bbs.spamgourmet.com

We're stable again, which is great. I'd like to bring everyone's attention to what may be one of the biggest threats to our survival -- that is when spamgourmet users file spam complaints against the spamgourmet server! These complaints are usually made to spamcop. What happens is that spamcop notifies our service provider, who sends me a nasty automated email saying I have to respond within 48 hours or face the consequences. I respond, and the spamgourmet user - realizing what he or she has done - hopefully retracts the complaint as regards our server.

So, to be clear here, what's happening is: 1) some spammer sends email to an unexpired disposable email address, 2) the spamgourmet user reports the spam to spamcop, specifying the spamgourmet server as being responsible for sending the spam, 3) spamcop automatically muscles our service provider who, 4) automatically muscles us. We didn't send the spam, we just forwarded it as part of our free spam-fighting service, but we (along with our service provider) are getting blamed.

To avoid this, if you report spam, be on the look out for spamgourmet hosts -- generally with an IP address of 216.218.230.146,147,148,149,150 or 216.218.159.210 or 66.160.138.245 and *don't report them*!!!! This has gotten so bad that we'll be modifying our terms of service to specifically mention it as a no-no.

If someone is so stupid that they don't understand how to work their automated 'report this as spam' email reader, and don't understand that spamgourmet is the brave new world, I say cancel their accounts. They should be forced to eat - spam!

If you want to be humane, give them one warning, then cancel.

No one using spamgourmet should be playing around with any other spam filter/ reporter unless they are experts. Most people are dumb and will mix things up. You should add instructions about this, not just TOC regulations.

How's about an email campaign from all users to spamcop to get them to forcibly exclude all complaints about spamgourmet? How's about the same to the sg hosting company?

Could actual spammers be doing this to you as an act of revenge?? Just a thought.

Such things are making me angry.

Of course, ther'll always be idiots, who report newsletters for which they signed in themselves. But i don't think, spamcop reacts to every single moron, who reports amazon.com as a spam-sender. There's gotta be some kind of a whitelist.

Of course i like the idea of simply deleting accounts as well.

The software can easily check for spamgourmet headers. At which point it handles them differently. Or whitelist the spamgourmet domains. Having instructions, possibly in the FAQ, for sieve, procmail, spamassassin, etc. would be useful.

Don't take chances. Until the blacklisting services give official whitelist recognition to spamgourmet, it should be ILLEGAL for any spamgourmet subscriber to use any kind of spam filter/reporter program. Period.

How about an option to forward email as an attachment?

Presumably, spamgourmet users will usually open the attachment to decide if the email is spam. Finding the attached email to be spam, a spamgourmet user who wants to report spam probably will forward (say to SpamCop) the attached email, not the enveloping email from spamgourmet.

SpamCop has some anti-spoofing checks that may prevent SpamCop from accepting the email because the destination of the original spam email (spamgourmet) is not the same as the origin of the forwarded spam email (the spamgourmet user). But rejection of the email will keep SpamCop from identifying spamgourmet as the spammer. If SpamCop will accept such email, then people who were too smart to report email forwarded by spamgourmet under the old method, could safely report email forwarded by spamgourmet via attachment.

Emails within attachments don't beneficiate from a special treatment. If you click on "report", you'd still flag us.

Also, it would be pretty inconvenient for daily use.

Finally, many spam filters give a higher score to emails with attachment, which means that non-spam email will have a higher prob to end up being deleted at the destination ISP too.

> Emails within attachments don't beneficiate from a
> special treatment. If you click on "report", you'd
> still flag us

How is that? If you attached the email just as you got it, wouldn't spamgourmet show up in the attached email as just a destination, not an origin or intermediary?

I am thinking of 3 cases

1) I get a spam email directly to my real email address.
I create a new email. I attach the spam email to the
new email. I forward the new email to SpamCop.

2) spamgourmet (for the purposes of my imaginary
experiment) acts as a destination, not a forwarder.
spamgourmet gets a spam email. spamgourmet creates a
new email. spamgourmet attaches the spam email to the
new email. spamgourmet forwards the new email to
SpamCop.

3) spamgourmet is back to its usual role as a forwarder.
spamgourmet gets a spam email. spamgourmet creates a
new email. spamgourmet attaches the spam email to the
new email. spamgourmet forwards the new email to my
real email address.

I get the email with the spam attachment. I create a
new email. I copy the spam email attachment to the
new email. Now the email from spamgourmet and my new
email contain the same spam email as an attachment.
I forward the new email to SpamCop.

Won't the email headers for the attachment be the same in Case 2 as in Case 3?

very interesting..

Is it bad to click "Report Spam" on a Spamgourmet-forwarded message in Gmail?

Almost all of my Spamgourmet-forwarded spam is correctly recognized as spam by Gmail. There are occasionally what I consider false positives, and very rarely there's a false negative. I'd like to make Gmail smarter about spam (by clicking "Report Spam"), but not if it causes Gmail to think that Spamgourmet is a spammer.

Emails are forwarded by sg. As such, most email header parsers see these forwarded emails as originating from sg. A few (such as spamcop) attempt tomake special efforts to avoid flagging forwarders. I doubt gmail is as thorough.

So don't.