Submit a Spam Sample

How to submit a spam sample to SophosLabs.

If you received spam that was not detected by your Sophos software, you can submit a sample to SophosLabs.

By forwarding spam to SophosLabs, your users can help Sophos in its ongoing efforts to improve the accuracy of spam heuristics.

What to do

It is preferred that you send samples as RFC-2822 attachments. Submitting in any other format can cause the loss of key message content, which may prevent SophosLabs from effectively analyzing the samples. A similar procedure is required if you want to submit spam false positives to SophosLabs.

From Microsoft Outlook:

  1. Create a new email message addressed to is-spam@labs.sophos.com.
  2. Drag and drop the spam sample from the inbox onto the new email message.
  3. Send the email message.
Note
Alternatively, you can deploy the Sophos Outlook Add-in, which allows email senders to report spam messages to Sophos with one click of a button on their Microsoft Outlook toolbar. For more information, see the "Sophos Outlook Add-In Deployment Guide."

From Mozilla Thunderbird:

  1. Select the spam sample.
  2. From the toolbar chooseMessage > Forward > Attachment.
  3. Add is-spam@labs.sophos.com to the recipient list.
  4. Send the email message.

From other email clients:

With other email clients, use the option 'Forward As Attachment'. You may want to discuss this with Sophos Technical Support before sending in a sample in this way.

Submitting spam false positives to SophosLabs:

Use the same method as described above for spam samples, except samples should be sent to not-spam@labs.sophos.com.

Further information

  • Spam samples sent to 'is-spam' as RFC-2822 attachments will be automatically processed by systems within SophosLabs.
  • You will not receive feedback for emails sent to 'is-spam'.
  • Samples sent to 'is-spam' will not necessarily be considered to be, or detected as, spam.
If you need more information or guidance, contact Sophos Technical Support.