Can we do something against all this SPAM?

C

ciccio

Hi,

Is there something we can do against all this spam. The amount we
receive at this news group is getting past bearing.

Any idea's? Any thoughts?
 
P

Pavel Lepin

ciccio said:
Is there something we can do against all this spam.

Yes. Killfile GG. Alternatively, petition your service
provider to UDP GG. The morons have been asking for it for
a damn long time. Don't be evil, my ass.
 
J

Juha Nieminen

ciccio said:
Is there something we can do against all this spam. The amount we
receive at this news group is getting past bearing.

Any idea's? Any thoughts?

It's a little known fact that usenet posts can be removed by anyone
(by using spoofing). Not all news servers pay attention to deletion
messages, though, and some which do, do it so with a large delay (so
there's basically no use in deleting those spam messages).
Some object to deletions because nothing stops anyone from deleting
anyone else's genuine messages.
 
I

Ian Collins

ciccio said:
Hi,

Is there something we can do against all this spam. The amount we
receive at this news group is getting past bearing.

Any idea's? Any thoughts?

1) use a decent server
2) setup and maintain your own filters.
 
L

Lionel B

1) use a decent server

I do use what I consider "decent servers" or several, none of which has
filtered the current Google Groups-originating spam torrent.
2) setup and maintain your own filters.

How do I go about filtering the current GG spam torrent, short of killing
all GG posts (which I am indeed considering as a last resort)? This is a
genuine question - any hints welcome (I use the Pan newsreader).
 
I

Ian Collins

Lionel said:
I do use what I consider "decent servers" or several, none of which has
filtered the current Google Groups-originating spam torrent.


How do I go about filtering the current GG spam torrent, short of killing
all GG posts (which I am indeed considering as a last resort)? This is a
genuine question - any hints welcome (I use the Pan newsreader).
I guess all you can do is want I do, add each new pattern to your
filters as they hit. Keeps most of it away. Just don't post anything
with "crack" in the subject and expect a reply!
 
L

Lars Uffmann

Pavel said:
Alternatively, petition your service provider to UDP GG.

[x] Done. Although I don't have my hopes too high, news.cis.dfn.de is
big and the last time I had any contact with an admin, he was being a
moron about me using a nospam addition to my sender email. Hope is that
they fired this one and have some decent people now.

Best Regards,

Lars
 
C

Christian Hackl

Lionel said:
How do I go about filtering the current GG spam torrent, short of killing
all GG posts (which I am indeed considering as a last resort)? This is a
genuine question - any hints welcome (I use the Pan newsreader).

Why not simply use a whitelist in your Google filter, i.e. "filter all
Google postings except of those coming from: ..." ?

Sometimes you'll see a reply to a filtered posting that reveals a new
Google user who did not post crap or spam, and if that actually happens
you can add them to your whitelist. That's probably far from an ideal
solution, but for me it works quite well.
 
L

Lionel B

Why not simply use a whitelist in your Google filter, i.e. "filter all
Google postings except of those coming from: ..." ?

Sometimes you'll see a reply to a filtered posting that reveals a new
Google user who did not post crap or spam, and if that actually happens
you can add them to your whitelist. That's probably far from an ideal
solution, but for me it works quite well.

That's a fair suggestion, might give it a go.
 
B

Brian Tyler

Wow! http://improve-usenet.org recommends just blocking all google groups
posts. And, as if by magic all of the spam disappears. I know that there
are some legitimate users of GG, but the torrent of spam is just so great
that I think it is justified.

If you use Pan then add this to your Score file (in the pan directory of
your home directory) and hey presto.

[*]
Score:: =-9999
Message-ID: googlegroups
Message-ID: webtv

Thanks for the link Alf.

Brian.
 
C

ciccio

Wow! http://improve-usenet.org recommends just blocking all google groups
posts. And, as if by magic all of the spam disappears. I know that there
are some legitimate users of GG, but the torrent of spam is just so great
that I think it is justified.

If you use Pan then add this to your Score file (in the pan directory of
your home directory) and hey presto.

It is a pitty (al)pine is not mentioned on that webpage, nonetheless just
a filter on googlemail did the same trick. gmail is still allowed, but
already 99.999% of the spam is gone with the wind.

Should have thought of filters earlier.

Thanks all for comments, nonetheless beter options are still welcome.
 
C

Charles Coldwell

Alf P. Steinbach said:
Since my ISP's newsserver stopped filtering, I've forwarded most of it
to [[email protected]], just on principle.

"Just on principle": it seems that mails to that abuse address are
processed automatically, never seen by monkey.

The business model at Google is to provide the lowest common denominator
of service to the highest possible number of people. It works well with
web search, not as well with email (e.g. gmail IMAP is badly borken) and
apparently not well at all with news. What I don't understand is why
they cannot apply their email spam filter (which works pretty well) to
their outgoing newsfeed.

Chip
 
C

Charles Coldwell

Brian Tyler said:
Wow! http://improve-usenet.org recommends just blocking all google groups
posts. And, as if by magic all of the spam disappears. I know that there
are some legitimate users of GG, but the torrent of spam is just so great
that I think it is justified.

If you use Pan then add this to your Score file (in the pan directory of
your home directory) and hey presto.

[*]
Score:: =-9999
Message-ID: googlegroups
Message-ID: webtv

Thanks for the link Alf.

I use emacs gnus, which uses "scores" instead of a killfile. To install
the rule,

L i r p

[L]ower score based on message D matching [R]egular expression
and install the rule [P]ermanently

Then for the regular expression I entered

<.*\.googlegroups\.com>

That lowers the score of all google groups postings by 1.

However, James Kanze often posts useful stuff, so I raise his score back
by one

I a e p

ncrease score based on message [A]uthor matching [E]xactly
and install the rule [P]ermanently

Then for the email address

James Kanze <[email protected]>

Although my email is @gmail.com, my usenet postings go via verizon.net,
so I think a message-id rule will spare me.

Chip
 
P

Pavel Lepin

Chris Thomasson said:
A lot of smart people who post here use GG.

And your point is..? I used GG myself until the quality of
their service became truly unbearable. I believe smart
people would certainly be capable of using a real
newsreader and obtaining an account at some or other nntp
server instead. It ain't no rocket science, y'know.

Oh yeah, there's also the Firewall Defense. Well, perhaps
tcp port 119 being closed on the firewall indicates that
their employer doesn't want them to read and post to
newsgroups during the work hours? Yes, I know, it's stupid.
*shrug* But it's the problem of those said smart people,
isn't it?
 

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