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Pete Stephenson | 12 Oct 07:12
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SpamCop Digest closing down...

Greetings all,

It's been quite some time (in excess of two years, I believe) since I
last posted any messages to the SpamCop Digest. As such, many of you
probably had forgotten you had subscribed to the list.

Here's what's happening:

1) You may remember that I was called up to serve in the US Army for
service in Iraq. During training, my foot was injured, and I was
honorably discharged for medical reasons from the military, and am now a
private citizen again. Due to my injuries, I did not deploy with my
unit...which I have mixed feelings about.

2) SpamCop now has a flourishing community in the SpamCop Forums and
SpamCop newsgroups (I tend to use the newsgroups, simply because I
prefer using my newsreader program, MT-NewsWatcher, to keep track of
posts rather than browing a website). While this has always been true,
it's even more so now.

3) The original point of the SpamCop Digest mailing list no longer
really applies; updates to the service are available on the SpamCop
website, and much more suitable means of getting information about the
service exists.

4) After returning from the military, I am now enrolled again in
college, and am striving to major in physics, and eventually become some
type of physicist. As such, I lack the time or energy to maintain the list.

As such, the SpamCop Digest list will be disbanded in the next week or
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Pete Stephenson | 7 Nov 02:45
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Clearing up some confusion...

Hey folks,

Evidently there's been some confusion about my relationship to 
SpamCop and how it relates to my deployment.

I am only a SpamCop user who volunteers my time to maintain this 
list. I am not associated with, employed with, or otherwise connected 
with SpamCop.

The fact that I am being deployed means only that this mailing list 
will fall into disuse while I'm gone. The SpamCop service itself is 
run by other individuals who's business it is to maintain SpamCop.

I suggested that people unsubscribe from *this mailing list only*, 
because of the likelihood in 2005 that people would forget they 
signed up, and report me as spam. If you're a SpamCop user or paying 
member, by all means, continue to use and support the service.

I just wanted to clear that up, as several people were wondering if 
the whole system would be going offline because I'm leaving. The 
short answer: No.

On a spam-related note, it would seem that a new virus is propagating 
for Windows machines that is designed to attack various anti-spam 
websites such as SpamCop and Spamhaus.org. SpamCop uses Akamai's 
distributed network to insulate against such attacks, and I've not 
noted any performance problems due to this attack. Spamhaus does not, 
and their website is slightly slower than before, but it still 
remains online. If you run the Windows operating system (why?!), it 
is strongly suggested that you update your virus definitions
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Pete Stephenson | 6 Nov 06:57
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Signing off for a bit...

Hi folks,

This is just a brief notice to let you all know that the SpamCop 
Digest isn't going to be updated for a significant (i.e. 18 months) 
amount of time.

My Army National Guard unit just got activated for federal service in 
Iraq, and I will leave on November 15th for pre-mobilization 
training. Assuming all goes to plan, I should return 18 months later.

I suggest that you unsubscribe from the Digest in the interim, 
because when I return and start writing it again, many people tend to 
forget they subscribed and report it as spam. It'd make both of our 
lives easier.

Wish me luck.
--

-- 
Pete Stephenson
HeyPete.com
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Pete Stephenson | 18 Sep 22:36
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VeriSign's SiteFinder & Britain Bungles Anti-spam Law

SpamCop Digest
18 September 2003

* VeriSign's Sitefinder
* Britian Bungles Anti-spam Law
* Request from the author.

-----------------------------------

* VeriSign's SiteFinder
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/index.jsp

VeriSign Naming and Directory Services, the company responsible for 
maintaining the root DNS registry and provisioning the .com and .net 
domain names, has decided that merely running the registry (and 
owning Network Solutions, a registrar of domain names) was no longer 
enough. Instead, they decided that since they maintain the root DNS 
system, they could direct *.com and *.net to their own system called 
SiteFinder (the URL of which is included above).

