Hard times

[Salmon Egg]

It appears that hard times are causing some, I hope truly desperate
people, to spam newsgroups with crap. Even though I can sympathize with
their desparation, I cannot abide them screwing up this and other
newsgroups,

I notice that someone called bleachbot seems to hover in the background,
cancelling much of this spam on various newsgroups including this one. I
am fed up enough to do the same if I only knew how.

Just how would I go about it?

Bill

 

[JoeU2004]

It appears that hard times are causing some, I hope
truly desperate people, to spam newsgroups with crap.

This is not new to these "hard times". People have been spamming newsgroups
for decades. Some news servers are better than others at filtering them.
And it takes time for such news servers to adapt to new spamming techniques.

I notice that someone called bleachbot seems to hover in
the background, cancelling much of this spam on various
newsgroups including this one.

I'm curious: how do you know this? That is, what is it that you see that
tells you this is happening, and what tells you that "bleachbot" is
responsible?

If the message were truly cancelled, I would think there is no evidence of
it.

This might be something peculiar to your news server. I don't see any
messages from "bleachbot" in microsoft.public.excel on the server
msnews.microsoft.com -- at least, nothing in the past two months.

Just how would I go about it?

The short answer is: (1) you issue an NNTP control message with a cancel
directive (RFC 1036); or (2) you issue a proprietary cancel command to the
news server directly.

The longer answer is: generally, __you__ cannot.

Even if you could cause an "NNTP cancel" message to be sent (i.e. an NNTP
control message with a cancel directive), most reputable news servers will
try to limit this operation to the author of the article being cancelled.
But of course, that can be spoofed. And then there are the unreputable news
servers, mostly based in Europe and Asia.

For that reason, many news servers do not recognize the NNTP cancel message.
And many news servers will not push NNTP cancel messages to downstream news
servers. If a news server has a proprietary cancel command, that usually
does not cause an NNTP cancel message to be generated.

Some news readers permit you to change the subject line. Since most news
readers thread articles based on the original message ID and subsequent
reference message IDs, this might make it appear that spam messages are
"removed" simply because their subject line is no longer umpteen characters
long.

But not all news readers permit this. And some news readers thread based on
the subject line, so any change would simply look like a new thread. (This
is a nuisance.) Moreover, even in some news readers that thread based on
message IDs, the changed subject line might simply appear inline in the
thread; it does not alter the original thread subject.

TMI?


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[AltaEgo]

Bleachbot is not a person:
http://home.httrack.net/~nocem/

To take action yourself:

Spammers normally send their messages through googlegroups {this says a lot
about Google}. With the right news reader, you could filter out mail from
googlegroups based on Message-ID. Unfortunately, about half the users access
microsoft.public.excel through googlegroups.

In forums where spam and/or sporge is BAD, I use Xnews with the following
filter:

[.offending newsgroup name]
Score:: =-9999
Message-ID: googlegroups

In these groups I don't get to read a lot of genuine questions unless
someone not using googlegroups answers and quotes original text. However,
spam and sporge dramatically reduces making the newsgroup readable again.

Levels of spam in microsoft.public newsgroups are generally low so I don't
filter out googlegroups here. Instead, I kill messages based on keywords.
For example, recent messages trying to sell high definition televisions
included 'hdtv' in the subject line. So, after receiving that message, I set
up a score to kill messages that include 'hdtv' in the subject line, taking
into account the low likelihood any Excel question will include 'hdtv' in
the subject.

HTH

 

[JoeU2004]

PS....

I don't see any messages from "bleachbot" in
microsoft.public.excel on the server
msnews.microsoft.com -- at least, nothing in the
past two months.

Well, I just noticed a set of "responses" that appear to be follow-ups to an
original message that I do not see. Presumably the original message (spam)
was removed. (Right. I see it in Google Groups, but on the
msnews.microsoft.com server.) In any case, there is no information that
would allow me know that "bleachbot" removed the original spam. As I noted,
there are other way.s


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[JoeU2004]

Spammers normally send their messages through googlegroups
{this says a lot about Google}.

I don't know why you say that. The several recent spam messages in
microsoft.public.excel that I looked at originated at usenetmonster.com, not
googlegroups.com.

It reaches Google Groups by normal NNTP server-to-server mechanisms.

It is true that Google Groups seems to do nothing to try to rid its server
of spam, even when it is reported by users, as I have done many times in the
past. I do fault them for that.

It might have been true some time ago that it was easy to originate spam
through Google Groups. I don't know. But GG now tries to thwart spam
originating through its web interface by requiring validation string upon
submittal.

 

[JoeU2004]

Mea culpa....

It might have been true some time ago that it was easy to originate spam
through Google Groups. I don't know. But GG now tries to thwart spam
originating through its web interface by requiring validation string upon
submittal.

I guess that's not working so well. I do see some spam in m.p.excel that
originated in Google Groups. Hmm, I wonder how that's done. I guess I'll
have to a network trace of a GG submittal ;-).


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