Automate Spamcop Submissions

hausmasta writes "Spamcop is pretty much dependent on user input. If no one submits and verifies spam, then they will have no blacklist. However that whole submission and verification process is a bit annoying. Why should I bother to actually submit spam to Spamcop and have it verified? If I just delete it, that will take less time.. This tutorial shows how to automate the Spam Cop submission and verification process. All I do is just put the spam into certain folders and our good old friend cron does the rest."

Re:NO NO NO

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

The key words to me were "where you put all your spam into." I read this as meaning that a human, not a script, would be filling the folder. Unless the Spamfolder is populated automatically, this process could be compliant, and I could certainly have missed something, but I don't see where he says he's doing that. In any case, someone submitting legitimate email to SC won't keep his account long.

Re:NO NO NO

[AaronLawrence]

The point is, that YOU should CHECK the results of spamcop's parsing, to make sure something dumb hasn't happened - like listing your own provider as the spammer.

This can happen outside your control because your email provider has changed configuration and messed up headers.

Spamcop only needs small numbers of properly checked submissions. Piles of submissions don't help - it's not a statistical process like Bayesian filters.

Have you not heard of SpamCop Quick Reports?

[Ivan Todoroski]

You can simply ask the SpamCop admins to enable so called "quick reporting" for your account. Then, you just change your address from [e-mail] to [e-mail], and you're all set. The spams you forward (via attachments) to this address are auto-reported immediately, no need to go clicking on the website.

The only slight drawback to this method is that quick reports only get sent for the source of the spam, but not for the web sites advertised in them.

Re:considering all the damage RBLs do ...

[AaronLawrence]

Spamcop specifically avoids those two problems (though it has others).
It only blocks specific IPs identified as sources of spam.
And it only blocks due to submitted spam - no manual entries.

So, your comments are irrelevant to spamcop.

Good Tutorial

[Ythan]

Mechanize::SpamCop [cpan.org] is another tool you can use.

Ummm, they just TOLD you what happened.

[khasim]

Do you think anybody at spamcop cares about false positives?

Yes, I think they care a lot.

My server was blocked by spamcop this past week.

No, your IP address may have been included on one of the blacklists, but your server was not "blocked".

The person controlling the server that your server was trying to send a message to was using a SpamCop blacklist as a rejection list.

If you want to complain, complain to that person.

Why? I have no idea, and no way to correct the problem, because when they block you, all they say is "You sent email to one of our secret addresses."

The reason to keep those addresses secret is because if the spammers found them, they would not be useful anymore.

If you have a static IP address, the problem is you. Someone with access to your out-bound email is sending spam.

If you have a dynamic IP address, you need to get a static address.

If you cannot get a static address, do not expect your email to always be delivered. You must monitor your logs for the rejection notices and then take whatever actions are necessary to get that site to whitelist your messages.

Don't blame SpamCop for the situation that results in your IP address being reported to them. No one is forced to used SpamCop's blacklists. They choose to use them because they believe they are useful in reducing spam.

Investment

[Zindagi]

Think of the time spent verifying spam as an investment; use your time now and have far less spam/worries about genuine mail being marked as spam in the future. Not to mention the saved minutes that you can spend browsing slashdot more thoroughly.

Re:Ummm, they just TOLD you what happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting as AC, but I'm a registered user who posts often)

I work at an EMail marketing company (no, not spam) and we have had our servers placed on blacklists multiple times ... you know why? People who are competetors to our clients signup a spamtrap email to their lists, getting our mailserver blacklisted for sending mail to an address -- even though the mail is a "are you sure you wanna subscribe?" message?

Your casual attitude toward "oh well, shouldn't have sent email to $secretspamtrap" without telling us *what* email or giving us details on how to avoid it in the future (like maybe adding your spamtrap domains to our lists that trigger "oh no, spammer" in our checks), you end up making RBLs more useless, and my job harder.

Re:Ummm, they just TOLD you what happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

and my job harder.

And your job would be so much easier if everyone knew what these addresses were so that everyone could spam the addresses with each other's email headers?

The fascinating thing is ...

[khasim]

That someone who all but admits to being a spammer is mod'ed up 3 times (after posting anon)...

While the follow-ups criticising such are mod'ed down.

Seems like there are a lot of pro-spammer accounts with mod points today.

Anyway, you're still wrong.

#1. The "competitors" you're complaining about would have to have poisoned your "clients" email listing prior to you receiving those listings. That's just unrealistic. Either they'd have to have:

  1a. Poisoned almost every company's email listings in which case SpamCop would be dead because every company would be listed on it each time it sent any mailings.

  1b. Have someone inside your company telling them who your clients are and then poisoning them BEFORE you get the listing.

#2. Your competitors have lots of accounts that they use to report your sendings to SpamCop. If your competitors have that much expertise and time, then why are they wasting it blacklisting you?

#3. Your competitors already know the SpamCop spamtraps. Why aren't they making a LOT more money as real spammers with this knowledge? Why waste any time/effort on you? They can avoid the spamtraps themselves and get their spam out.

No. None of that makes any sense. You're a spammer and you're mad that SpamCop is being used to kill your spam business.

I have my own DNSBL (using RABL and DSPAM)

[Anonymous Coward]

I personaly prefer to use Reactive Autonomous Blackhole List (RABL) [nuclearelephant.com] in combination with DSPAM [nuclearelephant.com].

Setting up RABL is easy as 1-2-3 (with the help of this [gentoo.org] Gentoo ebuild).

Some other people I trust more then SpamCop have as well installed RABL and we do exchange the data from our blocking list.

SpamCop is all okay but I like to have DNSBL data from sources I know that I can trust them. And I like to have IP's blocked from those dummies sending spam over here in europe. SpamCop has not enought data about those spammers. Only america and asia is well covered, but european spam is still not much found in SpamCop.