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Missing submit messages


funinatl

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For a few weeks now, only a few spam reports were being sent through Comcast, but I am happy to report that I am now getting every single spam report sent through. Not sure what did it though:

* A few days ago, I talked to a Comcast rep and he forwarded the matter to a tech (he claimed Comcast never blocks email from being sent, but I insisted he forward our conversation to a tech. No idea if he actually did.)

* About two days ago, I set up a specific mailhost (comcast mailhost) through the new Spamcop system. That might have helped if spamcop actually rejected emails (sometimes) as well as comcast (if Comcast did sometimes send them through).

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* About two days ago, I set up a specific mailhost (comcast mailhost) through the new Spamcop system. That might have helped if spamcop actually rejected emails (sometimes) as well as comcast (if Comcast did sometimes send them through).

If you are talking about the MailHost Configuration of your Reporting Account, there is no connection to the handling of your e-mail submittals. This MailHost Configuration data is only used by the 'parsing system' itself, which is 'long' after your e-mail submittal would have been 'accepted' by the SpamCop.net Parsing & Reporting system.

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If you are talking about the MailHost Configuration of your Reporting Account, there is no connection to the handling of your e-mail submittals. This MailHost Configuration data is only used by the 'parsing system' itself, which is 'long' after your e-mail submittal would have been 'accepted' by the SpamCop.net Parsing & Reporting system.

I've been following this thread with interest, as I have recently been experiencing the same "missing reports" problem here in the UK. Eventually started bcc'ing to a Hotmail account to prove conclusively that the few spam reports that SpamCop saw also went to Hotmail. Any that never reached SpamCop never reached Hotmail either.

I raised a ticket with my SMTP provider (ISP Eclipse) who denied anything had changed to stop my five years of SpamCop reporting in this way. During the past few weeks I have also received a couple of Don's "Bounced Response" verifications, having NEVER received one previously.

I still await advice from my ISP, but note that they proudly advertise that all their email is filtered by Cloudmark & IronPort Reputation Filters. Now there's an interesting fact. Where have I seen that name before ;-)

I have expressed my deep concern to my ISP that they are silently discarding my outgoing emails. I have no way of knowing whether it is only my SpamCop reports that are being hit, or whether other innocent emails are similarly suffering.

Anyone at SC know anyone at Ironport who may have an inside view on this? Can it be that our good work with SpamCop has enabled them to tune their product so well that it now prevents anyone whose ISP uses the Ironport filter to send further reports??

Confused of UK

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but note that they proudly advertise that all their email is filtered by Cloudmark & IronPort Reputation Filters. Now there's an interesting fact. Where have I seen that name before ;-)

I have expressed my deep concern to my ISP that they are silently discarding my outgoing emails. I have no way of knowing whether it is only my SpamCop reports that are being hit, or whether other innocent emails are similarly suffering.

Anyone at SC know anyone at Ironport who may have an inside view on this? Can it be that our good work with SpamCop has enabled them to tune their product so well that it now prevents anyone whose ISP uses the Ironport filter to send further reports??

If you can't find IronPort data elsewhere, there are both links and data provided in the SpamCop FAQ and the SpamCop Wiki .. see the top of this very page.

The primary 'problem' in your confusion is that the IronPort spam 'solutions' are primarily hardware based, using software to make decisions on "incoming" e-mail .... What I recall in researching CloudMark, et' al. in the past is that these tools also are used against "incoming" e-mail. The situation being talked about in this Topic is "outgoing" e-mail.

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so what's to stop his ISP from using Cloudmark and Ironport to filter 'outgoing' mail also?

I would think that Ironport also would offer a 'complete' package since ISPs need both incoming and outgoing filters - though it doesn't seem logical that they wouldn't recognize spamcop and the problems with other ISPs and spamcop messages.

However, since nobody but Don ever shows up in the forum, it is possible that nobody knows it is a problem. Not that Don would not tell them, but that they might not listen.

And, if they don't offer a complete package, then it just shows the limitations of specialists.

Miss Betsy

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so what's to stop his ISP from using Cloudmark and Ironport to filter 'outgoing' mail also?

No idea about CloudMark. IronPort stuff .. I would say way too expensive to throw against this scenario. What data is publically available, trying to play with configuration settings to make their appliances work against outgoing traffic would be an immense headache, if it was actually possible.

I would think that Ironport also would offer a 'complete' package since ISPs need both incoming and outgoing filters - though it doesn't seem logical that they wouldn't recognize spamcop and the problems with other ISPs and spamcop messages.

