OT: Spamcop BL - good or dangerous?

[Rose, Bobby]

Mostly when I've looked at addresses that are listed at spamcop, the
addresses are on the temporary blocklist due to the address sending
messages to Spamcop's spamtraps.  It's pretty hard to say it's a mistake
that a legit system emailed a spamtrap unless they are relaying which
then raises other questions.  

-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
[mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Paul
Kelly :: Blacknight Solutions
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 7:12 AM
To: MailScanner discussion
Subject: Re: OT: Spamcop BL - good or dangerous?

Gerard Seibert wrote:
> On Wednesday November 29, 2006 at 06:21:54 (AM) Arthur Sherman wrote:
> 
>> Sometimes I get a message from any of lists I'm subscribed to, that 
>> mail to my address bounces.
>> And as a reason I see Spamcop blocking sender's (legitimate) server.
>>
>> Here comes the question:
>> What would you use instead of Spamcop?
>> It gotta be free service, and the more lists the better: right now, 
>> Spamcop is #1 blocking BL in the logs.
>> I am afraid if I drop it, the blocking will be worse.
> 
> 
> SpamCop does not block legitimate servers. I use SpamCop myself.

I'm sorry, but that is complete rubbish. SpamCop users blatantly report
every and any e-mail they receive even double opt-in mailing lists etc.
It is an extremely dangerous BL to use if you wish to get legitimate
e-mail.

The only rbl of use (at smtp transaction time) is xbl. Anything else
will drop legitimate mail, that is a fact.

We host 16k domains, of which we're scanning around 5000 for spam and
other nasties. We see 200k mails a day through mailscanner with a factor
of 5 being rejected at smtp time by xbl.

We use spamcop in SA to add a few points to the spam score, we've found
that this is the only use for spamcop today. Anything else results in
users complaining on a daily basis that mail is being lost.

Bottom line, Spamcop should not be used by ISP's, HSP's at a bare
minimum at smtp time and for the rest of the people who admin their own
mail servers I would highly recommend not using it. xbl is extremely
safe to use.