[Scspamcop] Re: SpamCop regard responses to complainants as abuse

[Blue Rock]

"Anthony Edwards" <anthony.edwards at uk.easynet.net> wrote:
> My view may be coloured by my own preference and prejudice -
> any time I send an abuse complaint, if I don't receive a credible
> response informing me in a timely manner that the incident has been
> investigated and appropriate Acceptable Use Policy enforcement action
> taken, my view of the integrity and hat colour of the ISP concerned
> reduces significantly.
>
> In contrast, if I do receive such a response, that encourages me to
> regard the ISP concerned as a white hat, responsible member of the
> Internet community.
>
> Is such an attitude outdated?  Is it now the concensus that responding
> to abuse complainants informing them that their complaint has been
> handled is abusive in and of itself?
>
> I would be interested in the views of SpamCop users who post here.

Anthony,

I have been a SpamCop reporter for nearly one year now.  In that time, I
have reported thousands of  spam messages (I have used up 40-50 MB of
reporting fuel).

Today, I received my first, and only human response to such a report - and,
it just so happens, that was from you.

I think you are right.  It is nice to find out that some provider out there
is actually reading those reports, and acting on them.  Reporting spam
becomes a boring routine.  Yes, I know it contributes to the block list, but
I am beginning to think that the spammers aren't really affected by those.
The volume of spam I receive continues to increase, and much of it still
makes it through my spamassassin filter (which does use the SCBL in scoring
spam).

SpamCop's preference settings allow me to determine whether I receive only
replies from humans, or whether I receive both automated and human replies,
in response to reports I send.  To me, the automated replies are
meaningless, and I suspect that in many cases those reports go nowhere other
than the bit bucket.  So, I have set my preference to receive only replies
from humans.

It is unrealistic to expect that the abuse desks would have the time or
manpower to personally respond to every complaint.  If I understand the
system correctly, in order for you to generate a reply to a report, such
that it is not flagged as "automated" by SpamCop's system, you would have
had to have answered some form of challenge.  That would make the task of
personally replying to a SpamCop report even more burdensome.

For those SpamCop users who don't want to be bothered, I would suggest that
they add a third setting - to not receive any replies at all.

I see from other replies to your post here, that others don't feel the same.
They probably have good reasons for that.  But, a common complaint I have
read in this group, is that many reporters eventually get a sense of
uselessness, and begin to think that thier efforts are going to waste (see
posts with titles such as "I'm getting discouraged", "am I at least annoying
the spammers?", "Is it really worth while to report spam anymore?", etc.)

I think it would be really beneficial if SpamCop reporters were able to get
some sort of feedback that indicated thier efforts were actually doing some
good.  Unfortunately, I don't have a great suggestion as to what form such
feedback would take.

For me, at least, I did not think that your reply was more spam.  Any email
coming from SpamCop's servers is routed into a separate folder by my email
system, so I immediately recognized it for what it was.  I actually
considered posting a message here, saying "Hey - look at this!  Some abuse
desks actually do read these reports!"

So, my view is: thanks for being a responsible member of the internet
community!  And, thanks for letting me know that at least one of my reports
was read!