How does v3 handle SPAM?

[Debra]

Nothing else has been stated regarding ellarr's post below:

Originally Posted by ellarr

Here's what should really be done to eliminate spam...

Instead of forcing users to register on the website to be able to submit tickets, any user that sends an email who isn't registered should get a validation link sent as a reply. Until they click on the validation link, their messages sit in a separate queue. If they don't click on the validation link after a user-defined time, the messages get dumped.

You already have the option of sending a validation email message when someone registers on the website so I don't think this would require a whole lot of coding. I was actually surprised that this wasn't already supported when I was testing out the system.

The problems with the bounced tickets was addressed by Neil-UKWSD, however nothing else has been stated in regards to this.

It seems the best solution, however I cannot find that it is in Kayako as of right now. If it is where would I go to set it up? If not, is it planned?

Thanks,
Debra

[sdesort]

I would be perfectly happy if v3's Parser rules had a condition where it would check email HEADERS. Not one of the existing rules will read the SMTP header of the message. We run spamassassin. For our queue mailbox, I have the SA threshold set a little higher than normal so we don't miss any real issues that SA might tag incorrectly. Yet I would like Kayako to enable me to take that "questionable" group of messages that score, for example, between 4 and 6 in SA, and move them to a review queue rather than dumping them right into the primary support queue. This "possible spam" queue would not have the autoresponder turned on. All Kayako has to do is give me a pre-parse rule that could check the SMTP headers so I can look for the SA score value and deal with the message accordingly.

[melody]

Originally Posted by Neil-UKWSD

Hi,

The only change between v2 and v3 that will help with spam is the user registration system.

You can set the email queues to require user registration, emails from none registered addresses are disgarded.

For SPAM prevention outside user registration you would need to install something like SPAM Assassin and poll the emails using POP£ or IMAP after having them scanned by SPAM Assassin.

Hola, necesito un poco de ayuda, pues veo que al sector hispano... no nos dan tanta importancia... (lamentablemente) necesito si alguien puede orientarme o bien pegar aquí lo siguiente:

1- la mejor traducción al español de todo el kayako y que funcione... puesto que todos se la dan de grandes programadores y generan MAS PROBLEMAS QUE ANTES... (SOLO PARA LOS QUE SE SIENTAN ALUDIDOS, NO QUIERO OFENDER)

2- UN LINK PARA DESCARGARME EL WINAPP (Y SU TRADUCCIÓN AL ESP.) Y HE LEIDO QUE EL WINDOWS SP2 DA PROBLEMAS... COMO LO SOLUCIONARON?


3- COMO SE HACE PARA QUE TE ENVIE UNA ALERTA POR SMS, DÓNDE CONTRATAR ESTE SERVICIO ETC ETC.

4 - IMPORTANTE: COMO HACER PARA COLOCAR LA IMAGEN DE OFFLINE-ON-LINE EN OTRA WEB Y QUE SALTE DENTRO DE LA MISMA. SUPONGO QUE CON ALGUN "include" o "iframe".


CON ESTE POST, CREO QUE SERÁ DE AYUDA TOTAL Y DEFINITIVA PARA NUESTRA COMUNIDAD HISPANA, YA QUE VEO UN TERRIBLE KAOS CON "K" DE KAYAKO

Saludos desde españa, Maximiliano Peiso

[netjunkie]

I just finally got my mail pipe to work and hey presto I have no spam comming into my system at all.

I do not have the registration feature set, so what happened to all my "beloved spam".

Ok not that im not greatful that ive finally gotten rid of in excess of 300 spam mails per day, but im a bit worried about genuine mail.

Is there any way to see whats being discarded, cause im a bit to impressed by this magical dissapearance of my my "Cherrished Spam" and dont know what to do with the free hour I know have.

On a serious note...what on earth is going on.

Regards

netjunkie.

[Francisco]

Originally Posted by netjunkie

I just finally got my mail pipe to work and hey presto I have no spam comming into my system at all.

I do not have the registration feature set, so what happened to all my "beloved spam".

How did you achieved this?

[netjunkie]

To tell you the truth I just dont know.

I have now turned the registration on to see the diff, which my non "support" customers have complained about, so I may turn registration off again.

But I honestly dont know what has happened to the spam, and i am equally concerned about the possiblity of genuine mail failing.

Regards

Netjunkie.

[warsky]

I've read through this thread and I'm surprised no one has heard of challenge / response systems. These systems do what was described on one of the posts: if an email is marked as spam, an automatic reply is sent to the user and they have to do something (varies by software) to verify that they are human. Older systems would send a reply email with a link and the user would have to go to a website and enter a few codes and the email would then be allowed through. This, however, creates lots of traffic and bounce backs for all the invalid email addresses. We just switched to a system from mailtraq which instead of sending a reply email, rejects the email with a message and a temporary address that the user can send the email to and bypass the spam detection. By rejecting the email, invalid email addresses won't cause a bounce back to our system, but valid users will see the message.

