Serial spammers
Jarrick Chagma
spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
--
Regards,
Jarrick
------------------------------------
Jarrick...@your.mind.gmail.com
(Lose your mind before emailing me)
Noah Roberts
> This newsgroup has become almost unusable thanks mainly to one serial
> spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
>
You can try reporting them but you'll get a nice pandering letter and
then nothing will happen.
Default User
> This newsgroup has become almost unusable thanks mainly to one serial
> spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
See previous threads on the topic.
Brian
Juha Nieminen
> You can try reporting them but you'll get a nice pandering letter and
> then nothing will happen.
I have hard time believing this is the first time in the history of
the internet that a newsgroup has been flooded with spam. I also have
hard time believing this particular newsgroup has been saved from the
flood until now.
The spam flood started a couple of months ago. Before that, almost
nothing, then suddenly a huge flood. Something definitely has changed at
that point. But what?
Default User
> The spam flood started a couple of months ago. Before that, almost
> nothing, then suddenly a huge flood. Something definitely has changed
> at that point. But what?
It started long before that. It just took a while to get around to
technical groups.
Brian
James
> This newsgroup has become almost unusable thanks mainly to one serial
> spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
>
Maybe if we all visit their website and buy some stuff, they'll stop
advertising when they run out of inventory. :)
James
Juha Nieminen
"A while" being about 20 years? I have hard time believing that.
Default User
I'm confused. You said that, "The spam flood started a couple of months
ago." I'm not sure where 20 years comes in. If indeed the flood started
that recently, then it trailed other newsgroups like those in rec.*
hierarchies by a significant amount. I don't know, because NIN had
started their use of "cleanfeed" or whatever by then, so I never saw
any significant amount of spam here.
Brian
Juha Nieminen
> Juha Nieminen wrote:
>
>> Default User wrote:
>>> Juha Nieminen wrote:
>>>
>>>> The spam flood started a couple of months ago. Before that,
>> almost >> nothing, then suddenly a huge flood. Something definitely
>> has changed >> at that point. But what?
>>> It started long before that. It just took a while to get around to
>>> technical groups.
>> "A while" being about 20 years? I have hard time believing that.
>
> I'm confused. You said that, "The spam flood started a couple of months
> ago." I'm not sure where 20 years comes in.
Let me quote myself:
"I have hard time believing this is the first time in the history of
the internet that a newsgroup has been flooded with spam. I also have
hard time believing this particular newsgroup has been saved from the
flood until now."
Something has stopped the spam flooding before (during the existence
of this newsgroup), but now something has seemingly changed.
Default User
> Default User wrote:
I don't remember there being a spam flood here before either. I
understand that there is one now for some people, but I've never really
seen it.
My impression was that the institutional spammers got started in some
other groups, and expanded to ones like clc++. I might be wrong.
Brian
Rolf Magnus
If you send your mail to the address in the Complaints-To header, you'll not
even get that. Google is simply ignoring the fact that more or less all of
Usenet's spam is sent through Google Groups.
Ian Collins
> This newsgroup has become almost unusable thanks mainly to one serial
> spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
>
--
Ian Collins
Bill Davy
news:4a5638e3$0$2820$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but OE
does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
filtering?
I don't want lots of gimmicks, and I do not want it trying to take over the
world (not doing email, not being an Internet explorer, etc).
This is for XP.
TIA,
Bill
Alf P. Steinbach
Argh, perhaps I should write one, in C++. ;-)
For a while I thought in terms of modifying the functionality of some existing
free program, and created an extension for Thunderbird (NewsWorthy, sorry not
updated to work with recent versions of Thunderbird), but as it turned out
Thunderbird has a *lot* of bugs (e.g. in this connection Thunderbird sometimes
really screws up its own internal count of unread messages, mail and news), and
most of the functionality is completely undocumented, so I concluded it would
not be worthwhile to try to implement real filtering in Thunderbird.
However, when the base functionality is designed by oneself it should be fairly
easy... Yes, I actually think it's probably less work to implement a newsreader
from scratch than making Thunderbird do this thing. Because of bugs and the
undocumented and haphazard nature of that beast, old Netscape code.
Cheers,
- Alf
Ian Collins
>
> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but OE
> does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>
> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
> filtering?
Thunderbird can filter by "from" as well as subject. These two stop
just about all of the spam news.individual.net misses.
--
Ian Collins
Bill Davy
news:7boeq0F...@mid.individual.net...
Interesting.
"IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an SFF email account before you
can use the Newsreader functions"
Not quite what I was looking for then.
Alf P. Steinbach
That's bull, where did you get that? I'm using Thunderbird now. But the problem
with filtering directly on Google Groups is that e.g. James Kanze is posting (by
necessity) via Google Groups, and he and some others are GG-posting people you
really want to read.
Cheers & hth.,
- Alf
Ian Collins
> "Ian Collins" <ian-...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7boeq0F...@mid.individual.net...
>> Bill Davy wrote:
>>> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but OE
>>> does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>>>
>>> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
>>> filtering?
>> Thunderbird can filter by "from" as well as subject. These two stop just
>> about all of the spam news.individual.net misses.