Recalling that most ISPs I've seen and dealt with already include the 'thou shalt not spam' in their AUPs. The filtering of outgoing is one of those things that really shouldn't be necessary. Then, to take it further, the filtering of outgoing 'customer' e-mails seems to be an extreme over-reaction to those spam e-mail complaints received that actually point back to a compromised "customer's" computer .. the point being that that the actual ISP's e-mail servers were not used to send the objectionable garbage. To sharpen that point, the impact seen in situations like this Topic is a result of using the wrong tools against the wrong target by folks trying to 'do something' .....

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Well, I am glad that filtering outgoing email is not usually necessary - I thought that Comcast, et al were just being clumsy about it, rather than using the wrong tools unnecessarily.

Eclipse have confirmed that they do use "Ironport" and "Cloudmark" (they use the terms interchangeably) for my outgoing mail. That they don't bother to tell their clients that they may have a compromised machine and be spamming unawares, is unforgiveable.

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Eclipse have confirmed that they do use "Ironport" and "Cloudmark" (they use the terms interchangeably) for my outgoing mail.

That "interchangeably" statement/use doesn't sound quite kosher. Cloudmark is a bit of software/database magic .... IronPort requires the use of hardware, proprietary software, proprietary data .. not near the same configuration.

That they don't bother to tell their clients that they may have a compromised machine and be spamming unawares, is unforgiveable.

I have actually only sen this type of action done by two major ISPs, Qwest and Mediacom. The most interesting was the Qwest user's call-for-help .... DSL connection would pull up the Welcome to Qwest page, but wouldn't 'go' anywhere else. Actual identifying data was found when I had her shut down that damnable MSN Explorer crap and try Internet Explorer. This the actually followed the re-direct to the "your computer is really, really, hosed' web-page. The only URLs that would work after seeing that page were Microsoft, Symantec, and Norton .. any other attempted URLS came up 404. (This certainly proved to me just how bad MSN Explorer really is.)

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That "interchangeably" statement/use doesn't sound quite kosher. Cloudmark is a bit of software/database magic .... IronPort requires the use of hardware, proprietary software, proprietary data .. not near the same configuration.

I have actually only sen this type of action done by two major ISPs, Qwest and Mediacom. The most interesting was the Qwest user's call-for-help .... DSL connection would pull up the Welcome to Qwest page, but wouldn't 'go' anywhere else. Actual identifying data was found when I had her shut down that damnable MSN Explorer crap and try Internet Explorer. This the actually followed the re-direct to the "your computer is really, really, hosed' web-page. The only URLs that would work after seeing that page were Microsoft, Symantec, and Norton .. any other attempted URLS came up 404. (This certainly proved to me just how bad MSN Explorer really is.)

I just had a trawl through the Eclipse FAQs and can no longer find any references to Cloudmark. I did find these Q&As though;

Does Eclipse Internet provide spam filtering?

Yes we do. All mail passing through our mail servers is scanned by Eclipse AntiSpam, which is powered by CISCO's IronPort technology.

Will outbound mail be scanned for spam?

Yes we will scan for spam mail messages being sent out via the Eclipse Internet SMTP Server. There are no outgoing "Content" based filters.

How is it possible to monitor what is spam to one person and not to another?

AntiSpam uses both SBRS - Sender Base Reputation Scores and spam filtering or CASE - Content Adaptive spam Engine systems to determine whether an email is valid or spam.

So - if there are no Content based filters on outgoing mail, what is it in the attached spams that is killing my reports? Do I have a low SBRS? doesn't seem so, as all my other emails *apparently* go out OK. Can they mean that SpamCop as a destination has a low SBRS?

- still confused (and not getting any sensible replies from Eclipse).

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Does Eclipse Internet provide spam filtering?

Yes we do. All mail passing through our mail servers is scanned by Eclipse AntiSpam, which is powered by CISCO's IronPort technology.

In my opinion, this description is missing the word "incoming"

Will outbound mail be scanned for spam?

Yes we will scan for spam mail messages being sent out via the Eclipse Internet SMTP Server. There are no outgoing "Content" based filters.

Missing much detail there for sure, when trying to resolve what you are trying to discover.

How is it possible to monitor what is spam to one person and not to another?

That there is "no 'content' checks' on outbound doesn't seem to fly with your experience. It can't be your address or IP address, as that's known data for all your e-mail ... the only thing left to actually check would be 'content' ...

AntiSpam uses both SBRS - Sender Base Reputation Scores and spam filtering or CASE - Content Adaptive spam Engine systems to determine whether an email is valid or spam.

Again, in my opinion, this is talking about 'incoming' e-mail.

So - if there are no Content based filters on outgoing mail, what is it in the attached spams that is killing my reports? Do I have a low SBRS? doesn't seem so, as all my other emails *apparently* go out OK. Can they mean that SpamCop as a destination has a low SBRS?

Yet again, in my opinion, the FAQs don't quite line up with reality. But of course, this isn't all that unusual, noting the same type of discrepancies in the official SpamCop.net FAQ also, which has not quite kept up with all the changes of the tools involved.

