Paul Karagianis wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2006, at 4:28, A.Omer Koker wrote:
>
>> However spamcop is susceptible to people complaining with
>> NON-spam but from people who just don't like what you might have said or
>> students who don't like you ;)
>
> That was last year, even several years ago.  This year it's spam with
> the return address forged to one of their "secret" trap ID's so
> the Spammer legitimately *bounces* off of your Listserv host into
> the trap and Spamcop sanctimoniously hangs you for "backscatter".

The "backscatter" problem is real but I also have my doubts about the
"secret" spamtraps used.

> Delete any and all subscribers who have an ISP using Spamcop until
> the subscribers get other ISP's or has their ISP's whitelist your
> list.  Really.  Spamcop can cook up fresh new problems far faster
> than you'll ever be able to deal with.

When talking about Spamcop one has to distinguish the DNS blacklist
(SCBL) from the Spamcop reporting service. Our network has potentially
750.000 users and we do have our share of infected PCs. We therefor get
our share of spam-reports from various sources, including Spamcop. And
of all these sources Spamcop is the most reliable one with only a few
mistakes (bad tracking) which are quickly resolved by the Spamcop
deputies. So Spamcop as a reporting service is, at least for us, a very
usefull service.

The SCBL (Spamcop Blacklist) on the other hand is a pain in the a** when
used to block mail. Too many "good MTAs" are listed because of the
"secret" spamtraps and the likes. We try from time to time to convince
people to stop using the SCBL for blocking mail but instead use it to
either greylist or just flag messages with a SpamAssassin score (not too
high).

Apart from that we plan to put a dedicated spam/virus filter in front of
our listserv-boxes to minimise the backscatter. Basically the filter-box
would prevent obvious spam and virus-infected mails to even reach the
listserv-boxes and thus would also prevent much of the annoyances caused
by both backscatter and spam-related messages to our list-owners that
are not and can not be filtered by the standard anti-spam/virus tools of
listserv itself.

Cheers,

Xander
--
New systems generate new problems.