In my opinion, putting anti-spam in eSupport is a waste of Kayako's development time. There are plenty of other software packages available that do anti-spam just fine and its very easy to control external to the eSupport package. Its like buying a stereo system. You can buy an all in one unit, but it will do all the features not very well. Or you can buy individual components, from different manufacturers, where each manufacturer can do their part very well and have a much better system. I would rather see Kayako work on support features to eSupport rather then things that can be done elsewhere.

Our plan is to use a combination of web forms and challenge response. We'll have a web form for submitting tickets (the one built into eSupport) and we'll challenge/response all emails coming to support@, probably with a message that simply provides a link to the form. To handle replies (so users can reply to ticket notifications), we'll use some weird address like support834@ or similar, or we'll use the temporary address feature of MailTraq, which allows you to create email addresses that expire after a certain amount of time (say 3 months). This should provide 99.99% protection and we won't lose valid emails because mismarked spam gets an bounce back to the user.

[Francisco]

Originally Posted by warsky

Our plan is to use a combination of web forms and challenge response. We'll have a web form for submitting tickets (the one built into eSupport) and we'll challenge/response all emails coming to support@, probably with a message that simply provides a link to the form. To handle replies (so users can reply to ticket notifications), we'll use some weird address like support834@ or similar, or we'll use the temporary address feature of MailTraq, which allows you to create email addresses that expire after a certain amount of time (say 3 months). This should provide 99.99% protection and we won't lose valid emails because mismarked spam gets an bounce back to the user.

Hmm,

This sounds interesting, if we could integrate the Kayako's eSupport SUBMIT TICKET HTML code into a page OUTSIDE esupport itself, and if it had CAPTCHA verification it would rock.

Francisco

[leyton01]

there is no perfect solution for spam at the moment..

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/challenge-response.html

[warsky]

Originally Posted by leyton01

there is no perfect solution for spam at the moment..

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/challenge-response.html

An interesting article, and I agree on many points which guides us on how we implement C/R. This is why our C/R system only does C/R on emails that have been determined as spam by our baysen and other filters. It also does not send a reply email, but rather a rejection, which avoids many of the problems listed in this article (circlular bounces, being blacklisted yourself).

Also, the reason we use C/R is not to prevent spam so much as to make sure a valid user gets some sort of response that their email was rejected. The problem with all other systems that simply filter email into a spam folder is that at some point, a real person needs to go through that folder and check to make sure the system didn't accidently mis-classify a valid email. With the quantity we get, this is not viable, though still possible. In addition to sending a C/R, we file the email for 7 days, so if someone is bored and wants to double check the C/R responses, they can review the list.

The important point is that we don't blindly C/R everyone, but rather use it as a way of notifying the user sending the email and giving them a chance of proactiving responding, rather then waiting for us to go through our spam folder where we may, or may not, catch their email among all the spam.

That all said, #6 on the list still concerns me, though I'm not sure if our C/R is any different than when a spammer just sends to random addresses on our domain. These all get rejected as not found, and so cause the same traffic as our C/R which generates a rejection.

#11 is the most interesting. Though it does little to solve the immediate problem, if widely implemented, it could help control spam in general. Though I must say, like the continual battle against software piracy, my guess is that the spammers would just come up with a work-around if widely implemented.

[warsky]

Originally Posted by Francisco

Hmm,

This sounds interesting, if we could integrate the Kayako's eSupport SUBMIT TICKET HTML code into a page OUTSIDE esupport itself, and if it had CAPTCHA verification it would rock.

Francisco

In what way do you need it outside eSupport? With templates and template groups, I'd think you could make ticket submission look like its outside, when actually its not. Doesn't ticket submission offer a captcha option?

[christinasc]

I have noticed even with Emails accepted only upon user registration, and CAPTCHA enabled on the submit ticket forms,

I am STILL getting spam regardless, simply because there are people who will click on a webpage and fill in form and verify CAPTCHA image just for the sake of submitting SPAM.

It's irritating and annoying but there are people who are paid to do this.

[Racked Hosting]

Well, I have not set registration to on because most customers don't want to register and then send email. So, when I pipe the tickets, I get a lot of spam. However, when I use pop3, I can restrict quite a bit of spam using SpamAssasin, etc.

Now, to get rid of most of the spam, headers must be checked like they were in v2 (as told by others).

Btw, I just got two spam tickets while posting this :P