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Why are so many "Viagra" spams getting through


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Posted

Of late, I've been receiving as many as 10-15 spams a day for Viagra, with Viagra included in the subject line. Why are these obvious spams not being trapped? At least most of them end up in Held Mail, but still...

Posted

If you post in the Spamcop email section, there may be more posters who would help you to configure your filters to eliminate these spam appearing in your inbox.

I don't have a spamcop email account so I don't know how to filter specific spam to Held mail, but that's what you want to do by adjusting your choices for filtering. Spamcop email accounts only tag email as spam; they don't block it from entering your account. The ones in Held mail probably are listed on the spamcop blocklist which is used by some to actually block email from those IP addresses.

Miss Betsy

Posted
At least most of them end up in Held Mail, but still...

Is the assumption that ths is a SpamCop.net e-mail account question possibly correct?

If so, a Moderator will be along to move this post/Topic.

If so, or even if not, there is not enough data provided for anyone to try to guess at how your filters are set up, what white/black-listings you've configured, what rules may be in place (or not) ....... a Tracking URL of one in question might help for analysis purposes ..... referral to several other Topics/Discussions in the SpamCop E-Mail Account Forum section may have already addressed some of the issues involved .. noting that the Subject: line would only be a SpamAssassin scoring item if that's even invoked.

Posted

Why are these obvious spams not being trapped? At least most of them end up in Held Mail, but still...

If this is an email account we are talking about, the Held Mail IS the trapped messages.

If not, you are aware that SpamCop reporting alone will do little (nothing?) to stop the flow of spam into your inbox. You need other tools which use the list fed by those reports (and others) to stop spam.

Posted
Of late, I've been receiving as many as 10-15 spams a day for Viagra, with Viagra included in the subject line. Why are these obvious spams not being trapped? At least most of them end up in Held Mail, but still...

As others have pointed out, SpamCop doesn't filter anything for you unless you've set up the (paid) filtering service. I assume for purposes of this reply that this is what you have done.

It is unlikely that 'bare-naked' SpamCop would flag a message as spam simply because it contained the word "Viagra." If you are using the paid filtering service and have opted to use the SpamAssassin filter (which I believe is turned on by default), then this sort of content-based detection is more likely, but still not a sure thing. More likely, SpamAssassin would detect munged spellings of Viagra, or typical spammer circumlocutions involving the word.

Leaving SpamAssassin aside for the moment, SpamCop's primary means of sorting spam from Non-spam is to analyze the message routing data in the header, determining perhaps whether the message has come from addresses that are on one block list or another. Since most spam mail comes from hijacked home computers ('zombies'), it can take a bit of time for such an address to appear on a block list, so some spams will sneak through.

That said, I have to say that very few spams manage to make it past my SpamCop filtering. The few that I do get are not routed through SpamCop (yet). If you can post some more info on how you are using SpamCop, this might help you get a better answer to your question.

-- rick

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Of late, I've been receiving as many as 10-15 spams a day for Viagra, with Viagra included in the subject line. Why are these obvious spams not being trapped? At least most of them end up in Held Mail, but still...

Strange while getting a high number in my held folder none (so far) Pharmaceutical spams are getting through to my inbox? I get the odd one through but only one or two a week SpamCop sorts the rest (I always whitelist any legit email (unless I forget) But SpamCop seems to eerily and accuratly sort them

I do use COMPLAINTERATOR V10 to report sites from my held folder (not all but some) Which I suspect gets me whitelisted

I ony use The only email address you will ever need (petzl[at]spamcop.net) which possibly leads to some auto-whitelisting by spammers. I select all of SpamCop Emails blocks. I have used this email address everywhere including newsgroups since late 80's early 90's and it's still a reliable email address, one which I always use as my main and only contact address.

I also only use SpamCop to send and retrieve email (sending via "smtp.cesmail.net" using port "587" I believe many ISP's gather email address passing through their servers for spammers so avoiding using them is a big plus (SpamCop email servers are VERY fast)

I'm in Sydney Australia and get faster email speeds and much reliability than Australian ISP's provide.

My advice is to never automatically accept an ISP forced upon ones email address A major amount of ISP's are a dis-service completely incompetent with no desire to improve (any ISP that gets their email server listed in our SCBL deserves to be dumped as they would be blatently incompetent

Also try to get people you post to to use my signature (its all freeware and effective) Although for naive windows users simpler to use a programe like Windows OneCare which offers full protection first 90 days free

If you send to a computer accessed by hackers your information (as well as everything on that computer) is then sold to spammers or whatever thug that wants it

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted
Is the assumption that ths is a SpamCop.net e-mail account question possibly correct?

If so, a Moderator will be along to move this post/Topic.

<snip>

...Done.

Archived

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