Spamcop

[Keef]

Like others on here (I suspect), I've used Spamcop to filter some of my e-mail and block the junk. It's done a superb job over the years, filtering out several hundred thousand spams over that time (it keeps count!). About one in ten "blocked" mails would be genuine - so I'd tell it to release those and "whitelist" the sender. The rest get reported to the source ISP (when that can be identified).

While I was in hospital recently, the webmail provider used by Spamcop closed down. The new owner of Spamcop has switched off the "mail filter" connection rather than implementing a new one. If Spamcop incorrectly blocks mail, that mail is lost. There's no way to see what it was, or to do anything with it.

The claim is that everyone received several e-mails warning them that this is going to happen. The reality is that I didn't (I suspect others didn't, either).

Spamcop will still do its traditional "report spam to the source ISP", which is of some limited value. The great bulk of what I report goes to the same half dozen ISPs (well-known spamsites in China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, and the USA). About ten times in five years, I've had an acknowledgement from an ISP and been told that the offending account has been closed, so it's not quite been a complete waste of time.

I won't be renewing my sub next year!

[mixture]

Keef,

Not sure I would take your approach to using Spamcop, i.e. as a pre-filter.

I use Spamcop to report spam after it has been received, and in that function, I've seen no change in recent weeks, it still works just as well.

For spam filtering, you really should just seek out an ISP (or webmail service) with good spam filtering.... then the one or two that make it through after that you should report via Spamcop.

[Keef]

Quite so. The reporting bit still works as before, although the main offenders in the spam publishing business ignore Spamcop reports anyway.

When I first signed up for Spamcop, back in the dark ages, it was the address I gave to those people who demanded an e-mail address from me. If they spammed me, the spam got trapped and reported. It worked well enough that when I changed ISP for the first time, it became my only address for a while.

When my then new "primary" address started getting spammed badly, I set that up to forward to Spamcop too. That worked well. Filtered mail was forwarded from there to another (unpublished) address.

Now, if you write to the Spamcop address, there's a fairly high likelihood that the message will vanish without trace. Shucks, as they say. That's the bit that it's a nuisance to have "lost", because some of my oldest friends only have that address.

That "old primary" address now forwards to a Gmail address, which does the same filtering job (and does it well).

The addresses I use most nowadays (the Church and flying group ones) are with a very good provider whose spamfiltering is excellent. I check the spam every few days and delete or Spamcop as relevant.

[Booglebox]

The real benefit with reporting spams is that companies like Spamhaus block IP ranges and assign reputations etc. accordingly.
Although this makes it increasingly difficult to run your own SMTP server that is used by real people, it does do quite a good job of reducing spam :ok: