[SC-Help] Re: spamvertisement reporting & a question...

[Mike Easter]

Jeff G. wrote:
> <snip>
> "...there isn't much lost these days by not reporting the
>> spamvertisers to their providers."
>
> Mike, could you elaborate once more why going into the body and
> digging out the spamadverts is a waste for most?

I didn't say that.  What I sed or implied was that SC has a standard
protocol for spamvertisers.  The standard protocol is that it finds the
url and resolves it [unless it doesn't] and then the resolved url's
provider's contacts are notified.

SC doesn't use any tools to determine if that spamvertiser provider is
unresponsive, such as checking and seeing if the IP is spews or
spamhaused.  The only mechanism there is for an IP to have an alternate
notify than the mechanism I described above is if there has been enough
routing attention that a deputy has intervened and created a special
routing entry so that something else is notified instead of the protocol
notify.

So, very often the SC derived spamvertiser notify isn't a responsive
one.  In which case the notify isn't really good for anything.  The only
thing which is good for anything is that the reported url gets put on
the spamvertiser page where sc-surbl scrapes it and it contributes to
that db.

I say you could do that with a lot less trouble and resource expenditure
on the part of SC and the reporter if you did it another way.

> I got 1 guy in another group who swears this is the way - you spelled
> it out last week, but Thunderbird isn't the best ng searcher in the
> world and I forget the thread name anywho.  Quick & dirty - 2 lines...
> Tnx...

What someone may have been saying is that if the options for notifying
about a spam were to result in 'squashing' the cause of the source or/vs
squashing the spamvertiser, squashing the spamvertiser would be much
much better than squashing the source problem.

What I said in alt.spam the other day is that unfortunately, neither of
those squashes takes place.  Given that nothing happens as a result of
the notifies, then almost the only thing that happens is that the source
IP gets listed on the SCbl, which is a plus because it helps us filter
spam;  and the spamvertised url could possibly get put into the
sc-surbl, which would also help us filter spam.

The notifies aren't doing us any good [to exaggerate this point for the
sake of emphasis] -- the only thing that is doing us any good is to try
to help us get the spam filtered.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin