Additional notes

[Oriolus]

I'm interested in the question whether it's useful to add information in the box 'Additional notes' with a report, if I see an e-mail address or URL that's made useless by the spammer, but where the spammer suggests to (e.g.) remove the asterisk to get the address working, for instance:

http://www.somesite.*com (copy to your browser's address pane and remove * ).

Because I expect SpamCop cannot recognize this deformed address, I think it useful to supply the URL really meant by the spammer, so:

http://www.somesite.com

Is this a useful piece of information to send as Additional note with my spam report?

A similar question: Is it useful to report in 'Additional notes' that the spammer has forged his/her email to me by pretending it's an answer to an email that I should ever have sent at a particular date, whereas in fact I never sent any mail to the spammer?

[Miss Betsy]

The only use for additional notes is if you think that a whitehat (or totally ignorant) server admin is getting the reports and could use a little help.

If this item is truly spam, there are probably many, many spamcop reports to that abuse desk so the likelihood of any one (unless it is the very first) being read are probably pretty slim.

As for the * URLs, if you want to send a manual report, fine. Otherwise, nobody who gets the report particularly cares what the mangled URL is since no reports are going to the spamvertised website provider. And neither does the spamvertised website provider probably since they are either the spammer or willing to accept spammer money.

Abuse desks have very little time to read anything so IMHO it is a waste of time to add anything to spamcop reports. If you think you have something to tell them, it is much better to send a manual report.

Miss Betsy

[Oriolus]

Abuse desks have very little time to read anything so IMHO it is a waste of time to add anything to spamcop reports. If you think you have something to tell them, it is much better to send a manual report.

Thank you, Miss Betsy,

Do you mean by sending a manual report, sending the information to abuse[at]whats.in.the.SpamCop.report together with the full header and the (source of) the message?

[StevenUnderwood]

I'm interested in the question whether it's useful to add information in the box 'Additional notes' with a report, if I see an e-mail address or URL that's made useless by the spammer, but where the spammer suggests to (e.g.) remove the asterisk to get the address working, for instance:

http://www.somesite.*com (copy to your browser's address pane and remove * ).

Because I expect SpamCop cannot recognize this deformed address, I think it useful to supply the URL really meant by the spammer, so:

http://www.somesite.com

Is this a useful piece of information to send as Additional note with my spam report?

A similar question: Is it useful to report in 'Additional notes' that the spammer has forged his/her email to me by pretending it's an answer to an email that I should ever have sent at a particular date, whereas in fact I never sent any mail to the spammer?

1. This post will be moved out of the How to use section to the reporting section at the conclusion of this post.

2. Your note that http:/ /www.somesite.com is embedded in the spam email is often going to go to the wrong location. It should be the administrator of http:/ /www.somesite.com to get that message because there might be something they can do about shutting down the site. That will require a manual report because the spamcop parser won't find the site and therefore the report address because it is not a valid link (until you do some modification).

3. Most recently, the only times I have used the additional notes section is for some ebay spam I have been getting at my work account and the link reports are going to ebay's administrators. I add the note that the message was sent to an account with no associated ebay account.

[StevenUnderwood]

Do you mean by sending a manual report, sending the information to abuse[at]whats.in.the.SpamCop.report together with the full header and the (source of) the message?

From a PM:

You too refer to a manual report but I don't know what's meant by that. If you would be so kind as to explaining to me what this means, I would be very grateful!

What we mean is to send an email directly to the abuse desk in question with the information rather than using spamcop to do it for you.

Specifically, I would put the corrected (without the * or whatever) link into the parser and it will determine the reporting addresses it would use. Then simply generate your own email to those addresses stating that a link to site X was received inside a spam message and that you want them to take action againt the site. Then include the spam message itself and send it out.

The reason you would do this for these modified links is that spamcop will not see the link in its current form to report and you are prohibited by spamcop's rules from modifying the link in order for the parser to find it. Spamcop will be sending reports only for the actual spam message itself, not the content. Some people believe it is important to report the target of the spams.

I hope this helps. Please continue to ask questions. I am the father of young children, I'm used to lots of questions

[Oriolus]

From a PM:

What we mean is to send an email directly to the abuse desk in question with the information rather than using spamcop to do it for you.

Specifically, I would put the corrected (without the * or whatever) link into the parser and it will determine the reporting addresses it would use. Then simply generate your own email to those addresses stating that a link to site X was received inside a spam message and that you want them to take action againt the site. Then include the spam message itself and send it out.

The reason you would do this for these modified links is that spamcop will not see the link in its current form to report and you are prohibited by spamcop's rules from modifying the link in order for the parser to find it. Spamcop will be sending reports only for the actual spam message itself, not the content. Some people believe it is important to report the target of the spams.

I hope this helps. Please continue to ask questions. I am the father of young children, I'm used to lots of questions

Thank you, StevenUnderwood,

I nearly understand everything you explain to me. Where I'm puzzled is where you say:

Then simply generate your own email to those addresses ... Then include the spam message itself and send it out.

Do I 'pick up' something (what exactly?) out of the parser's results and paste that into an ordinary mail to the addresses which have a checked box in the parser's report? (And then, I presume, I should cancel the sending of the report to SpamCop?)

[StevenUnderwood]

Thank you, StevenUnderwood,

I nearly understand everything you explain to me. Where I'm puzzled is where you say:

Do I 'pick up' something (what exactly?) out of the parser's results and paste that into an ordinary mail to the addresses which have a checked box in the parser's report? (And then, I presume, I should cancel the sending of the report to SpamCop?)

If you open the reporting page at http://www.spamcop.net and enter simply the URL you are trying to report, it will return a list of addresses that spamcop would use to report that site. You can do the same with an IP address if you are looking at the source of spam.

If you are using this "single line" method, spamcop does not generate a report to cancel.

[Wazoo]

I nearly understand everything you explain to me. Where I'm puzzled is where you say:

Do I 'pick up' something (what exactly?) out of the parser's results and paste that into an ordinary mail to the addresses which have a checked box in the parser's report? (And then, I presume, I should cancel the sending of the report to SpamCop?)

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