Thunderbird also correctly snips signatures!
> Interesting.
>
> "IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an SFF email account before you
> can use the Newsreader functions"
Nonsense.
--
Ian Collins
Bill Davy
I quote from http://www.sff.net/help/setup/TbirdNews.asp:
"Mozilla Thunderbird Newsreader Setup
Download this software
IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an email account before you can
use the Newsreader functions. If you have not yet set up an email account,
you should do so now. Use the instructions on the Thunderbird Email Client
page to set up an email client before proceeding here.
Please have your SFF Net username, password and SFF Net Email address handy
(they were included in your original signup confirmation email). You'll need
them to complete these instructions.
1.. Start Thunderbird and select Tools --> Account Settings from the menu
to bring up the Account Settings dialog window. "
Anyway, I am not going that way and that's an end to it.
Bill
Ian Collins
> "Ian Collins" <ian-...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7boh06F...@mid.individual.net...
>> Bill Davy wrote:
>>> "Ian Collins" <ian-...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:7boeq0F...@mid.individual.net...
>>>> Bill Davy wrote:
>>>>> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but
>>>>> OE does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
>>>>> filtering?
>>>> Thunderbird can filter by "from" as well as subject. These two stop
>>>> just about all of the spam news.individual.net misses.
>> Thunderbird also correctly snips signatures!
>>
>>> Interesting.
>>>
>>> "IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an SFF email account before
>>> you can use the Newsreader functions"
>> Nonsense.
>>
As I said before, Thunderbird correctly snips signatures
>
> I quote from http://www.sff.net/help/setup/TbirdNews.asp:
Well would else would you expect form a site telling you how to set up
Thunderbird for their service?
--
Ian Collins
Bill Davy
I just created this SFF account to say "Hello" :)
Richard Herring
<Bi...@SynectixLtd.com> writes
>"Ian Collins" <ian-...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:7boh06F...@mid.individual.net...
>> Bill Davy wrote:
>>> "Ian Collins" <ian-...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:7boeq0F...@mid.individual.net...
>>>> Bill Davy wrote:
>>>>> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but
>>>>> OE does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>>>>>
>>>>> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
>>>>> filtering?
>>>> Thunderbird can filter by "from" as well as subject. These two stop
>>>> just about all of the spam news.individual.net misses.
>>
>> Thunderbird also correctly snips signatures!
>>
>>> Interesting.
>>>
>>> "IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an SFF email account before
>>> you can use the Newsreader functions"
>>
>> Nonsense.
>>
>
Why? This appears to be instructions for users of "SFF Net" (whatever
that is) to configure their systems.
If you want to know about Thunderbird, why not look at the Thunderbird
web pages (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird) instead
of out-of-context stuff on some random social networking site?
--
Richard Herring
Balwinder S Dheeman
> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but OE
> does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>
> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
> filtering?
I have never ever seen SPAM, since I started using Leafnode-2, a caching
NNTP server for small sites, it learns which newsgroups should be
downloaded and, or cached based on what is accessed by users, see
http://cto.homelinux.net/ports?port=leafnode-devel for further details;
provides effective SPAM filtering.
BTW, the paranoids might want to use a stable version of Leafnode,
available at http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/
> I don't want lots of gimmicks, and I do not want it trying to take over the
> world (not doing email, not being an Internet explorer, etc).
--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
Bill Davy
news:salji6x...@news.homelinux.net...
Thanks for this suggestion.
I have been trying XPN but it seems very "foreign" to my way of working.
Bill
Jerry Coffin
says...
[ ... ]
> Argh, perhaps I should write one, in C++. ;-)
My advice would be to consider writing a filtering new server
instead. I.e. it connects to a news server of your choice, filters
out whatever you don't want, and your newsreader connects to this
local news server to collect its filtered feed of the news.
This should reduce the effort considerably, and be pretty easy to
make (mostly) portable -- not to mention making adoption a lot easier
since its only affect on the user would be the lack of spam.
--
Later,
Jerry.
Alf P. Steinbach
Yeah, but it's not as fun. :-)
Anyways, I see else-thread that one such evidently already exists,
<url: http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/>.
And of old there was Hamster (not sure about download and never used it) and
NewsProxy, <url: http://www.nfilter.org/>, used in combination.
Cheers,
- Alf
Alf P. Steinbach
Possibly this might help some readers: <url:
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v9/v9n02hamster.html>
Cheers,
- Alf
Balwinder S Dheeman
A Usenet or NNTP caching proxy with filtering, the Leafnode-2,
http://cto.homelinux.net/ports?port=leafnode-devel, a work-in-progess
and Leafnode, http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/ stable is already there;
why re-invent the wheel?
BTW, I don't intend detracting anyone from writing a new, tiny, clean,
compact, portable and an efficient NNTP proxy in C++ from scratch.
Default User
> They all seem to come from Organization: http://groups.google.com but
> OE does not seem to permit filtering on Organization.
>
>
>
> Can anyone recommend a good newsreader programme that does allow that
> filtering?
