Death to spammers

[Geoff]

Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the spammers that
are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into r.a.p now ?


geoff

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff > wrote:
>Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the spammers that
>are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into r.a.p now ?

I don't see any spam here at all. Ask your news provider to run cleanfeed.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"geoff" wrote ...
> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the spammers
> that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into r.a.p now ?

No, there is no central authority over Usenet. The Usenet is not
unique in this deisign. If I had to choose between a single entity
who controlled Usenet, or the independent structure that we have
now, I would vote for independence. Not all movement is "progress".
Distributed control means no single entity can screw it up.

I've seen very little spam on r.a.t and r.a.p in the last few months.
If you are seeing a lot, then you need better filters and/or a better
news service. These newsgroups are nothing remotely resembling
"totally killed."

[Geoff]

Richard Crowley wrote:
> "geoff" wrote ...
>> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the
>> spammers that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into
>> r.a.p now ?
>
> No, there is no central authority over Usenet. The Usenet is not
> unique in this deisign. If I had to choose between a single entity
> who controlled Usenet, or the independent structure that we have
> now, I would vote for independence. Not all movement is "progress".
> Distributed control means no single entity can screw it up.
>
> I've seen very little spam on r.a.t and r.a.p in the last few months.
> If you are seeing a lot, then you need better filters and/or a better
> news service. These newsgroups are nothing remotely resembling
> "totally killed."

Maybe your USENET server is filtering them - but I always worry whay lse may
be being filtered.

rec.audio.tech over the last few weeks has had probably 300 spam posts
versus half a dozen real ones. This bunch on r.a.p this morning:

Prada Milano Large Fringed Bag Black Discount, Replicas, Fake
Monogram Canvas Pochette Bosphore M40044 Discount, Replicas, Fake
2009 Collection 8512 grey white bag Discount, Replicas, Fake
Hermes Dogon Wallet Travel Case Organizer Black Discount, Replicas, Fake
2009 collection 6018 cream bag Discount, Replicas, Fake
Chloe leather bag 50831 shiny light blue Discount, Replicas, Fake
..... and ten or so more.

I'll have a word to Giganews and maybe they can make them go away.


geoff

[Richard Crowley]

geoff wrote:
> Maybe your USENET server is filtering them - but I always worry whay lse
> may be being filtered.

Why? Usenet is not a guaranteed delivery scheme like email.
Surely there are at least 1000 things that are more important
to worry about than losing the random Usenet posting.

> rec.audio.tech over the last few weeks has had probably 300 spam posts
> versus half a dozen real ones.

Wow. I don't think I've seen even 3 over the last few weeks.
individual.net costs 10 Euro per year and has effectively 100%
perfect filtering.

[Anahata]

On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:01:56 +1200, geoff wrote:

> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the spammers
> that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into r.a.p now ?

Your headers say you're using MS Outlook Express. You need a proper
newsreader that does filtering (or scoring or killfiling, whatever they
call it).

I'm using pan (http://pan.rebelbase.com). Free, and can score articles
based on author, subject, newsgroup, number of crossposted newsgroups,
references, size and several other criteria. It's very easy to give the
obvious offenders a negative score and just not see their posts, and if
you want you can fine tune by positive scoring threads you're interested
in so you get to view them first. Well worth a try. An extra advantage
for me is it's multiplatform - I use it on Windows here at work and Linux
at home.

--
Anahata
==//== 01638 720444
http://www.treewind.co.uk ==//== http://www.myspace.com/maryanahata

[Ian Bell[_2_]]

geoff wrote:
> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the spammers that
> are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into r.a.p now ?
>
>
> geoff
>
>


There's only one way to deal with spammers and that is to ignore them
and carry on posting and replying to topics of interest.

Cheers

Ian

[Mike Rivers]

anahata wrote:

> I'm using pan (http://pan.rebelbase.com). Free, and can score articles
> based on author, subject, newsgroup, number of crossposted newsgroups,
> references, size and several other criteria. It's very easy to give the
> obvious offenders a negative score and just not see their posts, and if
> you want you can fine tune by positive scoring threads you're interested
> in so you get to view them first.

