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(Answer) (Category) SpamCop FAQ : (Category) SpamCop Parsing and Reporting Service : (Category) How do I get my email program to reveal the full, unmodified email? : (Category) Microsoft products :
Microsoft Outlook (all versions)

Outlook does not properly forward mail with the headers and message body intact. It is not possible to use SpamCop's email submission system with Outlook unless you use one of the below add-on programs or similar macro.

As a result of a fairly lengthy and intense investigation of Outlook 2003 and 2007: Outlook does *not* include full and accurate headers when you forward spams as attachments. It reorders the Received headers, which makes them untrustworthy, as well as deleting/not forwarding other headers including X-headers, which is of less importance but which may loose some valuable information needed by ISPs/hosting companies.

The result of the 'scrambled" or reordered Received headers means that SpamCop does not reliably know where the injection point of the spam is.

Outlook is reordering the headers, not SpamCop.

Thusly, if you are running Outlook you *may not* forward your spams as an attachment for processing. You can copy/paste or look into running mailwasher or some other 3rd party add-in/add-on but you must stop forwarding as an attachment.

Outlook (97, 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007

Email submission system

It is not possible to use the email submission system with Outlook. The add-on programs mentioned above will not work with Outlook. You must use the web form to submit spam if you use Outlook as your email client.

Web Form Submission

Microsoft Outlook 97 may require an update called the Internet Mail Enhancement Patch in order to display the email headers AT ALL.

Outlook 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007

Web Form Submission

Outlook does not display the Internet headers and message body together for submission using the standard web form. To submit spam from Outlook you must use the special Outlook/Eudora workaround form, which is accessible from the initial log-in page. Users of Outlook may now paste spam headers and body into a special two-part form, and SpamCop will do its best to patch them together. It should be noted that even with this, or any other work-around discovered to date, Outlook users simply cannot get the full email source. All Outlook add-ons or work-arounds are only partial solutions, they do not actually get the full email source. Users are encouraged to complain about this deficiency to Microsoft.

How to use the website submission form...

  1. Make sure your account is set to use the two-part "workaround form".
  2. Open the message in a separate window (double click)
  3. Under the View menu select Options
  4. Copy the text in the Internet Headers window (unfortunately it doesn't include the message itself).
  5. Paste into the Headers box on the SpamCop page.
  6. Close the options window
  7. If the spam header shows "text/html":
    1. Right click on the body of the spam, and choose 'View Source'.
    2. This automatically opens the HTML code up in Notepad.
  8. Copy the entire message body.
  9. Paste into email body box on the SpamCop page.

A registry hack is available to make Outlook 2003 display the full email source code, including HTML, MIME and Base64 encoding in the pop-up window that formerly only displayed the header information. This means it is possible to get the full header and body source code in one step for pasting in the webform box. This does not fix the problem of not being able to use the email submission system with a stock Outlook installation.

Follow the instructions on the Outlook Tips page for adding a registry key and value. Note that is "All", not "AII" in the parameter.

Once done, when you right-click on the message in the message list and choose "Options", the box with the "Internet Headers:" now contains the headers and full message source of the email body, which you can paste into the single-part form on the SpamCop reporting page.

Email Submission System

Four add-on products have been created by SpamCop users to help streamline this process. SpamCop does not endorse or even test these programs. Links are provided for the convenience of our users. Questions and support must be directed to the provider of the program.



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