[SpamCop-List] Re: Results of Reporting

[Bill Beyer]

"Mike Easter" <MikeE at ster.invalid> wrote in message
news:dnt5d4$5g9$1 at news.spamcop.net...

> And all of that palaver is just the story of the spamsource problem;
> the story of the spamvertiser provider is even more bleak.
>
> If there were a whitehat spamvertiser provider, then the spamcop notify
> would lead to the whitehat provider squashing the spamvertiser.
> However, there is no such similar 'consequence' of being a spamvertiser
> provider as there is being a spamsource IP which becomes sc blocklisted,
> as there is no blocklisting of spamvertiser providers.
>
> If there were no whitehat spamvertiser providers, but all of them were
> blackhat, then there would be absolutely no effect on the spamvertisers,
> because they wouldn't care whether there were a spamcop report or not.
>
> Mostly the spamvertiser providers are blackhat, so the spamcop report is
> ignored and there is no effect, no consequence.
>
> If you somehow could 'magically' tell that the condition of a spam was
> such that there was going to be no consequence of the notification of
> the spamvertiser was a complete waste of time, you wouldn't even bother
> with the extra time and resources of the evaluation of the spambody, you
> would simply report the spamsource to contribute to the SCbl and you
> wouldn't expect any other consequence than the 'condition' of the SCbl
> being a very 'frisky' and dynamic blocklist to be fed and used -- and
> you would forget all about any actual reduction in your spam or any
> providers doing anything about any spam notifications.
>
> Except for some very small percentage which isn't so blackhat or
> unresponsive.
>
> -- 
> Mike Easter
> kibitzer, not SC admin

Something I just discovered after re-enabling SpamAssasin on one of my email
accounts is that the SpamAssasin program looks at the list of spamvertised
URLs that are reported through SpamCop. These sites are compiled into
something called the SC SURBL and SpamAssasin checks that list when scoring
spam. There are several other SURBL lists as well with various weights
associated with them The SC SURBL seems to carry a significant amount of
weight in the scoring which helps push the score up quickly.