I find it so easy to simply ignore what's obviously spam (just don't
click on
the header) that it's not worth the bother to set up filters and kill
files. I filter
Viagra and Nike and Rolex (which I suppose will mean that some people
won't read this message) but there's no point in filtering by poster name
(unless you simply don't want to read posts from, for example, me) because
spammers use random names.

I broke down and am using Eternal September for news now and every
now and then I see a one-time burst of spam, but it's nothing to get excited
about or take any effort to eliminate it from my view. One interesting
difference
between spam on Eternal September and Verizon (who has already or soon
will be dropping) news is that on E.S. all the spam shows up as expired so
I can't read it if I wanted to, but on Verizon, I could, even though I
don't. This
probably means that if I looked an hour later, I probably wouldn't have
seen
it at all.

[Scott Dorsey]

geoff > wrote:
>
>rec.audio.tech over the last few weeks has had probably 300 spam posts
>versus half a dozen real ones. This bunch on r.a.p this morning:
>
>Prada Milano Large Fringed Bag Black Discount, Replicas, Fake
>Monogram Canvas Pochette Bosphore M40044 Discount, Replicas, Fake
>2009 Collection 8512 grey white bag Discount, Replicas, Fake
>Hermes Dogon Wallet Travel Case Organizer Black Discount, Replicas, Fake
>2009 collection 6018 cream bag Discount, Replicas, Fake
>Chloe leather bag 50831 shiny light blue Discount, Replicas, Fake
>.... and ten or so more.
>
>I'll have a word to Giganews and maybe they can make them go away.

None of this showed up here. The guys upstream of me run cleanfeed,
which does a lot of things including searching for messages posted
multiply (not crossposted, but multiposted) to more than 20 groups.
It does not remove any legitimate postings, but it removes almost all
the spam.

Some folks on Usenet will dump all posts from Google and things like
that, but these are generally more extreme measures and they have only
a fairly small impact on spam once cleanfeed has been run.

Remember that your view of Usenet depends on all of the filtering done
by all of the guys in the line between the posting site and your server's
site... and there may well be a hundred different servers in-between.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

anahata wrote:
> geoff wrote:
>> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the
>> spammers that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into
>> r.a.p now ?
>
> Your headers say you're using MS Outlook Express. You need
> a proper newsreader that does filtering (or scoring or killfiling,
> whatever they call it).

I use Outlook Express and I don't see the spam either.
Sounds more like the OP should vote with his feet and
sign up with a server that does a better job. Some are
free or very nearly free.

[Richard Crowley]

"Ian Bell" wrote ...
> There's only one way to deal with spammers and that is to ignore them and
> carry on posting and replying to topics of interest.

Nominated for: Best Advice of the Month!

[Nil]

On 21 Sep 2009, "geoff" > wrote in
rec.audio.pro:

> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the
> spammers that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into
> r.a.p now ?

Nobody here can stop spam messages from entering or propagating through
the Usenet network - it just doesn't work that way. You can personally
complain to your new service administrator, who might be able to filter
out some spam, and also complain to the ISP where the spam originates.
At least 90% of Usenet spam these days is posted through Google Groups.
Google refuses to deal with the issue. Your news service (giganews?)
might be more responsive.

Your best practical solution would be to get a better newsreader, one
with decent filtering capabilities. Outlook Express does not qualify.
Otherwise, just ignore it. Often the spammers unleash waves of spam,
and then move on to other targets.

Some people go so far as to filter out all Google-sourced messages.
That would get rid of nearly all newsgroups spam... and also quite a
few legitimate posts, of course. But maybe it would be worth it for
you, at least in the short term.

I see very little spam here at r.a.p. I'm sure that my news services,
individual.net and eternal-september.org, are pretty diligent about
filtering known spammers.

