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SpamCop Shutters Webmail Service
In what marks the end of an era (of a sort), users note that they're receiving this e-mail from SpamCop noting that the service is going to be shut down:
quote:
"For over 12 years, Corporate Email Services has been partnering with SpamCop to provide webmail service with spam filtering via the SpamCop Email System for our users. Back then, spam filtering was rare. We heard story after story about how our service rescued people from unfiltered email. Nowadays, webmail service with spam filtering has become the norm in the general public. As such, the need for the webmail service with SpamCop filtered email has decreased. Due to these reasons, we have decided to retire the SpamCop Email System and its webmail service; while SpamCop will continue to focus on providing the World's best spam reporting platform and blacklist for the community. As of September 30, 2014 (Tuesday) 6pm ET, the current SpamCop Email service will be converted to email forwarding-only with spam filtered by SpamCop for all existing SpamCop Email users."
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topics flat nest 

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

I've had numerous issues with them, both personal and on my job - as other parties used their services and ended up with blocked mail.
At some point even hotmail and yahoo got blacklisted.. idiots...
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

LOL hotmail and yahoo are probably the 2 biggest domains out there that are sending spam. They probably have more spam coming from those 2 sources than any others.

michieru
Premium Member
join:2009-07-25
Denver, CO

michieru to cowboyro

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They most likely got blacklisted because Yahoo & Hotmail had compromised servers in their pools sending tons of spam which happens more often than you think. I wouldn't call them idiots for doing their intended purpose.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by michieru:

They most likely got blacklisted because Yahoo & Hotmail had compromised servers in their pools sending tons of spam which happens more often than you think. I wouldn't call them idiots for doing their intended purpose.

Better allow 1000 spams than block a single legitimate one. I've had company emails being blacklisted and no, the server was not compromised - they just flagged the source as spam based on their proprietary dumb algo.
The intended purpose of an airbag is to deploy in a crash, but you don't see them popping when you step hard on the brakes.
kmcmurtrie
join:2006-04-18
Sunnyvale, CA

kmcmurtrie

Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

That's how it was in the old days. Sleazy ISPs, especially UUNET and Verizon, would mix top customers and top spammers to evade blacklists.

I don't want any mail from ISPs that can't keep their network abuse under reasonable control. Their customers can talk to me when they go somewhere else or convince their ISP to clean up.

michieru
Premium Member
join:2009-07-25
Denver, CO

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I disagree since spam is a very serious issue and the type of scam being sent out today specifically targets identity. One of the key issues I found related to being marked on spam is whether or not you had a marketing department sending mass emails via internal servers. Many users mark the crap as spam and the algo flags the entire source and cause all emails within the organization to be denied.

This is why services like mailchimp.com exist and are used for mass marketing.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

1 recommendation

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by michieru:

I disagree since spam is a very serious issue and the type of scam being sent out today specifically targets identity.

And again, it boils down to idiots knowing better than putting their bank info on a claim form for lost funds in a Nigerian bank.
Want to prevent it? Mark it as spam or phishing as major providers do. Just like some post offices have a note that foreign money transactions might be a scam. Let the user decide whether it is spam or not. And if I want to send a survey or a product update to existing customers who OPTED IN to receive my mail, I shouldn't be forced to pay and use a third party service because some idiot admin thinks he knows better and all email from that server should be discarded.

michieru
Premium Member
join:2009-07-25
Denver, CO

michieru

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

So my assumption here is that you do indeed have some form of mass email. Well guess what? A user did mark you as spam and therefore the algo kicked in and flagged you. The same idiot user might of opted in to your mailing list and never unsubscribed. Is it my fault that your users are to dumb to unsubscribe correctly? I shouldn't have my organization flood with emails because some idiot admin thinks he knows better and all email from that server should be received.

Your issue is your configuration. You could setup a separate SMTP dedicated for mass email within your organization with it's own IP and subdomain for mass email.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

No, I should not have to go to extra length to make sure my email has better odds of not being flagged by some retards who would gladly unblock me in exchange for a ransom. I don't have to put a priority mail with actual delivery stsmp on my envelopes.
And no, there was no mass email whatsoever. NONE.
I will gladly volunteer to pull the plug on any of these services.

michieru
Premium Member
join:2009-07-25
Denver, CO

michieru

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

What kind of "ransom" are we talking about here?

