FC: SpamCop reportedly backs down, removes Politech from blacklist?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I thank Duncan for his note, and invite SpamCop to confirm. If SpamCop has 
reverted back to its original policy of blacklisting only spammers at the 
lowest level of reasonable granularity -- an IP address -- that seems 
encouraging. But SpamCop's FAQ still says it blacklists entire /24 networks 
merely to punish a few miscreants, so it's unclear what's going on:
http://spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/297.html

Also, thanks to Ed Felten's blog (freedom-to-tinker.com), here's an item 
about Amy Wohl's Opinions newsletter being blacklisted because it's (gasp!) 
hosted at Verio:
http://amywohl.weblogger.com/2002/10/31

BTW I've been asked what Internet providers offer SpamAssassin filtering 
with a POP account. I don't know of a comprehensive list, but I do know the 
Well does.

-Declan

---

From: Duncan Murdoch
To: declan () well com
Subject: More on SpamCop
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 14:08:45 -0500

Declan, feel free to post this to the list.  Please don't include my
email address.

SpamCop has come under a lot of fire here lately because your server
got blacklisted.  It was blacklisted because of a recent change to the
SpamCop listing rules that attempted to stop spammers from round-robin
spamming:  send from a whole block of IPs, with none of them sending
quite enough spam to get listed.

As you know, SpamCop's first goal is to "provide a system which will
flag the most spam with the least 'collateral damage' (flagging of
wanted email)."  The rule change that got your server listed was
attempting to address the "flag most spam" part of this goal, but it
violated the "least collateral damage part".

Guess what? The rule was changed last night.  Politechbot.com is no
longer listed, and it seems pretty unlikely that it will be
incorrectly listed again.  Of course, it's always possible:  people
make mistaken reports sometimes, algorithms don't act as intended, and
so on.

In an earlier thread, jhh () siliconinc net said that the reason some
netblocks aren't listed is because of payoffs to SpamCop.  He gave
this as gossip, but offered 66.197.140.2 as proof.  That net block
looks to me like one of the round-robin spammers I mentioned above
(though I don't know this for sure; maybe everyone there opted-in, and
forgot).  They have been caught by the new rules, and I think it's a
good thing.

The rules that SpamCop uses will always have loopholes that spammers
will try to exploit, and will never be able to be 100% accurate at
letting non-spam pass through.  But give them a break: they're trying.

Duncan Murdoch
A satisfied SpamCop user




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