[PLUG] Help reading an e-mail header please

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Carla Schroder wrote:

> One thing you might try is using SpamCop. www.spamcop.net. It will do the 
> traces and reverse lookups for you, then you can study what it did. Then you 
> can even use it to send abuse reports for you, if you like. I use the Web 
> form, rather than forwarding emails, to see an analysis of the headers right 
> away.

  I will second this suggestion with two caveats. First, sometimes spamcop
gets it wrong; not often, but sometimes. Second, the more important drawback
is that some providers refuse to accept the munged reports spamcop sends;
others just refuse spamcop reports.

  Here I use spamcop when it looks like tracing the correct source will take
more time than I wish to spend on the effort. Otherwise, I trace the source
and send them a canned request to shut down the spammer. For the known spam
factories or relayers, I just add their IP address or domain name to the
appropriate postfix filter.

  I have a couple of related questions for the group, but I'll put them in a
separate thread.

Rich