SpamCop Reporting Through MW and ISP Bypass

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Lode
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SpamCop Reporting Through MW and ISP Bypass

Mon Dec 03, 2012 1:12 am

As my ISP blocks spam reports to SpamCop -mistaking them for spam- I made a separate email account just for sending spam reports to SpamCop. I chose a free gmx.mail account for that. A gmail account also works, as many others may. But if your ISP lets the reports to SpamCop go through, just fill in the data of your ISP given email account. Or any email account you have.

stan_qaz has written info on SpamCop here: http://forum.firetrust.com/viewtopic.ph ... 200#p54917
SpamCop also has a very helpful forum: http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/

The following step by step "How To" was needed to get MailWasher Free 6.5.4 to work properly for me sending the spam reports to SpamCop to a different address than my ISP.

TUTORIAL FOR MAILWASHER SPAMCOP REPORTING BYPASSING ISP SETTINGS:

1. In "Email Accounts" > "Add Account" I called my ISP's given email account: "Alice."

2. Under "Email Accounts" > "Incoming Mail" I checked "Include this account in default mail check", and filled in my ISP's POP3 info: "in.alice.nl", my regular email address, and password. I checked "Remember password", and left the "Advanced account options" as is by default.

3. In "Bouncing and Outgoing Mail" I left the box for enabling bouncing unchecked -strongly recommended on this and SpamCop's forum- but in "Email address" filled in my gmx.mail address: "(xxx)(at)gmx.com" and in "SMTP server address": "smtp.gmx.com". (No quotation marks, and the gmx.mail data instead of my ISP given email account data, as my ISP Alice mail service blocks the spam reports to SpamCop as explained above.)

4. In "Specify..." I checked "This account has multiple email addresses" and filled in "(xxx)(at)gmx.com" and checked "Ask." At the right of the unchecked "Assume that it was send to" appears "(xxx)(at)gmx.com".

5. In "Advanced Account Options" > "Outgoing mail (SMTP)" I checked "My SMTP server requires authentication." I also checked "Log on using" and as username I filled in "(xxx)(at)gmx.com" and my gmx.mail password, and checked "Remember password."
"Bouncing details" I left by default checked on "Use local SMTP server only", and "Email Addresses" unchecked.
In "Email addresses" I again checked "This account has multiple email addresses", have filled in "(xxx)(at)gmx.com" and have checked "Ask." Again there also appears "(xxx)(at)gmx.com" following the "Assume that it was send to."

6. In "Spam Tools" > "Origin of spam" I have "Check the origin of the email (etc.)" checked, as well as SpamCop and Spamhaus.

7. In "Spam Tools" > "SpamCop" I ticked "Enable SpamCop reporting", filled in my personal SpamCop reporting email address: "submit.(xxx)(at)spam.spamcop.net", and in "SMTP server": "smtp.gmx.com".

8. Still in "SpamCop" > "SMTP server" > "Advanced" > "Outgoing mail (SMTP)" I checked "My SMTP server requires authentication", filled in my GMX Mail user name: "(xxx)(at)gmx.mail.com", and my GMX Mail password. I ticked "Remember password".

(I got some error messages from MW, but everything works fine, so I checked the "Suppress all errors" box. No problems with that at all.)

With thanks to those who helped! :thumbsup
And I hereby congratulate Firetrust for making this marvelous MailWasher + SpamCop reporting software available even for free to those among us who have only basic spam reporting needs. Thank you! 8) :D
Last edited by Lode on Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:48 am, edited 19 times in total.
Lode
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:51 am

PS:
As for MW "throttle" of header lines:

"What do you mean by "full headers"?
Here's an example of the headers of an email:
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/17.html

SpamCopAdmin Aug 24 2011, 02:16 PM
http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/lofiver ... 11970.html

For less than 200 lines "First Alert!" must be unchecked.
Last edited by Lode on Sun Dec 23, 2012 5:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
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TrustFire
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Thu Dec 20, 2012 4:24 am

Great job, Lode - would just like to bring a few points to your notice. :D
Lode wrote:I chose the free GMX Mail service because they don't require mobile a phone number for code confirming as Gmail now does. See: http://help.gmx.com/introduction/genera ... f.SzW12.3H**
and http://www.gmx.com/
Whenever I open a Gmail account for self (or others) which is quite often, I register my mobile as 0000000000 which is accepted - serves them right for attempting to trespass into my privacy. :devil

Lode wrote:To make the "Old is Gold" MailWasher version work I needed Microsoft .Net Framework 4. I found out when I kept getting error messages from MailWasher, and on a hunch un-installed the "Old is Gold" version and downloaded-installed the "Latest & Greatest" version: during the install I got a message from MailWasher that I needed "Microsoft .Net Framework 4" and was asked if I wanted to download-install it. At my "OK" MailWasher took care of the rest. Excellent.
Then after un-installing the "Latest & Greatest" version, and re-installing the "Old is Gold" version, those error messages did not appear anymore.
Nope, the older V6 does not require Microsoft .NET Framework - your errors were caused by some other misconfiguration. ;)

Lode wrote:PS:
I just remembered to set the header lines throttle to 20 lines. That is enough for SpamCop and this way my SP fuel lasts a lot longer it looks like.
Don't know about the SpamCop fuel - I prefer using a free SpamCop account which serves the purpose sufficiently well (but, setting 20 lines is quite meager - I'd suggest nothing less than 50 lines for the masses.) Personally my MWP 2012 version is configured for 500 lines.

Lode wrote:PS:
Usually not, but sometimes the following still appears:

"No such host Ensure that the POP3 server is correct"

In the mean time everything works fine: receiving all mail and SpamCop reporting confirmation requests, as well as sending reports to SP. So it doesn't really matter. I suppose this has to do with not filling in my regular ISP's email account address in "Bouncing and Outgoing Mail", but instead my "proxy" (xxx)(at)gmx.com account. It looks like I must do that, otherwise SpamCop reporting doesn't work, as my ISP's webmail address (xxx)(at)alice.nl doesn't allow sending spam to SpamCop.

I remember that before -when I used a gmail account to report to SP- I never got those error messages. I don't remember if I had anything different in MW settings.

But -again- it doesn't really matter, as things work fine regardless of those sporadic messages.
The POP3 error is not related to outgoing (i.e. SpamCop Reporting, Bouncing or Sending e-mails.)

It's related to incoming (i.e. Receiving e-mails.)
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stan_qaz
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:09 am

Lode wrote:PS:
I just remembered to set the header lines throttle to 20 lines. That is enough for SpamCop and this way my SP fuel lasts a lot longer it looks like. For this minimal lines setting "First Alert!" must be unchecked.
The amount you report to spamcop makes a difference for full reports, you need to send enough lines that spamcop gets the URLs in the spam. I send in 200 lines but 50-100 would probably be enough. Since FirstAlert reporting has been disabled and I'm not seeing very many hits on my spam turning it off would be a minor loss.

Usually not, but sometimes the following still appears:

"No such host Ensure that the POP3 server is correct"
This is Windows failing to return the IP address of your mail server quickly enough to satisfy MW. The best solution is to change from using the name of your server and ust the IP address instead. A possible PITA though if your mail server moves to a new address.

In the mean time everything works fine: receiving all mail and SpamCop reporting confirmation requests, as well as sending reports to SP. So it doesn't really matter. I suppose this has to do with not filling in my regular ISP's email account address in "Bouncing and Outgoing Mail", but instead my "proxy" (xxx)(at)gmx.com account. It looks like I must do that, otherwise SpamCop reporting doesn't work, as my ISP's webmail address (xxx)(at)alice.nl doesn't allow sending spam to SpamCop.
Don't mix POP/IMAP and SMTP issues, it will just lead to confusion.

I remember that before -when I used a gmail account to report to SP- I never got those error messages. I don't remember if I had anything different in MW settings.

But -again- it doesn't really matter, as things work fine regardless of those sporadic messages.
I am not a Firetrust employee just a MW user.
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Lode
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:19 pm

@TrustFire
@stan_qaz
Thank you both. 8)

I hadn't thought of giving gmail the "0000000000." I just tried it, and got a message saying "The phone number is not correct. Please try again." (Or something like that. Of course a number can be faked.)

As for the number of lines: I got the help of Don D'Minion (SP admin) with that when I originally set it up last year. He replied to an email in which I had copied a header, and he showed me exactly where to cut it off. Only the first line of the body of email text must show below all the header info for it to work. More is not needed. And this is precisely so with 20 lines.
On top of that my "fuel" was going down really fast I noticed when I had MW set to 200 lines. I didn't understand why, until I remembered the 20 lines setting, and re-discovered that for that First Alert! must be turned off.

