Community Spam Notes
Problem reported by J Lee - 2/25/2026 at 10:54 AM
Submitted
Hi Everyone,

This would be a simple version of community notes on x.com

Community spam and virus response. This would be done on a server level or even on a SmarterMail global level.

The end user could turn this on or off in settings or from the Block Sender drop-down.

If x amount of server users mark this email's sender ID and IP as spam, then put these emails in my spam folder or a Suspected Junk foler.

For official newsletters and notices that often get falsely marked as spam you could tie this to the email and domain whitelist.

The end user could set the X value. 

  • Reply
  • Reply All
  • Forward
  • Move
  • Flag
  • Mark Unread
  • Move to Junk
  • Trust Sender
  • Block Sender
  • Community Suspected Spam/Virus 
    • Turn On
    • Set x Value
  • Download EML
  • View Raw Content
  • Delete
  • Delete All in Folder

J. Sebastian Lee Service2Client LLC 6333 E Mockingbird Ste 147 Dallas, TX 75214 - 877.251.3273

Douglas Foster Replied
I am performing manual review of items sent to the Training folder.    My customized external sender warning lets the user know that it is avaiable:
  • To report harmful email, place it Junk Email folder, then delete after 24 hours.
I do not have the option of automatically feeding a spam filter's Bayesian model, but I don't think I would dare.   Manual review of the feedback is helping me block illegitimate and unwanted mail, but it also includes stuff that should be handled differently.  This includes:
  • Essential messages from internal and external sources which are sent to the Junk Email folder, instead of the Deleted Items folder, when the message has been fully processed.
  • External messages that are advertising from our vendors.   The user can be unsubscribed, but the vendor must not be blocked.
SmarterMail has an integral :"Unsubcribe" button which is displayed for messages that it can parse correctly.    I have not decided how to help users notice that it is there and safe to use.   That capability is related to the largeer question of helping users know whether an unsubscribe link is safe or not.   So for the moment, I am doing a lot of unsubscribe that users could do for themselves.

When I do block messages, I have to dig deep to determine which identifier should be blocked.  The attacker's identity could be hidden by impersonation or hidden in the Reply-To field, among other possibilities.    In some cases, the attacker's identity is fully obfuscated and the only available response is an Abuse report to the attacker's hosting service (if that service is legitimate.)
J Lee Replied
True there are also the no-reply@yourdomain.com sent from googlecontentusers. These tend to get through also. We wouldn't want user inedvertenly blocking their own domain. 

J. Sebastian Lee Service2Client LLC 6333 E Mockingbird Ste 147 Dallas, TX 75214 - 877.251.3273

J Lee Replied
We are seeing a huge amount of what I call AI spam. The spam email address and domain, from what I can tell, are used only once or twice. So blocking the *@spam.com is useless. The content is different, so pattern matching is not working. The domains, spf, dmarc, dkim all are good. The spam piggybacks on known brand names, so you can content block "Lowes." A Community spam and virus response is looking more like a good option. 

J. Sebastian Lee Service2Client LLC 6333 E Mockingbird Ste 147 Dallas, TX 75214 - 877.251.3273

Douglas Foster Replied
How is your community spam idea different from RBLs like SpamHaus or the proprietary reputation data maintained by the commercial filtering vendor.    The typical vendor pitch is all about how they see more email than everybody else, so they block bad stuff first.   For the problem you state, it just does not work.   By the time that an attack is detected and publicized, the attacker as changed tactics.   Besides, if none of us know how to detect this stuff reliably, then pooling our ignorance cannot make us smarter.

Email has been operating for a long time on a bad security model:   "If I cannot prove that the message is harmful, then I have to deliver it to the user."    The foolishness of this model should be self-evident.   If the global mailstream is more than 75% unwanted messages, and I pick a random message to deliver, what is the probability that it is unwanted and possibly harmful?    More than 75 percent, of course.

Your office building probably has a reception area for receiving visitors.   It slows them down, but that is not a reason to give every random stranger free access to your building.    In email, the reception area for unknown persons is called Quarantine.   When you start quarantining every message with unknown reputation, you will have hope of acheiving safe email communication.


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