Wow, This Is So Sad...

[JustBoo]

I used to frequent this place years ago. It's been turned into a
wholesale Nike Knockoff Outlet, in essence an outlet for China Inc. That
and apparently a pop-psychology project management class as well.

The RIAA can find one woman through her IP address and win a ~2 million
dollar judgment for songs she *might* have shared, yet somehow no one
can find "people" literally sending a million spamming emails a day.

The decline of western civilization continues unabated. Weeeeeeeee....

Not all those who wander are lost. - J.R.R. Tolkien

 

[Default User]

I used to frequent this place years ago. It's been turned into a
wholesale Nike Knockoff Outlet, in essence an outlet for China Inc.

As has been mentioned in several previous threads, there are news
providers that are doing a fine job of filtering spam at the server. I
seen none of this sort of thing.




Brian

 

[Bill Davy]

As has been mentioned in several previous threads, there are news
providers that are doing a fine job of filtering spam at the server. I
seen none of this sort of thing.




Brian

News.Individual.NET is one.

 

[Lars Uffmann]

News.Individual.NET is one.

Is not, sadly - I am using news.cis.dfn.de, which is - as I was assured
by their support people on phone - the very same thing, just for
organisations attached to the german research network. And I get quite a
lot of mass-spam here and in other newsgroups.

I'll maybe ask their staff though, if they have configured them
differently now...

Kind Regards,

Lars

 

[Ian Collins]

Is not, sadly - I am using news.cis.dfn.de, which is - as I was assured
by their support people on phone - the very same thing, just for
organisations attached to the german research network. And I get quite a
lot of mass-spam here and in other newsgroups.

Anything NIN misses, simple client filters can catch - most of the time!

 

[Noah Roberts]

As has been mentioned in several previous threads, there are news
providers that are doing a fine job of filtering spam at the server. I
seen none of this sort of thing.

Well, my ISP's servers suck balls at it. It's become pretty hard to
weed through all the spam to get at actual questions/answers.

 

[Default User]

Well, my ISP's servers suck balls at it. It's become pretty hard to
weed through all the spam to get at actual questions/answers.

NIN costs 10 euros/year (about $14US when I reupped a week or so ago).




Brian

 

[Default User]

Anything NIN misses, simple client filters can catch - most of the
time!

When the mass spam first started, I was mostly seeing it in popular
rec.* groups and the like. I produced a number of filters for the spam
at that time. After NIN implemented their measures I pretty much
stopped having to create any. I still need new ones for the trolls and
idiots, of course.

I believe NIN uses cleanfeed:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(Usenet_spam_filter)>




Brian

 

[Juha Nieminen]

As has been mentioned in several previous threads, there are news
providers that are doing a fine job of filtering spam at the server. I
seen none of this sort of thing.

That's fighting the symptoms, not the cause. The problem is not
servers which don't filter, but servers which send the spam in the first
place.

 

[Default User]

That's fighting the symptoms, not the cause. The problem is not
servers which don't filter, but servers which send the spam in the
first place.

Irrelevant, as there's very little that can be done about it. And
there's really only one, that's Google Groups. They care little, and
there really isn't anyone who can make them care.




Brian

 

[Florian Schlichting]

Is not, sadly - I am using news.cis.dfn.de, which is - as I was assured
by their support people on phone - the very same thing, just for
organisations attached to the german research network. And I get quite a
lot of mass-spam here and in other newsgroups.

"quite a lot" - can you be a bit more specific? Where do you see that?
(email welcome)

At news.individual.net / news.cis.dfn.de (which indeed mostly share
group list and articles), we've decided to implement several filters
specifically for articles from Google, catching over 1500 arriving over
the last 24 hours alone. This doesn't prevent one or two spammy articles
getting through once in a while, and sometimes one wonders because they
should have been really obvious. But if the filters were more aggressive
we'd see a lot of false positives, which IMHO is even more unacceptable
than spam.

Yet if you find a group with more than just a few spammy articles over
the last week (and it's not just very new articles disappearing a few
minutes after arrival), we'd like to know as it's likely a case for
manual intervention.

Regards,
Florian Schlichting

 

[osmium]

"quite a lot" - can you be a bit more specific? Where do you see that?
(email welcome)

At news.individual.net / news.cis.dfn.de (which indeed mostly share
group list and articles), we've decided to implement several filters
specifically for articles from Google, catching over 1500 arriving over
the last 24 hours alone. This doesn't prevent one or two spammy articles
getting through once in a while, and sometimes one wonders because they
should have been really obvious. But if the filters were more aggressive
we'd see a lot of false positives, which IMHO is even more unacceptable
than spam.

Yet if you find a group with more than just a few spammy articles over
the last week (and it's not just very new articles disappearing a few
minutes after arrival), we'd like to know as it's likely a case for
manual intervention.

I use individual net and I would guess I see 10-15 spams per week, in this
group, so it is not a big problem. I think they are all recognizable, by a
human, from the subject line, spam has a distinctive "look and feel". I
had no idea the situation is so bad prior to the filtering you do.

 

[osmium]

I use individual net and I would guess I see 10-15 spams per week, in this
group, so it is not a big problem. I think they are all recognizable, by
a human, from the subject line, spam has a distinctive "look and feel".
I had no idea the situation is so bad prior to the filtering you do.

I came back after a couple hours to see if my post was OK. It was followed
by seven spams posted via Google. It looks like my estimate may have been
on the low side.

 

[Bill Davy]

I use individual net and I would guess I see 10-15 spams per week, in this
group, so it is not a big problem. I think they are all recognizable, by
a human, from the subject line, spam has a distinctive "look and feel".
I had no idea the situation is so bad prior to the filtering you do.

And then suddenly there are 7 from "peng Salina" (via Google).

 

[Default User]

I see far less than that.

I came back after a couple hours to see if my post was OK. It was
followed by seven spams posted via Google. It looks like my estimate
may have been on the low side.

Interestingly, I didn't see the ones you mention (which I assume are
the ones Bill Davy posted about). I don't know if that's because the
filters caught up to them, I had encountered the person before and
killfiled, or if one of my own subject filters got them. You didn't
mention what the spam was about.

I have seen a few spam posts regarding "jeans" of late. I added a new
filter recently for those.



Brian

 

[Juha Nieminen]

Irrelevant, as there's very little that can be done about it. And
there's really only one, that's Google Groups. They care little, and
there really isn't anyone who can make them care.

If it was some hacked server in some country which couldn't care less
about such things, then that would be true. But Google is a huge
international company with strict policies. One would think that they
can be made to do something about the problem.

 

[Default User]

Default User wrote:

If it was some hacked server in some country which couldn't care
less about such things, then that would be true. But Google is a huge
international company with strict policies. One would think that they
can be made to do something about the problem.

Oh? Who will make them if they don't want to be made to care?

This is a serious question. What entity or group of entities would
really want to take on this 900 lb. gorilla over usenet? If anyone
would, why haven't we seen it?

For those that are concerned for their users, the easy path is to do
what NIN has done. Filter at the server.




Brian

 

[JustBoo]

Oh? Who will make them if they don't want to be made to care?

This is a serious question. What entity or group of entities would
really want to take on this 900 lb. gorilla over usenet? If anyone
would, why haven't we seen it?

Could these guys do something? The Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). http://www.ietf.org/

Perhaps through the "RFC process"? Some kind of rule or procedure
performed at the server level? So, just as everyone followed TCP/IP,
"they" would follow the new RFC?

Realize, I am just making a suggestion, not demanding a New World Order.