This means that when a user enters a domain name that does not exist, 
instead of getting an error message that says "Error: Host Not Found" 
(which might not mean much for the average user, but at least they 
know something's wrong), they will be directed to VeriSign's website. 
Similarly, if someone attempts to send mail to a nonexistent domain, 
it will be directed to VeriSign's mailserver (which currently rejects 
all messages, though logs and statistics are likely to be kept...and 
what's to prevent them from collecting email addresses?).

Other domain registrars must register domains individually (and pay
(Continue reading)

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Pete Stephenson | 7 Sep 03:05
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Italy Goes Opt-in, Law States Senders of Unsolicited Bulk Email Now Face Jail

According to a recent posting on Spamhaus.org[1][2], spamming is now 
a crime in Italy. According to the official release[3], "those who 
send email advertisements without the consent of the address owners 
will go to jail".

The rest of Europe will be implementing the same EU directive by 31 
October of this year; Italy decided to implement it a little bit 
early. Now, if only the rest of the world could follow suit.

See the URL's below for more information.

[1] 
http://www.spamhaus.org/index.lasso?-database=sbl_news&-layout=detail&-response=newsstory.lasso&-recordID=19&-search
[2] http://tinyurl.com/mhvb if [1] wraps.
[3] http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=272444

--

-- 
Pete Stephenson
HeyPete.com
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Pete Stephenson | 23 Jul 22:45
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[CORRECTION] Using SpamAssassin to detect and sort spam.

In the last SpamCop Digest, I made an error. I had said the following:
>SpamCop has been experimenting[5] with using SpamAssassin as an 
>optional filter for paying subscribers. JT's still in the process of 
>testing it out, and it's defaulting "off" on all accounts, though 
>you can turn it on if you wish via the webmail interface. When it's 
>out of testing, and placed fully into production, there'll be an 
>announcement.

I had failed to recall a message that was sent to all users, posted 
to the SpamCop Forum, and mentioned on the "news" page. SpamAssassin 
support with SpamCop is no longer being tested -- it's in production. 
Paid users with SpamCop mail accounts can access it by logging into 
the webmail system, going to "Options", selecting "SpamCop Tools", 
and selecting "Select your email filtering blacklists."

I would also like to clarify that I was not suggested that 
SpamAssassin in any way replace SpamCop, or make it less effective. 
On the contrary,I was suggesting that people use SpamAssassin (or 
many of the other similar filtering products that people sent me 
emails about) in order to enhance their spam-fighting experience (by 
filtering out junk from your mailbox, it allows you to deal with 
legitimate mail now, and spam when it's convienient for you). 
Obviously, I strongly encourage everyone to report all spam they 
receive, because otherwise there's no way that the spam will actually 
stop.

We must hold the spammer's feet to the fire, and make spamming more 
difficult and less profitable for them in order to stop the spam. 
Filtering is merely a stop-gap measure to make email a bit more 
usable, but we must continue to report spam in order to lessen it.
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Pete Stephenson | 23 Jul 11:51
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Using SpamAssassin to detect and sort spam.

Greetings again,

In this edition of the SpamCop Digest, I will discuss the use of the 
free spam filter called SpamAssassin[1] to detect and sort spam.

While I believe it's safe to say that all subscribers of this mailing 
list are indeed quite frustrated about receiving spam, and most 
report most if not all of the spam they receive via SpamCop. Overall, 
I believe that anti-spammers will win, and that spam will no longer 
be tolerated anywhere on the internet. However, while we're waiting 
for that day, we still have to deal with the huge volume of spam we 
receive daily (I generally receive anywhere between 50 and 200 spams 
per day, with it varying randomly every day).

Many of us get spam at our work email accounts in addition to our 
personal accounts, and many businesses are fearful of implementing 
server-side filtering because they fear it might result in 
false-positives and blocking of legitimate mail, which, for a 
business, would be intolerable (and reasonably so). Since employers 
hesitate to block spam and implement filters, our accounts receive 
more spam, and more of our work time is being spent dealing with 
spam[2].

