SpamCop To Be Sold To IronPort? 111
Iphtashu Fitz writes "InfoWorld is reporting that SpamCop is about to be sold to IronPort Systems for an undisclosed amount of money. According to the InfoWorld article, the announcement will be made on Nov. 25, and will include IronPort investing $1 million in SpamCop to keep the service up and running. IronPort apparently makes use of the SpamCop DNS blocklist in their spam filtering products and this move is seen as a way to help support SpamCop and formalize their relationship. IronPort is reported as stating that the SpamCop blocklist data will remain freely available to the public."
Re:Spamcop's list of websites (Score:3, Insightful)
Please try to remember that the end-recipient of spam is not the only one who is hurt by spam.
Deja vu Comments? (Score:3, Informative)
Great. Slashdot subscriber spammer! MOD DOWN! (Score:3, Informative)
Ugh....I can't believe the couth of some people...
undisclosed...? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, I don't know about you, but no price is too small for that great selection of penis enlargement offers they must have at their fingertips.
spam is the spice of life (Score:1)
I got one the other day, with a subject line saying "upgrade your wang".
I snorted my coffee through my nose laughing at that one.
Re:spam is the spice of life (Score:2)
_
web site hosts [cherry-web...ing.com.au]
webmail.spamcop.net ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:webmail.spamcop.net ? (Score:1, Insightful)
-=Someone=-
IronPort's Reputation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Calm down (Score:3, Informative)
The example of Hotmail (Score:1)
Look at what happened when Hotmail, a service that provides free e-mail accounts, got bought. Microsoft turned it into a pay service and cut down what had been available to free customers. For example, free customers are more strictly limited in how much they can hold in their inboxes and how large of attachments they can send or receive. Others seem to agree that Microsoft ruined Hotmail [google.com].
Re:IronPort's Reputation? (Score:5, Informative)
If I've ever met a group of people who understand the Spam Problem, it's them.
This is *fantastic* news! The guys at IronPort Systems make the best damned mail routers I've ever seen. Bar none.
Their SenderBase [senderbase.org] and Bonded Sender [bondedsender.com] programs are really a lead into solving the SPAM problem.
Both products integrate directly into the IronPort C60 mail appliances and automatically apply what they call "reputation filters" which let you control SPAM. You can throttle based on the "reputation score" from SenderBase, as well as traditional methods.
The fact that BrightMail is integrated also is a major bonus.
Back to the original point, I'd definitely give IronPort a chance here. They're a GREAT group of people (I've met everyone from the CEO on down), understand e-mail, and really want to do the Right Thing.
Check them out at: http://www.ironport.com
Unfortunately, my company's rules won't let me give a public testimonial as a satisfied customer, but believe me, if I could, I would!!
Is it just me.... (Score:2)
Eh, mabbie i'm just too damned cynical for my own good. Glad to see i'm in good company, however
No offense to the parent poster. Just too many years to Microsoft and SCOisms.
Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not a fan of stackless.
Re:Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. (Score:2)
burris
Re:Iorn Port is also OSS friendly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Stackless, which incidentally isn't the best name for it (it's based on an architecture that is best described now as "many stacks", not stackless), is a patch to Python that started off as offering first-class continuations (a continuation can be described as taking a snapshot of the run state and providing a sort of "goto" to get back to th
Re:IronPort's Reputation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IronPort's Reputation? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:IronPort's Reputation? (Score:1)
its a good thing those of us in this elite and secret club got to hear you speak (shit what was your codename again), anyway. thanks for the blatant^H^H^H^H^H^H^ helpful info !!
Potential advantage of corporate backing (Score:5, Informative)
Antispam services that have limited operating resources (such as the now defunct monkeys.com and osirusoft.com) -- while extremely useful services, simply didn't have the means to withstand major attacks. Those two services had to be shut down because the owners could not deal with the onslaught. Spamhaus, and probably now Spamcop will be able to withstand attacks.
Kudos to any company that joins in on the spam fighting effort. Also worth mentioning are the good folks at Easynet [easynet.nl], who have been running top-notch anti-abuse DNSBLs that are available to the public.
I use SpamCop for e-mail... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I would never use the SpamCop blacklist for completely blocking e-mail - only filtering. Why? Any one "possible spam" message processed through its system lands the server on the blacklist - which means one user that sends out a spam message (or even a message that someone thinks is spam or unwanted) that is then processed as spam through SpamCop puts the mail server onto the blacklist. The server will not be removed for a minimum of 24 hours.
This means that systems that are active against thwarting spammers can still end up on the blacklist for 24 hours (or longer - you can report e-mail for up to 3 days after it was sent).
Re:I use SpamCop for e-mail... (Score:1)
Re:I use SpamCop for e-mail... (Score:1)
Noooo, minimum two reports from one user within seven days is enough for a blacklisting
Re:I use SpamCop for e-mail... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not quite correct. SpamCop uses a fairly simple, but quite effective weighting system that combines the number of reports and the age of reports to decide whether to block an IP or not. You can find out the specifics here [spamcop.net] if you want, but in a nutshell a minimum of *two* reports are required for a listing of just 24 hours. All IPs will be delisted 48 hours after the last spam complaint, which can be upto 5 days after the last spam was sent, as you imply.