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

1 edit

2 recommendations

rebus9 to cowboyro

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to cowboyro
said by cowboyro:

Better allow 1000 spams than block a single legitimate one.

Clearly written by someone who is not an email admin.

Rule #1: Email delivery is imperfect.
Rule #2: Never rely on email for critical communication, due to Rule #1.

Millions of emails have been lost over time due to spool issues, disk failures, and clueless/careless admins. If you cannot afford to lose a piece of email, then you need to followup the SEND button with a phone call to verify receipt.

Or send via fax (which is also imperfect).

Or use FedEx (which is also imperfect).

I bet there's hardly a person alive who WOULDN'T trade one missing email for a 1000 spam reduction.

Oh BTW, Spamhaus doesn't BLOCK email. They only provide lists of bad-sender IPs. It's up to the receiving admin how the inbound spam filters are configured.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

LOl a little off topic. But i like many use to use icq. And i fired it up one day after like 5 years of not using it. I get a icq from a friend from about 7 years before. Now this was when i was online 24/7 and icq was also on. I never got that message when it was originally sent. But did get it seven years after the fact. Ive seen postal mail arive years and years after being sent etc but electronic mail/messages. And here i thought icq was a instant messenger hehe. .

Never trust email will reach the person it is being sent to never trust that a txt message will ever arrive. If you rely on these things for communication you could end up divorced like i am sure has happened over a missed date or other such thing do to a txt or email not arriving. Think it is unlikely heres a thought

husband email> wife "hey honey i ran in to a old friend and his wife their car broke down and they needed a place to stay so i gave them my hotel room. Meet me at my other friends house at 111 somedumb st just down the road" instead of the hotel." wife comes to meet him but never got the email or txt ither works. She goes to his hotel room knocks and his friends wife answers the door in a robe. Now like many of us he does not tend to save sent emails or txts. So his wife now thinks and can not be convinced other wise that he is cheating on her.

Email txts etc should never be trusted as first line of communication. They as you said can fail for countless reasons.

Jobs get lost break ups happen etc because of to much faith being put in email and txt. There is a reason why mega corps still use good old fasion paper memos along side internal emails. You may get the email faster and sooner than the paper memo. But if something happens that the email never hits your inbox you will get the paper one some time after. Any company that is not using paper memos is ran by foolish people.

rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay

1 recommendation

rebus9

Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by Nanaki:

LOl a little off topic. But i like many use to use icq. And i fired it up one day after like 5 years of not using it. I get a icq from a friend from about 7 years before. Now this was when i was online 24/7 and icq was also on. I never got that message when it was originally sent. But did get it seven years after the fact. Ive seen postal mail arive years and years after being sent etc but electronic mail/messages. And here i thought icq was a instant messenger hehe. .

As a systems admin, I've seen messages stick in outbound queues for no apparent reason. Either they failed to send at all, or they exceeded the retries but were never bounced back to the sender as undeliverable.

Restarting the spool re-queues them and out they go. On Windows systems that are patched and rebooted monthly, this isn't nearly as big an issue as Unix/Linux mail servers that go months or years between reboots.

Hence, rule #1 that I mentioned earlier. Email delivery is pretty reliable, but certainly not perfect.

newview
Ex .. Ex .. Exactly
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Parsonsburg, MD

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Yahoo & Hotmail were the very first domains I refused mail from on my home email server.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

What you do on your home system is your own problem, it does not impact unsuspecting users who do not receive email at all, either in their inbox or in the spam folder.

newview
Ex .. Ex .. Exactly
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Parsonsburg, MD

newview

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

When Hotmail & Yahoo refuse to do anything about the spammers they continue to allow to blast their crap to the rest of the 'net, they deserve both public and private blacklisting.

»www.spamhaus.org/sbl/lis ··· ahoo.com

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

1 edit

1 recommendation

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by newview:

When Hotmail & Yahoo refuse to do anything about the spammers they continue to allow to blast their crap to the rest of the 'net, they deserve both public and private blacklisting.