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To give credit where due, TrevorB shows up here too, although not as often now as in his earlier, more enthusiastic days.

But he no longer posts. His last post was just before Halloween, and there have been PLENTY of opportunites for him to post since then, but he's gone strangely mute. <_<

DT

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, looks like a temporary non-glitch. After I started receiving spamcop reports, they've died down again, and I'm getting 3 spams a day that don't get reported. :angry:

Comcast hasn't sent me any emails about the issue either. Perhaps it's time to talk to another hapless customer support fool to try to get some answers out of them.

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  • 1 month later...
Well, looks like a temporary non-glitch. After I started receiving spamcop reports, they've died down again, and I'm getting 3 spams a day that don't get reported. :angry:

Comcast hasn't sent me any emails about the issue either. Perhaps it's time to talk to another hapless customer support fool to try to get some answers out of them.

As of today, Jan 14, 2008, I'm still having the problem. None of my messages are making it to Spamcop. But I have tried sending the exact same message (same subject, same body and the blacklistxxxxxx.txt attachment) to hotmail, yahoo, msn and several other acconts. They don't make it to any of them either. Of course, Comcast has repeatedly tried to blow me off. But after a few heated conversations today, I've made it to Exectuive Excalations guy. I think I have his attention and he has someone working on it. He has been able to reproduce the problem by sending one of my Spamcop messages to another email outside Comcast. It didn't make it there either. So we'll see what they come up with this time.

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I thought that if you address your spam sumbission to your SpamCop 'submit' address, and to the Comcast spam reporting address at missed-spam[at]comcast.net at the same time, Comcast would let the email go to us because you are also sending it to them.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

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Noting that this entiire Topic isn't 'just' about a ComCast issue .....

I thought that if you address your spam sumbission to your SpamCop 'submit' address, and to the Comcast spam reporting address

I recall a user making this same suggestion ... however, where that post exists and what ISP was involved, I have no idea. 20 minutes spent trying to guess at a search query against the newsgroup archives and this Forum came up with no specific result that I could then point to.

at missed-spam[at]comcast.net

Interestingly enough, searching for that specific tidbit returns the complaints about the abuse[at]comcast.net inbox being (repeatedly) filled, thusly rejecting any and all further e-mail attempts.

at the same time, Comcast would let the email go to us because you are also sending it to them.

As above, I recall the scenario offered up by someone, but can not find any specifics. Where exactly in the FAQ would I go to find this nugget of information?

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...I recall a user making this same suggestion ... however, where that post exists and what ISP was involved, I have no idea. 20 minutes spent trying to guess at a search query against the newsgroup archives and this Forum came up with no specific result that I could then point to. ...
That was a Cox user (wgtripp) - http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...ost&p=56512

The phrase you needed was "Neat huh?" :D

Alas, it seems not to work with all - not with iinet.net.au last I tried anyway.

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That was a Cox user (wgtripp) - http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...ost&p=56512

The phrase you needed was "Neat huh?" :D

Thanks, yet again. That was the exact Topic/post I had in my mind ... but looking at the post, I can see why none of the search strings I tried to put together found it .... as you suggest, one would have to know exactly what words were in that post to pull it out of the hat.

Now, where to place whatever I might come up with a FAQ/Wiki entry 'here' .. and how to phrase the 'might be a possibility' scenario, rather then the much more desired hard fact ....

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Funinatl, please do tell us what happens, if anything, in a week or so. I'm extremely angry and disappointed that Comcast has such high prices on their service here, has ads plastered all over their webmail system to the point of unrecognizable garbage, can't fix their incoming spam problem, and to top it off they filter outgoing "spam" that their system could have already determined to be spam before we even got it! Fuming mad and looking seriously at Verizon.

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...has ads plastered all over their webmail system to the point of unrecognizable garbage, ...
Totally O/T but sounds like an ideal candidate for the little meme at http://blogs.nimblebrain.net/index.php?blo...p;tb=1&pb=1 - works with IE, don't know what others. Just press the browser "back" button to resume mundane service. Umm ... or temporarily select another page from the page menu or use the browser drop down list to select another site/re-select the webmail site or close the window if you haven't an active back button in your current session.
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Funinatl, please do tell us what happens, if anything, in a week or so. I'm extremely angry and disappointed that Comcast has such high prices on their service here, has ads plastered all over their webmail system to the point of unrecognizable garbage, can't fix their incoming spam problem, and to top it off they filter outgoing "spam" that their system could have already determined to be spam before we even got it! Fuming mad and looking seriously at Verizon.

I'll post it here when they come up with something. I've heard from them a couple times and they're supposedly still working on it. Do I understand that you're having the same problem that I am - not able to send submit emails to spamcop?

I'm curious, are you running Norton Interent Security? If so, what version? Thanks

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