Yes, mistakes can and do happen (I've seen Amazon and a popular mailing list blocked), which is why SpamCop recommends you don't use it as a DNSBL, but despite that I have found it to be the most accurate blocklist of all. I use three DNSBLs on my server (SpamCop, Spamhaus and my own local one) with an SMTP error verbose enough to pick up bounces. I've seen just *two* false positives, one from a mailing list and another an advert from Amazon. A simple "amazon.com OK" in my mail config fixed that permanantly, but that's not really an applicable solution for a big multi-user server.
If that kind of filtering makes you nervous, then a better solution is to configure something like SpamAssassin to check the DNSBLs for you and assign a positive score to the hits. If you adjust your SpamAssassin scores to reflect your personal confidence in each enabled service then the results are superb. For the last three months I've been running with the three DNSBLs listed above blocking IPs outright and SpamAssassin checking about half a dozen more for a match amongst all its other checks, plus a few custom ones and adjusted scores. The results are stunning:
- Two minor false positives on the DNSBLs
- Zero false positives from SpamAssassin (you rock!)
- Three spams of the meaningless content type arrived in my inbox (fixed by tweaking some SpamAssassin scores)
- A few thousand legitimate emails received
- Probably a similar number blocked or removed - who cares?
Spam problem? What spam problem?Undisclosed (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like a very good thing, IronPort will benifit by being able to tightly integrate SpamCop into hardware and SpamCop will become better due to less downtime due to DDoS attacks
I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferent.. (Score:3, Interesting)
SpamCop works on fighting spam. They get an investor.
Happy day!
Um...I've read several posts that say IronPorts is a good company, so no worries about current customers being abused - good, so my internal gut feelings about privacy issues are abated.
I haven't used SpamCop personally, so this is only an impression, however I'm a strict hater of blacklists (blocklists?), and that's how SpamCop is being described.
I personally opt for SpamAssassin Milter, although any method of plugging into SA would suit me, simply because it's so highly customizable, open source, and I don't have to worry about a list going down or suddenly blocking everyone, which has NEVER happened recently (would have linked to the appropriate
Now am I that far off? Are there redeeming qualities about SpamCop that I'm overlooking that make this blocklist a good thing? Who controls who's blocked? Is it fair? Is there a human contact when things go awry?
Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen (Score:5, Informative)
Funnily enough, SpamCop recently incorporated SpamAssassin for the pop/webmail service that they provide.
As for getting on and off, there is a deputy you can e-mail (a live human being), in addition to the standard set of webforms etc. SpamCop these days is a very benign service (for the most part). The fact that SpamCop is under almost constant attack by spammers trying to DDOS them, trying to overload their systems with fake accounts, etc. tells me that spammers consider SpamCop to be a major threat.
Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen (Score:1)
Yes there are live people behind Spamcop, I've interacted with a deputy on a few occasions after either erroneous reporting or joe jobs against customers.
Spamcop is a very handy service and very low key when it comes to getting listed and re
Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen (Score:1)
As for Black/Block lists I do not really know why everyone makes such a fuss about the block lists.
I need to elaborate a bit so bear with me.
A block list is just a specially configured DNS that returns special addresses for servers that chipped in their bit for spam. (Nothing wro
Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen (Score:3, Interesting)
The e
Re:I don't know what to be: happy, sad, indifferen (Score:3, Informative)
You do realize of course that two of the checks in SpamAssassin are for Spamcop and the Ironport Bonded Sender whitelist?
Now am I that far off? Are there redeeming qualities about SpamCop that I'm overlooking that make this blocklist a good thing? Who controls who's blocked? Is it fair? Is there a human contact when things go awry?
Spamcop blocks nothing. It simply tells you whether an IP address is on the list and provides you with a URL to use to make the fin
Nice (Score:1)
SpamCop/IronPort needs to be careful (Score:1, Informative)
Ironport? (Score:4, Interesting)
IronPort's Virtual Gateway technology allows a single IronPort to deliver separate campaigns on unique IP addresses. This technology ensures that if one campaign has a problem with less than perfect spam filters at receiving ISPs, it won't impact other campaigns on separate Virtual Gateways. Each IronPort A60 supports up to 256 unique outbound IP addresses.
Doesn't this sound a but like a spamming appliance? Basically it's saying that if one of your IPs gets blacklisted for spamming, that's ok because it will use a different one automatically.
Re:Ironport? (Score:2, Informative)
These big companies' mailservers are often blacklisted as spammers because of:
- the volume of email they send out,
- recipients who forget they've opted into receiving mail and report the mail as SPAM,
- etc.