[Tobiah]

>
> There's only one way to deal with spammers and that is to ignore them and
> carry on posting and replying to topics of interest.

I found out that my Uncle bought some inkjet cartridges by clicking
on a link in a spam email. I scolded him. The amazing thing, is that
spamming is worthwhile (otherwise who would trouble to do it?). If we
could educate the public never to answer a spam (no matter how good the
offer) the spammers would shrivel and die very quickly.

Same should go for junk snail mail.

[Mike Rivers]

Tobiah wrote:

> I found out that my Uncle bought some inkjet cartridges by clicking
> on a link in a spam email. I scolded him. The amazing thing, is that
> spamming is worthwhile (otherwise who would trouble to do it?).

Of course it's worth while. I bought some inkjet cartridges from a company
who sent spam. I was looking for a less expensive source so I checked out
their web site, the price was good, they had a phone number (I ordered by
phone) and the cartridges were fine. I refereed someone else to them.

There are people who will accuse a poster in this newsgroup who sings
the praises of some piece of gear or software of being a spammer. But maybe
he has someone useful to say to those who have never heard of the product.
I suppose that there are people like me who read only one newsgroup who,
unlike me, are interested in buying viagra or handbags.

The volume is not so great that it's hard to ignore.

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers > wrote:
>
>Of course it's worth while. I bought some inkjet cartridges from a company
>who sent spam. I was looking for a less expensive source so I checked out
>their web site, the price was good, they had a phone number (I ordered by
>phone) and the cartridges were fine. I refereed someone else to them.

And now you're getting more spam. Guess why?

>There are people who will accuse a poster in this newsgroup who sings
>the praises of some piece of gear or software of being a spammer. But maybe
>he has someone useful to say to those who have never heard of the product.
>I suppose that there are people like me who read only one newsgroup who,
>unlike me, are interested in buying viagra or handbags.

On Usenet, there is a very specific definition of spam, and it's called the
Breidbart Index. Most good news services use it for filtering, and so on
a well-run Usenet server there is remarkably little actual spam. There is
often a lot of stupidity and flaming.

>The volume is not so great that it's hard to ignore.

The volume is ENORMOUS, it's just that you don't see most of it because you
are behind such extensive filtering.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Geoff]

Ian Bell wrote:
> geoff wrote:
>> Is there somebody highly internet-savvy here who can nuke the
>> spammers that are have totally killed r.a.t and are getting into
>> r.a.p now ? geoff
>>
>>
>
>
> There's only one way to deal with spammers and that is to ignore them
> and carry on posting and replying to topics of interest.

Looking forward to your contributions to rec.audio.tech then ! Not that
there are many post any more to reply to, so it's clearly not just me who
has a problem....


geoff

[Mike Rivers]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

> And now you're getting more spam.

I have no idea. When I recognize something as spam,
I don't even read it, I just delete it. Who's counting? I figure
that most of the unsolicited e-mail that I get is the result of my
real address in this newsgroup. I get maybe 2-3 pieces of
junk mail to my Verizon address. And Yahoo does a pretty
good job of deciding what's spam and puts it in a separate
folder. I always look through it (sometimes legitimate mail
gets put in there, mostly press releases or product announcements
from audio companies.

> On Usenet, there is a very specific definition of spam, and it's called the
> Breidbart Index. Most good news services use it for filtering, and so on
> a well-run Usenet server there is remarkably little actual spam. There is
> often a lot of stupidity and flaming.

But among the users, the term "spam" is applied to any mail or news
articles that they see that appears to be advertising a product or
service. They
probably have no idea of the official definition and don't care. If they
don't need
to see it, it's spam to them.

>> The volume is not so great that it's hard to ignore.
>
> The volume is ENORMOUS, it's just that you don't see most of it because you
> are behind such extensive filtering.

Well, then that's a good thing. Thank you, whoever is upstream. Usually when
someone complains about spam in rec.audio.pro, I'll see maybe two to
half a dozen
messages in a reading, and then never see them again.