howtoforge.com — A tutorial on how to fight spam the lazy way. Submit Spam to SpamCop automatically. When Spam Cop receives a certain amount of complaints during a time-period then they will blacklist the dirty spammer. Submit Spam to SpamCop automatically.
May 28, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountMay 29, 2006
Fight Spam? Lazy? I like it!
clumsyninjaMay 29, 2006
I used to submit to spamcop, until I got a gmail account.
geekchicMay 29, 2006
I don't like this idea at all. Far too many people simply "block" email newsletters they have subscribed to as spam rather than unsubscribing to them.You only need a few "lazy" people to do that to end up blocking a company from sending any emails at all.
Closed AccountMay 29, 2006
These people spend so much time setting up zombie machines and sending out your spam. And you're just going to automatically block it and send the report? You unimaginable bastard.
ceralorMay 29, 2006
OK, this is a terrible idea. As many have stated, automatically submitting spam gets a lot of legitimate mail put in there as well!Reported as lame.
calienteMay 30, 2006
thats the lazy way? screw that, I'm using okopipi when it comes out.
tposzJun 28, 2006
From Wikipedia: Additionally, SpamCop automatically lists IP addresses harvested from "spamtrap" email addresses. Since these addresses may be falsely used as a return address on spam messages, replies sent to spam messages (including vacation messages and other auto-replies) can result in an otherwise innocent server being blacklisted. One of the unique features of the SCBL, however, is that a listing expires automatically when no spam is reported from that source for 24 hours.SpamCop notes that "The SCBL is aggressive and often errs on the side of blocking mail... by using this list, you can block a lot of spam, but you also may block or filter wanted email" and suggests using the SCBL as part of a scoring system. Unfortunately many ISPs and IT consultants use the SCBL as a simple screen, often without making it explicit to their clients that valid incoming messages may be (indeed from time to time will almost certainly be) rejected.----This is exactly what is happening to me now with my ISP. They have decided to use SPAMCOP as a service, and someone at my forwarding email's domain has an autoresponder that has been caught in the "spamtrap", so now everytime this happens, for 24 hour periods, my forwarding email domain is blacklisted, and my forwarded email is rejected by my ISP's mail server. They (Astound/Wavecable) stand by their decision to use SPAMCOP as a screen and drop about 30% of my legitimate email on the floor. Who has ideas for how to help me convince the ISP that there is a better alternative? Personally, I think the SPAMCOP actions with these autoresponders are a "bug", but no one answers any queries over there...