SpamCop FAQ

SpamCop Parsing and Reporting Service

Parsing and reporting spam with SpamCop - decisions, problems

2/9/00 - SpamCop has begun requiring that spam containing HTML is submitted with the HTML codes intact (funny codes in the body of the message). This prevents erroneous complaints and allows SpamCop to find sites referenced within the HTML. Just because you don't see pretty pictures and colorful text does not mean the email you are viewing does not use HTML coding.

The HTML source is important for three reasons:

1. The HTML tags contain the email and web site addresses, which may not be contained in the plain text. If the spammer includes, for example, "<a href="http://spammer.website.here/">click here!</a>" in the email, then to be able to deal with that website, SpamCop needs the whole thing - just the words "click here!" are useless.
2. The abuse desk receiving the spam may want to match the spam with other copies of the spam, or with their logs. To do this, they need an accurate representation of the email that traveled through their system.
3. Spammers can actually exploit the inaccurate rendering of HTML source to falsely implicate innocent parties. For instance, the HTML code "<a href="http://spammer.website.here/">http://www.whitehouse.gov/</a>" when rendered in an HTML viewer shows only "http://www.whitehouse.gov". If SpamCop accepted that text, it would send abuse reports to the administrator of the Whitehouse web-site rather than the spammer's web-site.

Please re-read the FAQ section for your email software to see if you can meet this requirement.
Email software help

If you do not find a solution there, try the email interface:
Email interface instructions

If neither approach works for you, please join the forum and/or help research the best way to solve the problem using your email software.

Of course, if you subscribe and route your email through the SpamCop filters initially, SpamCop keeps an accurate copy of your email for single-click reporting without email software hassles.