That is exactly the same as saying that if an ISP doesn't terminate a troll then all users from the ISP should be blacklisted.
Email providers are not nannies, nor should they have to play the nanny role and inspect sent mail. If someone makes a formal complaint then yes, they should do something about it, but I'm willing to bet this isn't the case in 99.99% of all spammers.
And again, it's not only about gmail/yahoo/hotmail, I've had legitimate outbound mail from a former company being blocked after they blacklisted the server IP for no reason.

newview
Ex .. Ex .. Exactly
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Parsonsburg, MD

newview

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

Sanford Wallace couldn't have said it any better ...
kmcmurtrie
join:2006-04-18
Sunnyvale, CA

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Blacklists are used only by people who want to use them. There's really nothing for you to complain about. Yes, there are even blacklists like APEWS and SORBS for trolls. I'm more interested in stopping hackers and spammers because they eat up my crappy DSL bandwidth.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by kmcmurtrie:

Blacklists are used only by people who want to use them

They are also used by small providers who want to cut on mail storage space or whom were told to use such filters by some pointy-haired boss.
The actual users will never know it though, they will just not receive the emails that you send them and they will call you a liar when you say you emailed them.
Oh and if you really want to be able to send email then pay $50 extortion fine to have your IP delisted. Umm, no, screw you spamcop.

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium Member
join:2000-11-08
Da Bronx

TamaraB

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

Curious, are you a ROKSO member? The language and terminology you use sounds very familiar., very spammy.
TamaraB

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said by cowboyro:

Oh and if you really want to be able to send email then pay $50 extortion.... fine to have your IP delisted.

Had to do this did you? Got listed did you? Stop spamming, and it won't happen any longer!

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

cowboyro

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

No, my company's mail server got blacklisted for weeks with no reason and no recourse and I (as a network admin) was caught in the middle. And my ISP at the time (OOL) got blacklisted, I couldn't email my parents for weeks and for them using anything but POP wasn't an option at the time (dial-up with hefty per-minute charges). OOL was aware but couldn't/wouldn't do shi1t, they claimed it was up to third parties to stop using their crap (true).
Fight spam by flagging individual messages and direct them to a spam folder, just in case there are false positives. Blocking everyone is an approach only retards take.

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium Member
join:2000-11-08
Da Bronx
·Verizon FiOS
Ubiquiti NSM5
Synology RT2600ac
Apple AirPort Extreme (2013)

TamaraB

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by cowboyro:

No, my company's mail server got blacklisted for weeks with no reason and no recourse and I (as a network admin) was caught in the middle. And my ISP at the time (OOL) got blacklisted .....

I too have a similar setup for personal/family/friends use. Also with OOL. I have a business account with a fixed and properly RDNS'd IP address. I have never had a problem receiving mail from any legitimate source. And that, with heavy spam and firewall blocking to avoid spam and virus sources.

Also bear in mind that SMTP is an "UNRELIABLE" transport. There is not even a semblance of a delivery guarantee.
said by cowboyro:

Blocking everyone is an approach only retards take.

I agree, but on the flip-side, not blocking known spam spewing networks (not "EVERYBODY") is inviting these scum to dominate your mail server, especially a small private system like we both run.
NLiveris
join:2001-11-25
Chicago, IL

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Yes! Exactly the same thing here:

Our small business of 25 employees uses Web.com for hosting and there would be countless issues with our legitimate emails being flagged as spam by spamcop. We were at the mercy of spamcop's secret algorithm and Web.com tech support claimed they were powerless (clueless) to do anything about it. Being unable to send legitimate emails to customers for 24 to 48 hours was awful for business.

I'm very happy spamcop is going away and will not be missed at all.

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium Member
join:2000-11-08
Da Bronx
·Verizon FiOS
Ubiquiti NSM5
Synology RT2600ac
Apple AirPort Extreme (2013)

TamaraB

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by NLiveris:

I'm very happy spamcop is going away and will not be missed at all.

SpamCop is not "going away". They simply terminated their webmail service. Their blacklists are still active and in use by many email servers and end users, as are other major RBL operators like Spamhaus. If it wasn't for these resources, email would be totally useless.
NLiveris
join:2001-11-25
Chicago, IL

NLiveris

Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

Dammit! Oh well

However, might it be a bit of an overstatement that without the efforts of 1 single company, spamcop, email would be totally useless?

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium Member
join:2000-11-08
Da Bronx
·Verizon FiOS
Ubiquiti NSM5
Synology RT2600ac
Apple AirPort Extreme (2013)

TamaraB

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by NLiveris:

Dammit! Oh well

However, might it be a bit of an overstatement that without the efforts of 1 single company, spamcop, email would be totally useless?

Without RBLs, which Spamcop is but one, email would be useless, yes.

My SMTP server rejects between 90% and 93% of all connection attempts, all of it either outright spam or virus infected. Postfix rules only account for a fraction of the blocking, RBLs do the rest.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

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said by TamaraB:

If it wasn't for these resources, email would be totally useless.

Total BS.
I'm getting maybe 3-4 spam emails in my inbox a week. The rest get sent to the junk folder, where I can review them - and sometimes extract one that is not really junk.
The termination of the web service is the sign they are going away. The sooner the better.

TamaraB
Question The Current Paradigm
Premium Member
join:2000-11-08
Da Bronx
·Verizon FiOS
Ubiquiti NSM5
Synology RT2600ac
Apple AirPort Extreme (2013)

TamaraB

Premium Member

Re: Not a day too soon... they won't be missed.

said by cowboyro:

said by TamaraB:

If it wasn't for these resources, email would be totally useless.

I'm getting maybe 3-4 spam emails in my inbox a week.

My main email address has been active since 1985 and is on every spammer list one can acquire. Without very severe blocking, I would be picking through hundreds of spams every few days.
said by cowboyro:

The rest get sent to the junk folder, where I can review them

Ahhhh yes, free labor in support of the spam gangs. Nice! I have better things to do with my time, I let the RBL operators clean my crap.
said by cowboyro:

The termination of the web service is the sign they are going away.

Well, yes, their web mailer is going away. This is good, as all web mailers need to die. As far as their RBL is concerned, do you have any evidence that will cease as well?

newview
Ex .. Ex .. Exactly
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Parsonsburg, MD

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said by cowboyro:

said by TamaraB:

If it wasn't for these resources, email would be totally useless.

Total BS.
I'm getting maybe 3-4 spam emails in my inbox a week. The rest get sent to the junk folder, where I can review them - and sometimes extract one that is not really junk.
The termination of the web service is the sign they are going away. The sooner the better.

Three quarters of world's email traffic is spam according to a recent December 2013 report by Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab.
»www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/ ··· -is-spam

Blacklists are used by people who do NOT want this crap in their inbox. Without blacklists, your email box would become totally useless.

••••••

NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
TP-Link TD-8616
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P

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MVM

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Your issue isn't with Spamcop. The problem is the idiot mail admins who block based on an SCBL listing. Last time I checked, SC recommends against blocking:
quote:
We recommend that when using any spam filtering method, users be given access to the filtered mail - don't block the mail as documented here, but store it in a separate mailbox. Or tag it and provide users documentation so that they can filter based on the tags in their own MUA.

»www.spamcop.net/fom-serv ··· 291.html

I tested the SCBL, along with others, for a period when I first set up my server; tagging only. In the end SPEWS (now defunct) was useless, Spamcop had enough false positives that I only used SCBL hits for scoring; only Spamhaus was sufficiently reliable to trust for blocking (and even they should probably just be used in "scoring" mode for a service with an eclectic user base).
Heymoe
join:2007-08-08
Saint Louis, MO

Heymoe

Member

Spamcop's proposed new service is much less useful

Since it will forward the "good" mail to outside addresses, there will not be an easy way to add false negatives (spam missed by SCBL) to their filter. Currently a user can simply move it to the "Held Mail" folder and report it.

So a big reason for using using service is going away.

DeeplyShroud
@216.116.2.x

DeeplyShroud

Anon

I'm reminded of this:

»Perfect way to stop spam. Are you listening Yahoo?

The person replying to my idea at the time decided to lower its intelligence quota by calling me
slow minded. Well, he challenged me to a way to stop spam that he couldn't break.
How about this? In order to be sure the message is received, it must have its own 10 digit code
like a phone number. Without it, the message goes to the bit bucket.

I still think a challenge-authenticate method would work to weed out server spoofing.
Receiving server gets a message from sending server.
Receiving server queries sending server to find out if message actually came from that server.
If yes, proceed, if no, bit bucket.
If we proceed, is sender's address in receiver's address book?
If yes, proceed, if no, bit bucket with notice to sender.
If we proceed, does the message have the receiver's 10 digit code?
If yes, proceed, if no, bit bucket with notice to sender.
If we proceed, deliver message.

if received msg = true then
if sending server query = true then
if sender's address in receiver's addressbook = true then
if receiver 10 digit code match = true then
deliver message
end if
end if
end if
else
bit bucket
end if