IronPort's products are supposed to help these companies out and ensure
Re:Ironport? (Score:1)
Re:Ironport? (Score:3, Informative)
True, a spammer could abuse the system, but why would they need too spend the money on the device in the first place? If t
Possible comfort-based repercussions? (Score:1)
Hrm... Sounds Fishy... (Score:2, Interesting)
I did some research on these guys awhile back mainly for their inbound smtp gateway stuff, for a multi-site forwarding mess I'm currently trying to straighten out.
Now about 3 months ago they announced that they were going to do a deal with brightmail for spam filtering on their inbound mail
Re:Hrm... Sounds Fishy... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm confused -- should there be a ban on efficient mail gateways or something? Spammers don't have the budget for Ironport boxen. They especially won't have the budget to pay for an Ironport bond, because every single complaint will cost them money.
Memories of CDDB (Score:2)
I'm not holding my breath. This all reminds me of another service which would have been squat without the community supplying massive amounts of data for it initially and making it successful.
Yup, CDDB. Purchase it, privatize it, charge certain "strategic partners" for access to data, then eventually block out all free clients and make it totally commercial.
Did Gracenote originally promise to kee
Lets Hope (Score:2)
We just redid our email services and started using Spamcop our first RBL use ever and I'm extremely happy that it's blocking 99% of the mass spammers that have hit us for so long. After seeing the logs I was amazed that we get so much. I'll hold of on donations to spamcop until I know my money will be going towards supporting a free RBL service.
Here's the real test... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please notice (above) that I use my spamcop.net addy here at
It's the users that make SC what it is. If IronPort ever goes to the Dark Side, the users will defect and there will be no SC any more ! I trust also that they understand this and that this is a happy day for the SC folks.
SMTP Servers? (Score:2)
I'm a very satisfied Spamcop customer and have been for about two years now (my e-mail address in this post's "headers" confirms this, depending on how it's obfuscated).
At any rate, the only disadvantage I see with Spamcop is its lack of an SMTP server -- you'd think that they could have some kind of authenticated-SMTP included in the package, but that's not the case. Instead, you're advised to "use your ISP's SMTP server". That advice works most of the time, but you do run into some ISPs with SMTP server
Re:SMTP Servers? (Score:4, Informative)
fastmail [fastmail.fm] will let you use their smtp server for a one time fee of $14.95. which also gets you access to an imap account, web based mail, super good spam filtering, and some other stuff.
i primarily use them for the smtp server nowdays though.
and if you sign up and are feeling generous, you can use "jwilson" as the referrer code and i'll get a kickback of a $1 or something. woo! :)
you may want to go read their official support forums [emailaddresses.com], with regular appearances from the actual developers/owners of the company, to get a feel for what they offer/how they operate, etc.
regardless of the smtp server, their web based mail is super nice. go tell your hotmail using friends to sign up to the free fastmail account (sans-smtp access) instead... fastmail will happily suck mail from existing hotmail accounts, so it makes the transition a bit easier.
Re:SMTP Servers? (Score:2)
Ah -- at first I was concerned about whether it really was "one-time", but it appears that it really is [fastmail.fm]. However, will Fastmail's SMTP server allow me to send mail from my existing spamcop.net address, or only mails with from *@fastmail.fm?
Re:SMTP Servers? (Score:1)
Get a clue, dumbass, you are spammers.
Dear Sweet Crap (Score:4, Informative)
We had 2 IronPort A60's that we would use to pound mail out like insane pixies who had too much sugar.
With SpamCop being owned by Ironport..
This obviously would mean the dependance on spamcop to be a serious regulatory company, would be an idiotic assumption.
Ironport Sells 2 series of devices The A and the C
the A60 is the flagship of the outgoing mail genre, and the C60 is the flagship for blocking the incoming mail.
In basic sense, they sell the ultimate spam machine, as well as the ultimate anti-spam machine.
They're basically Gun Runners, and fairly evil. They will sell you one product to send huge mail campaings, and another to avoid them, its a damn protection racket.
How is this legal in the us?
Good, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a side note, I wonder what will happen to the donated mirror servers. If SpamCop gets funding, are they going to still keep using the freebie public mirror servers or are they going to build their own and start paying for colo space? If they are going to build their own and pay for colo space, that will eat in to that $1Mil pretty fast.
Bye bye SpamCop (Score:2)
We use the Spamcop paid service - Great Service (Score:1)
What about Cyveillance? (Score:2, Interesting)
l33t computer companies (Score:1)
why do these frickin' tech guys have to CamelBack EveryThing?
Ironport inaccuracies (Score:1, Insightful)
First, they started with their own 'senderbase.org' misfeature. Senderbase.org lists addresses in unassigned, reserved, and even multicast ranges as having sent dozens, hundreds or more spam messages. Apparently, they blindly pick up IP addresses forged by spammers in Received headers, and declare the forged IP as the spam origin.
Second, they'll now
Spamcop remains free... for how long? (Score:1)
Don't Panic ... just yet. (Score:2)
Personally, until I have confirmation from the source, I see nothing that warrants getting my knickers into a twist. As of this moment, the purchase plan is nothing but a rumor; kind of like the official release date for Duke Nukem Forever.