Enter SpamAssassin. In it's native form, it's a free, open-source 
UNIX program, though it's been ported to Windows and other platforms, 
and people have created commercial versions[3]. It performs a wide 
variety of heuristic checks on the headers and body text of mail in 
order to detect spam.

Many filters out there aren't very effective, as they either have
(Continue reading)

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Pete Stephenson | 18 Jul 21:37
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It's been a while...

Greetings SpamCop Digest reader,

It's been many months since the last SpamCop Digest was published. 
This was due partially to me being lazy, coupled with me joining the 
US Army and having to go off for training from January until June. 
Now that I've returned, the list should be a bit more active.

I'm going to start off with two articles, relating to spam, from Spamhaus.org:

==================
* The Spam Definition and Legalization Game
http://www.spamhaus.org/newsdog.lasso?article=116
The word Spam means "Unsolicited Bulk Email". Unsolicited means that 
the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message 
to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger 
collection of messages, all having substantively identical content. 
But ask a spammer and he'll claim spam is something else.

* United States Heads Towards Legalization of Spam
http://www.spamhaus.org/newsdog.lasso?article=117
With all of Europe set to implement Opt-in legislation by October, 
Europe has taken the lead in banning spam and is no longer waiting 
for the United States to stop the huge American spam problem, problem 
that most of Europe suffers from with over 90% of all spam hitting 
Europe being sent by American (mostly Florida-based) spammers.

But the United States is going in the opposite direction to Europe 
and is now set to explode the spam problem far worse than it is 
today, incredibly by actually legalizing Unsolicited Bulk Email 
instead of banning it.
(Continue reading)

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spamcop-digest-admin | 16 Nov 13:26

SpamCop Denial of Service


Julian posted the following message at 0230 Pacific Time (GMT -0800):

-----------------------------------------
SpamCop is currently undergoing a denial of service attack. My ISP
(accretive technology) has been monitoring the situation and
attempting to resolve it with peering points.  Most of the traffic
appears to be originating on level3. The situation is out of *my*
hands at this point.

Service will be restored as soon as possible, but no ETA is available
at this time.

G'night,

-=Julian=-
-----------------------------------------

Hopefully things will be resolved shortly.
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spamcop-digest-admin | 17 Sep 19:51

SpamCop Downtime

In addition to the planned downtime that Jeff informed me of, I 
received a notice from Julian (the guy responsible for the SpamCop 
Reporting service) saying the following:

>Spamcop's connectivity in Seattle is down.  I am working with accretive to
>fix the problem, but don't have a resolution estimate - should not be too
>long.
>
>-=Julian=-

Let's hope Accretive, the facility where SpamCop's servers are, fixes 
their problems swiftly.

Cheers!

--

-- 
Pete Stephenson
HeyPete.com
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spamcop-digest-admin | 17 Sep 19:23

(no subject)

Hey folks,

I just received the following notice from Jeff, the guy in charge of 
the SpamCop Email Service, who requested that I posted this 
notification to the SpamCop Digest.

If you have any questions, let me know, and I'll either answer them 
myself, or refer you to where you can ask them.

Cheers!

>This was just posted to the news page. I think it, or an excerpt, would be
>appropriate for the SC Digest. Not mentioned here is that this only affects
>email and news. The reporting service will be available as usual. That should
>be in the digest.
>
>Thanks
>Jeff
>
>>We're moving! After nearly a year, we have outgrown the facility where the
>>SpamCop Email Service is hosted. So, we have to move. The existing 
>>servers will
>>be packed and hand-carried to the new facility on Sunday September 22. There
>>will be a significant downtime while the servers are moving as we're moving
>>from Tampa to Atlanta. Expect the service to go down around 9:00 a.m. and
>>return around 5:00 p.m. EDT.
>>
>>This move should have significant benefits in both bandwidth and reliability
>>for us. At our current facility, we're on copper-based circuits. At the new
>>facility, we are on a node of a SONET ring which runs around the north metro
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Gmane