Fighting spam is a never-ending battle. GKH utilizes several free blacklists and anti-spam services to limit the amount of spam our clients recieve. SpamCop is one of the services we use.
From SpamCop’s FAQ
SpamCop is the premier web-based service for reporting and blocking spam, founded in 1998 by Julian Haight. SpamCop processes over one million spam complaints a day and is supported by hundreds of thousands of users, a knowledgeable volunteer community, and a professional staff. SpamCop streamlines the process of determining the origin of spam emails and reporting them to the relevant Internet service providers. SpamCop offers both free and premium reporting services.
The providers of services like Spamcop–allowing people to report spam to network admininstrators and add spammers to a block list that mail server admins can use to block known sources of spam–are doing a HUGE public service (and a service that directly benefits us). So naturally, I wanted to help support them!
In addition to using the SpamCop list to block spam, I decided to do my part by reporting email to SpamCop as well as enjoying the benefits of using their list. Since we use their list, this has the added benefit of potentially reducing the amount of spam everyone who shares our hosting recieves.
It wasn’t as difficult as you may think. If you’d like to help by reporting your spam to SpamCop, it’s pretty easy:
- Register for a free account with SpamCop.
- Learn what you should (and should not) report–important!
- Either use the web form to report your spam, or even better, use email submission. Very easy!
- Outlook users may want to add an easy reporting plugin. (pictured above)
You can either use the form on SpamCop to report your spam, or set up email reporting, which is much faster. There are full directions for email submissions using a number of popular programs.
Just click to whack that spammer!
Users of Outlook (like me) may have to work a little harder to report spam to SpamCop because of the way Outlook manages email headers; they are seperate from the message. Using the webform to report requires getting each bit of info and pasting it into a two part web form, which was a little annoying. However, I found a small plugin called SpamSource to my outlook to make reporting very simple! (They provide recommend settings for SpamCop.)
I installed the plugin and configured it. It provided me with a “Report Spam” button right in my email program, so whacking this spammer has just become super easy! I click the button; the spam is marked “read” and deleted for me immediately. In a few minutes, I get a followup from SpamCop, with a link to confirm my spam report.
I follow the link and review the report to make sure it’s really spam and submit. You can report several spam at one time, and confirm them all with a single visit to spam cop. It does take a few minutes out of my day, but it’s quite satisfying and, in the big picture, it’s a small price to pay for helping clean the world of spam.
And since we do indeed use SpamCop for our mailserver, I opted to open a paid account. I’m not yet sure what the benefits are from a user standpoint of having a paid account, but I know it’s important to support services that help out–both us and others. So GKH got a subscription to the paid spam reporting services.
Thanks, SpamCop!
Possibly Related
Posted on February 2, 2009 at 3:05 pm in: GKH, Spam Whacking
