R. F.

Where to begin. Both are underdeveloped, missing too many usable clues to the real culprits. On the sender side, almost always concludes it is the recipient's own email servers that initiated the spam, but anyone knows that's rarely if ever the case. On the link side, it gets worse. Many links now are either redirects (often multiple redirects to final host URL), or use simple Hex encoding that should be child's play to decode.

Yet Spamcop does neither. Hex encoded or even partially encoded links (the ones it %nn%nn... to replace text characters) come back as unidentified. Boggles the mind that these aren't resolved into a text link that can reveal the host site. Another failure is to examine links for redirects to find the final target, again revealing the host site. Yet another failure is to convert shortened URLs ("tinyurls" like bit.ly, goo. Gl, cntr. Click, etc.) to their full URL link, and reveal the host site.

These are not difficult to do. There are dozens of external sites that can do both the Hex and tinyurl conversions. But do you really want to have to manually do all this on the side, substituting it back into the spam text before submitting to SpamCop, just so SpamCop can do its job? This is not rocket science for SpamCop, or if it is, someone is completely asleep at the wheel.

And what is up with all the devnull abuse reports, essentially saying no abuse report actually went to the offending host site, but just went to File 13 as a "statistical report". Well, that is a waste of time and effort for the user, because now you have to package up your own abuse report with the message and headers, and send it yourself. Sort of a thanks for nothing.

In the end, it looks like someone started something at SpamCop that spammers have long since found how to work around, rendering the use of the site limited at best. Is it just a dying cash cow, with no new development? Are they that unaware of their own failures to resolve links that are barely hidden? All I can say is, only the most amateur of spam mailers will get reported by SpamCop. But those newbie spammers must not be aware of well-circulated but simple tricks to thwart SpamCop's analysis. At which point, you have to ask, what good is this site except to make you think it is your weapon in the war on spam and phishing, and please send them money?