kinds of problems with other sites.

[rdgrimes]

4 consecutive timeouts this morning, trying to report about 30 mails. What a completely useless service.

I realize that at Spamcop, customer service is at the borrom of the list of priorities. Your attitude seems to be that customers are not worth bothering with, and NO PROBLEMS ever exist with your service.

Considering that filtering service can be had just about anywhere now days, I see little reason to give Spamcop any money when nothing else but filtering actually works.

[cats]

4 consecutive timeouts this morning, trying to report about 30 mails.

I tried a more robust test. It was suggested I set the WebMail window to 1000 messages (actually, 999 is the upper limit) as I have around 2500 spam in Held Mail. Took about 130 seconds to load--not too bad. However, selecting "all" took something over 7 minutes; I'm not sure exactly how long because I walked away at that point and came back in 10 minutes at which time it was done. I was unsuccessful in 3 attempts to report the spam, each time getting the message: Could not open the page “http://webmail.spamcop.net/horde/imp/mailbox.php” after trying for 60 seconds. Big waste of time.

I notice this on the main SpamCop page:

System slow - update

Several factors are contributing to system slowness in the mornings. Some of the performance problems are still somewhat of a mystery. But we are aware of the issues and we will be working on them until we're satisfied they are under control (or at least explained). Of course we are always looking out for attacks on the service, but our initial investigation does not point in this direction.

So they are at least award of a problem. No solution in sight, though.

[StevenUnderwood]

Your attitude seems to be that customers are not worth bothering with, and NO PROBLEMS ever exist with your service.

I don't know where you get that idea. Have you seen the reporting page recently?

Help improve SpamCop

System slow - update

Small Mailhost Beta

1 item to find out how you feel about the service

1 item telling you about a known problem they areworking on

1 item to imrove reporting and something that many people have been asking for since I signed up 15 months ago.

I will admit that they are not very responsive to requests for improvement but they do hear the requests. They have a lot on their plates keeping the service running and probably should have a larger staff to deal with these things.

Now onto your problem:

4 consecutive timeouts this morning, trying to report about 30 mails. What a completely useless service.

How (exactly) are you trying to report your spam. Which web site you using (there are several different methods). Are you using VER (http://mailsc.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog'>http://mailsc.spamcop.net/reportheld?action=heldlog), webmail (http://webmail.spamcop.net/), or copy/paste submission (http://mailsc.spamcop.net/ or http://www.spamcop.net/)

I personally have reported about 100 messages this morning (sance 8:30 AM EST) through webmail (Report as spam) and experienced no timeouts. I have also submitted 1 message via email that slipped through the filter which has not come back yet, but as seen here (http://alpha.cesmail.net/graphics/spamstats.gif) we are in the middle of that slow period happening each morning described on the submitting page. I expect that submission to arrive around noon time.