Spamcop

Security issues affect us all

I’ve been talking about security more on the blog. A lot of that is because the security issues are directly affecting many senders. The biggest effect recently has been on companies ending up on the SBL because their signup forms were the target of a subscription attack. But there are other things affecting online spaces that are security related. Right now not much of it is affecting email senders, but it’s good to be aware of.
DDOS attacks
There has been an increase in DDOS attacks against different companies and network. Some of the online game sites have been targeted including EA, Blizzard and others. A group called PoodleCorp is claiming responsibility for those attacks.
Another set of DDOS attacks hit Brian Krebs’ website this week. The site stayed up, but Akamai has told Brian they can no longer host his website. His website is down for now and the foreseeable future.
While this activity doesn’t affect marketers directly, it does tell us that there is active development happening on the less legal side of the internet. The volumes of the recent attacks have sent records. They’re also changing in scope and including new kinds of traffic in an effort to knock sites offline. Even more concerning, they appear to be systematically attempting to discover defenses in order to attack the internet as a whole.
Increase in Spam
Spam has been on the decrease over the last few years. Many of us were treating it as a mostly-solved problem. But a new report from Cisco Talos shows that trend is reversing and spam levels are increasing. Current levels are approaching those last seen more than 5 years ago. Cisco Talos has used a number of different sources of data, all showing an increase in spam directly and indirectly.

Spamcop mail changes

Spamcop is shutting down it’s email service. While anyone could report spam using Spamcop, the system also provided users email addresses behind the Spamcop filters. This shut down should have no major impact on senders. Email addresses in use will still be accepting email, but that mail will simply be forwarded to another address, instead of users being able to access it through POP or IMAP.
The one problem some senders may have is IF they are solely authenticating through SPF and they are publishing a p=reject DMARC statement. This may result in some of the mail being rejected at the forwarding mail server, like AOL, Yahoo and other services respecting DMARC policy statements.
User forwarded mail will be coming from 68.232.142.20 (esa1.spamcop.iphmx.com) and 68.232.142.151 (esa2.spamcop.iphmx.com). If you don’t want to apply DMARC policy to known forwarded mail, those are the IPs to special case.

Abuse it and lose it

Last week I blogged about the changes at ISPs that make “ISP Relations” harder for many senders. But it’s not just ISPs that are making it a little more difficult to get answers to questions, some spam filtering companies are pulling back on offering support to senders.
For instance, Cloudmark sent out an email to some ESPs late last week informing them that Cloudmark was changing their sender support policies. It’s not that they’re overwhelmed with delisting requests, but rather that many ESPs are asking for specific data about why the mail was blocked. In December, Spamcop informed some ESPs that they would stop providing data to those ESPs about specific blocks and spam trap hits.
These decisions make it harder for ESPs to identify specific customers and lists causing them to get blocked. But I understand why the filtering companies have had to take such a radical step.
Support for senders by filtering companies is a side issue. Their customers are the users of the filtering service and support teams are there to help paying customers. Many of the folks at the filtering companies are good people, though, and they’re willing to help blocked senders and ESPs to figure out the problem.
For them, providing information that helps a company clean up is a win. If an ESP has a spamming customer and the information from the filtering company is helping the ESP force the customer to stop spamming that’s a win and that’s why the filtering companies started providing that data to ESPs.
Unfortunately, there are people who take advantage of the filtering companies. I have dozens of stories about how people are taking advantage of the filtering companies. I won’t share specifics, but the summary is that some people and ESPs ask for the same data over and over and over again. The filtering company rep, in an effort to be helpful and improve the overall email ecosystem, answers their questions and sends the data. In some cases, the ESP acts on the data, the mail stream improves and everyone is happy (except maybe the spammer). In other cases, though, the filtering company sees no change in the mail stream. All the filtering company person gets is yet another request for the same data they sent yesterday.
Repetition is tedious. Repetition is frustrating. Repetition is disheartening. Repetition is annoying.
What we’re seeing from both Spamcop and Cloudmark is the logical result from their reps being tired of dealing with ESPs that aren’t visibly fixing their customer spam problems. Both companies are sending some ESPs to the back of the line when it comes to handling information requests, whether or not those ESPs have actually been part of the problem previously.
The Cloudmark letter makes it clear what they’re frustrated about.

Getting spamcop summary reports

1) Create a spamcop account at http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=ispsignupform, once you get your password mailed to you, login to the account.
2) Request reports by clicking on “request reports” http://www.spamcop.net/mcgi?action=reqroute. Spamcop takes most formats of IP addresses that people normally use.
3) Reports will come in aggregate and look like:

Changes at Spamcop

Earlier this week some ESPs started asking if other ESPs have seen an uptick in Spamcop listings. The overwhelming answer (9 of 11 ESP representatives) said yes. I’ve also had clients start to ask me about Spamcop listings. All in all, there seems to be some changes at Spamcop that means more senders are showing up on the Spamcop radar.
Luckily, Spamcop provides us some insight into their data processing. If you look at the current monthly volume graph, we can see some very interesting changes in data.

Holomaxx v. MSFT and Yahoo

I mentioned way back in January that Yahoo had filed a motion to dismiss the case against Holomaxx. Microsoft filed a motion to dismiss around that time, although I didn’t mention it here.
And, of course, Holomaxx filed a motion in opposition in both the Microsoft case and the Yahoo case. Nothing terribly interesting here, about what you’d expect to read.
On March 11 the judge ruled on both motions to dismiss and in both cases ruled that the case was dismissed. He did, however, give leave for the complaints to be amended in the future.
As I expected the Judge agreed that MSFT and Yahoo have protection under the CDA. First, the court made it clear that providers are allowed wide leeway in determining what is objectionable to their customers.

Blocking mail to spamcop.net

Josh reports mail from MobileMe to spamcop.net addresses is being filtered somewhere and isn’t being delivered or actively bounced. He asserts that Apple is blocking all mail to Spamcop addresses