It also looks like those error messages only appear sometimes when I manually hit the "Check the Mail" button. If I let MW fetch the mail by itself (I have it set to every 5 minutes) those messages don't appear. So no problem. Maybe I set MW to check mail every 1 minute... even less temptation to check it myself. :lol:
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:54 pm

Lode wrote:I hadn't thought of giving gmail the "0000000000." I just tried it, and got a message saying "The phone number is not correct. Please try again." (Or something like that. Of course a number can be faked.)
While creating a Gmail account the mobile number field is not mandatory - one can leave that blank (I just tried this.) :devil

Lode wrote:As for the number of lines: I got the help of Don D'Minion (SP admin) with that when I originally set it up last year. He replied to an email in which I had copied a header, and he showed me exactly where to cut it off. Only the first line of the body of email text must show below all the header info for it to work. More is not needed. And this is precisely so with 20 lines.
All headers are not equal - some headers run far beyond those 20 lines. SPAMmers have learned how to insert blank blocks between the header and the top section - I'd personally never bear to allow even a single SPAM to go unreported due such a misconfiguration. :no

There's another serious issue, with this misconfiguration - the restrictive 20 lines applies to also good messages. Consequently, when restoring a message deleted (unwittingly) via MWP that was good, you stand to lose all precious content beyond those 20 lines permanently because MWP can possibly recover only the first 20 lines you've originally specified. :thumbsdown

Lode wrote:On top of that my "fuel" was going down really fast I noticed when I had MW set to 200 lines. I didn't understand why, until I remembered the 20 lines setting,
I'm on a free SpamCop account that reports thousands of SPAMs as-and-when they hit my Inbox - on a config. of 500 lines with nary a worry about silly things like SpamCop fuel. :crazy

Lode wrote:If I let MW fetch the mail by itself (I have it set to every 5 minutes) those messages don't appear. So no problem. Maybe I set MW to check mail every 1 minute... even less temptation to check it myself. :lol:
Frequency is a subjective matter. Setting MWP to periodically check every 5 minutes can prove too frequent - this setting can possibly get one into trouble with for example Yahoo! accounts.

In some countries (not mine) Yahoo! is not amenable to a mail-check that's more frequent than 15 minutes. Setting a shorter frequency is a sure recipe to POP3 issues in the example cited here - Yahoo!

Hence, setting the frequency cannot be the same for everyone - it depends (different strokes for different people.) :)
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:52 am

I didn't proceed with the gmail account -don't need it- but I believe you that a phone # can be left blank.

Since I set the MW Throttle to 20 lines again -as I had it before- the few spam reports I've send to SP worked fine so far. Sometimes I've had the "Nothing to do" messages due to spam send through IPv6, but Don D'Minion says they're working on that.

I'll increase the amount of lines if I see that SP cannot handle some spam reports right.

I must be lucky to only get a few spam a day now. I got up to a 100 last year -and thought that was a whole lot- reason I searched for a solution and found SP. Then on the SP forum someone told me about MW...

Since I get only a few emails a day, having MW check every minute works fine for me. I like to send spam as soon as possible to SP. Even though I have my laptop turned on only now and then, my average reporting time is 3 hours, so not too bad.

So far I've never lost an email I wanted to keep, as I make sure to only mark spam and have MW send it to SP. Right after that I hit "Process Mail", but only the spam is gone. So I leave my emails in MW. Then I hit "Check Mail" and have my Opera mail client fetch the mail. After a minute the confirmation email for SP appears in MW, and after hitting the link and reporting it, only then do I let MW delete everything. I already have all my mail in Opera mail.

That error message indeed only appears when I check for mail myself. Leaving things to MW that doesn't happen.
I think this concludes this tutorial for me, so next time I have to set it up I come here and follow the steps. I have the URL of this thread saved on a memory stick and an external drive.
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:04 am

I have two spamcop.net accounts, one for quick reports where no user interaction is needed to complete them that is a free account and a second for full (submit) reports where user interaction is needed to complete the reporting process. The full reporting account is fueled as I do not care to wait for the delay that free reporting inserts into the process. The few cents for fuel is a good trade-off for my time.

