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SpamCop To Be Sold To IronPort?
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."
InfoWorld is reporting that SpamCop is about to be sold to IronPort Systems for an undisclosed amount of money...
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.
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What about spamcop's mail service? What will happen to people who pay ~$30/year for zero, and yeah, I mean zero, spam? Accounts sold?
I currently have a SpamCop account, it's my primary address (though I also use Spam Gourmet's aliasing service). Does anyone know if I should start looking for a new email address?
Spamcop is one of the blocklists that has been under perpetual attack by spammers. Recently, spammers started a rather major DDoS against spamcop and several other services.
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, who have been running top-notch anti-abuse DNSBLs that are available to the public.
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).
Will the Deal for an undisclosed amount of money be finalized in the undisclosed location that The Vice President was kept in?
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
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Please try to remember that the end-recipient of spam is not the only one who is hurt by spam.
Relax, everytime one service/company gets bought by a bigger one, folks flip out. Yes, sometimes larger companies have sinister motives but most of the time it is in the best interests of both companies and the industry. Corporate backing == more money == better products (hopefully)
This comment seems oddly familiar
I'm even putting karma on the line to say so.
Ugh....I can't believe the couth of some people...
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Here's the deal.
/. article, but I'm feeling lazy right now).
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?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
From Ironport's Webpage:
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.
SpamCop publishes a list, but whether it is used for scoring or blocking is completely up to the person receiving the list. For example, you state that you like SpamAssassin - one of the filters that is used by SA to score spam is the SpamCop blacklist. Also keep in mind that publishing this list is only one of the benefits that SpamCop provides. I use the reporting service to report spam (and incidentally, it's these reports that go into the creation of the blacklist.)
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.
They have funded the continued development of Python with continuations, called Stackless, by hiring the original author part-time.
The email service itself lets you decide which techniques and/or lists you wish to use to filter your mail: Spam Assassin scores, Blacklists (you can even use Spamcop's email service but not their own blacklist), or simply by country.
Ok... So Ironport has 2 main product lines. One for accepting inbound email for multi-site redundant messaging infrastuctures, the other for blasting out huge volumes of mail for marketing campaigns (ahem, SPAM).
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 gateway line (and so did symantec for their mail filtering/av/anti-spam/app firewall appliance) and now they're investing/buying spamcop.
Am I the only one seeing these guys play both sides of the fence? I mean, they've got one division dedicated to optimizing the throughput of their hardware to deliver the maximum spam/sec, while the other group is activly working away setting up spam filtering and blacklisting mail (which quite a bit of probably originated from hardware they made!).
Is it just me or is this kind of odd?
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.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I'm a former direct-mailer (spammer). Yes, Hate me.
.dear lord, will this mean for an extended supscription one would get removed from spamcop?
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?
Welcome to the End
...I think they should have held out for someone like AOL. Picture this: Aol buys spamcop and integrates it into their network. They go, if you don't use our blacklist by middle of next year, you will no longer be able to send us e-mail. That gives a deadline to all of the jokers that are running open relays to get their software configured up or they will not be able to send mail to AOL or anyone else doing business with AOL. That could be a huge self-regulating spam blocker.
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.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
fastmail 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, 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.
I personally opt for SpamAssassin Milter
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 final determination yourself. Spamcop itself does not recommend automatically blocking based on SC listing alone. Spamcop is quite trigger happy because it's largely automated (and unfortunately the DNSBL doesn't include things like volume statistics to help automate it -- I suspect that'd be a commercial value-add). If you want a more carefully researched blacklist, I recommend the spamhaus SBL.
The contact process is documented on spamcop's site. Humans do read and act on it. They're generally a lot more reasonable than, say, the folks on usenet you'll have to speak to if you wind up on SPEWS.
I'd be astroturfing if I told you the overall "safe" solution I recommend, so I'll leave it there.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I stopped using Spamcop when they struck a deal to send data to Cyveillance. Is that going to end?