Empath, thanks. This is clearly an issue you are very passionate about, and you certainly exceeded my expectations in offering the information I sought! I appreciate it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I won't get into a big debate here over the merits (or not) of Spamcop vs. other spam blocking techniques, nor about the alleged ethics of Julian Haight. I will offer some tidbits that might be of practical value to those deciding what to do about their spam problem.
In the Spamcop email account, anything flagged as spam is stored in a "Held Mail" folder that I can review whenever I want; nothing is actually deleted until I do so myself, or possibly until a certain number of days elapses, though I've never seen that happen. I tend to review my held mail each weekend (sometimes once every couple weekends) to make sure nothing valuable was tossed.
Anything on the whitelist is kept regardless of any other filters in effect. Similarly, anything on the blacklist is tossed (into the held mail folder) regardless of any other filters. Not sure what happens when the same thing is in both whitelist AND blacklist, but I know it wouldn't be the smartest thing in the world to do! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
There are a number of filters to choose from; here's a quick copy-and-paste:
<ul type="square">[*]SpamCop Blacklist (bl.spamcop.net)
[*]SPEWS level 1 (spews.relays.osirusoft.com)
[*]Osirusoft open relay inputs (inputs.relays.osirusoft.com)
[*]ORDB open relays (relays.ordb.org)
[*]Spamhaus Blacklist (spamhaus.relays.osirusoft.com)
[*]South Korea (the country) (korea.services.net)
[*]Osirusoft Open Proxies (socks.relays.osirusoft.com)
[*]monkeys.com open proxies (proxies.relays.monkeys.com)
[*]China (the country) (cn.rbl.cluecentral.net)
[*]Nigeria (nigeria.blackholes.us)
[*]Argentina (argentina.blackholes.us)
[*]Brazil (brazil.blackholes.us)
[/list]
The key point on the filters is that each and every one of them, including the "SpamCop Blacklist" itself, can be enabled or disabled at the user's discretion at any time. So if Spamcop is abusing their blacklist as has been alleged (not sure if they do or not, just trying to be objective for the time being), you can actually stop using it! Seems odd, but there it is.
In addition to all the above, Spamcop recently began using the SpamAssassin heuristics-based filtering system, which essentially looks through the incoming emails for phrases, technical details (colors, font sizes, positions of things, etc.), etc., that it associates with spam. SpamAssassin then assigns a "score" between 0 and 10 to the email, with higher scores associated with a higher likelihood of the message being spam. The user can choose any particular threshold for tossing mail into the held mail folder; for example, I toss anything scored 5 or higher. The user can also disable the SpamAssassin filter entirely just as any of the other filters can be disabled.
In practice, I have
every filter activated for my account, plus I've got a fair number of entries in both my whitelist and my blacklist at this point. Each week I receive roughly 2000 spam messages that are caught and tossed into the held mail folder; I would estimate that perhaps 100 spam messages during the course of the week still make it into my Inbox. Also in a typical week,
nothing that I would have wanted gets tossed, though occassionally (once every several weeks?) I might find a couple messages I wanted that got tossed. When I do, I move them back to my Inbox and usually add them to my whitelist so it doesn't happen again. I will say that the majority of those "false positives" (mail I wanted that got tossed) are promotional mails, but they're ones I want to receive.
What I can say with certainty is that in practice, my Spamcop-based email account works well for me. Is it the best choice, or the one on the highest moral ground? I honestly don't know; that's something for additional research.