The long dead suggestion area had a suggestion to set the download throttle different than the reporting throttle and have a throttle for each spam reporting service so you could tailor the number of lines sent to each one.

For quick reports you just need the first line of the body, for full reports you need to submit enough that the spammed websites can be identified, fewer work for the blacklist and mail server reporting but don't send reports for the spammy websites.. That isn't really good enough for the spam tools though, you need 250 lines to properly classify a lot of Yahoo messages that run to 200-225 lines of header and html before the first word of the body appears. I don't recall the needs of First Alert but it has a minimum, optimum and more than they care about levels.

Sending spam reports with Google offers you a very nice option, if you check your gmail account using POP and the recent option (put "recent:" ahead of your user-name) you can see exactly what was sent from MW. I use this not only to capture spam submissions but also debug reports which makes it easy to keep track of them.
I am not a Firetrust employee just a MW user.
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:37 am

FWIW, Old is Gold met with a slow & graceful death - all the beta-testers and most of the Users migrated over to the newer MWP 2012 (currently.) We dismantled the aging V6 from our system - though, I do re-install it whenever any of the handful of V6 Users requires assistance, through screenshots.
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Sat Dec 22, 2012 11:50 am

stan_qaz,
So maybe the SP admin told me 20 lines because he thought I meant for a free SP account? Could be.

Lately many of the reports I confirmed had "Address could not be found" with "/dev/null'ing report for nomaster[at]devnull.spamcop.net" messages lately. I don't know if this has anything to do with the amount of lines, as this already happened when I still had MW set to 200 lines.
I posted about that here, bumping up an old thread that was inactive for 7 years:

"/dev/null'ing report, What does this mean?"
Lodewijk Dec 5 2012, 11:42 PM http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.p ... =4422&st=0

I'll experiment a bit with the amount of lines, see what happens...
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:03 pm

Lode wrote:So maybe the SP admin told me 20 lines because he thought I meant for a free SP account? Could be.
Regardless of whether one uses a free account or paid account, full reporting or quick reporting - the fact is; one cannot disregard the following disaster-waiting-to-happen with a 20-line-misconfiguration:- :no
TrustFire wrote:There's another serious issue, with this misconfiguration - the restrictive 20 lines applies to also good messages. Consequently, when restoring a message deleted (unwittingly) via MWP that was good, you stand to lose all precious content beyond those 20 lines permanently because MWP can possibly recover only the first 20 lines you've originally specified. :thumbsdown
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:16 pm

Thank you for your kind concern.

I am aware that -unless I do the following- I could lose email, so I make sure I hit "Process Mail" after carefully checking only the spam for SP. The rest I leave unchecked. Then I hit "Check Mail" which opens my Opera mail client, and manually have it fetch the emails I did not let MW remove yet. Now also having received the emails in Opera, I have MW process the same ones still left in MW, so MW is a clean slate again. But the emails are still in Opera mail.

This way I never lose an email.
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Sat Dec 22, 2012 4:20 pm

Lode wrote:Lately many of the reports I confirmed had "Address could not be found" with "/dev/null'ing report for nomaster[at]devnull.spamcop.net" messages lately. I don't know if this has anything to do with the amount of lines, as this already happened when I still had MW set to 200 lines.
I posted about that here, bumping up an old thread that was inactive for 7 years:
That is not related to the number of lines submitted.

If you try the recent: option on Gmail you can see exactly what is being submitted at various line counts. You can also sort of see it if you use the MW view source option except that if you scroll a tiny bit too far you'll trigger a full message fetch which will confuse things and burn fuel for nothing.
I am not a Firetrust employee just a MW user.
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW When Your ISP Blocks I

Sat Dec 22, 2012 5:38 pm

Lode wrote:This way I never lose an email.
With some extra effort, you will not lose mail - that's great. But, you've written a tutorial - what about others :?:

I'm afraid your opening 2 posts need to be updated with necessary corrections - might otherwise cause the handful of folks who are left using the Old is Gold to bail out of the already sinking ship. :devil
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Re: How To: SpamCop Reporting with MW

Sun Dec 23, 2012 5:08 am

At your kind request, I changed my first and second above posts, and simultaneously some settings and data in my MW. It looks like that resulted in no more error messages (knock on wood) even though everything worked fine for receiving mail and spam reporting.

If you would like me to update anything else, let me know.

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