XanaNews can filter on anything in the header (there's a catch-all for
anything not explicitly available). Again, I would NOT do that. There
are valuable contributors like James Kanze and Nick Keighley that use
GG to post.
Brian
Jerry Coffin
bsd.S...@cto.homelinux.net says...
>
> On 07/10/2009 08:32 PM, Jerry Coffin wrote:
> > In article <h370g1$sf$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, al...@start.no
> > says...
> >
> > [ ... ]
> >
> >> Argh, perhaps I should write one, in C++. ;-)
> >
> > My advice would be to consider writing a filtering new server
> > instead. I.e. it connects to a news server of your choice, filters
> > out whatever you don't want, and your newsreader connects to this
> > local news server to collect its filtered feed of the news.
> >
> > This should reduce the effort considerably, and be pretty easy to
> > make (mostly) portable -- not to mention making adoption a lot easier
> > since its only affect on the user would be the lack of spam.
>
> A Usenet or NNTP caching proxy with filtering, the Leafnode-2,
> http://cto.homelinux.net/ports?port=leafnode-devel, a work-in-progess
> and Leafnode, http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/ stable is already there;
> why re-invent the wheel?
>
> BTW, I don't intend detracting anyone from writing a new, tiny, clean,
> compact, portable and an efficient NNTP proxy in C++ from scratch.
While it certainly looks interesting, Leafnode isn't quite what I had
in mind. In particular, while it does have filtering, the filtering
appears to be limited to regular expressions. While that's
undoubtedly better than nothing, I don't think it's really the best
way.
I think something a bit more extensible would be more useful. At the
bare minimum, it would include a couple of classes like:
class filter_base {
public:
virtual operator()(std::string const &message) const = 0;
};
class register_filter {
public:
bool operator()(filter_base const *filter);
};
A new spam filter would derive from filter_base. To get it used,
you'd register an instance with register_filter. The registered
filters would then be applied to incoming messages.
Probably a better approach would be to invoke each filter once for a
group of incoming messages. You could, for example, pass a filter an
iterator to the first message in the store, the first new message in
the store, and one beyond the last message in the store. This would
help support statistically-oriented filters that might attempt to
determine whether something was spam based on statistics of the
entire store instead of looking only at individual messages. Using
this approach, it would probably be most natural for the filter to
write out results via an iterator as well.
Of course, if you didn't mind adding some non-portable code, you
could also support filters being implemented in shared libraries
(UNIX) or DLLs (Windows).
Personally, I think filtering on regular expressions does more harm
than good. It never really works well, but it's good enough that it
tends to prevent anything better from being developed either.
--
Later,
Jerry.
Jerry Coffin
says...
>
> * Jerry Coffin:
[ ... ]
> > My advice would be to consider writing a filtering new server
> > instead.
[ ... ]
> Yeah, but it's not as fun. :-)
You have a strange idea of fun! I'll admit, I don't know of any
newsreader I'd consider really great, so I can see a good reason for
writing a better one -- but it's not what I'd consider _fun_, by any
stretch of the imagination.
> Anyways, I see else-thread that one such evidently already exists,
> <url: http://leafnode.sourceforge.net/>.
Yes, I saw that, and commented on it elsethread. I think it's
probably a good starting point, but (at least based on the
description) I don't think it's currently quite what I'd like to see.
--
Later,
Jerry.
Default User
> You have a strange idea of fun! I'll admit, I don't know of any
> newsreader I'd consider really great, so I can see a good reason for
> writing a better one -- but it's not what I'd consider fun, by any
> stretch of the imagination.
XanaNews is open source, but it's written in Delphi. Had it been in C
or C++, I'd have been tempted to hack away to make a few changes.
Brian
David Pratt
news:4a5638e3$0$2820$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au...
> This newsgroup has become almost unusable thanks mainly to one serial
> spammer. Can't anything be done to stop them?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Jarrick
>
> ------------------------------------
> Jarrick...@your.mind.gmail.com
> (Lose your mind before emailing me)
One thing comes to mind is that maybe a class action lawsuit by the usenet
servers against Google for allowing the spammers such easy access to
accounts, and for not enforcing their own terms of service on proven
spammers, might open the Exec's eyes at Google a little bit.
Balwinder S Dheeman
NP, I would love to see a multi-threaded, improved and, or better NNTP
caching proxy in C++; shall/can join hands in bringing it up ASAP in
case you need me :)
Nick Keighley
ah, fame at last! I'd hardly say I was a major contributor to
comp.lang.c++, I know C rather than C++ and have some opinions
on software engineering
--
Nick Keighley
Jerry Coffin
bsd.S...@cto.homelinux.net says...
[ ... ]
> NP, I would love to see a multi-threaded, improved and, or better
> NNTP caching proxy in C++; shall/can join hands in bringing it up
> ASAP in case you need me :)
Okay. I've done a bit of looking at the link you posted. I'm left
with somewhat mixed feelings. On one hand, it clearly represents a
lot of work, that would be nice to avoid, if at all reasonable. On
the other, my immediate impression is that it's quite a lot larger
and more complex than what I had in mind as the finished product, not
to mention the starting point.
Admittedly, an initial impression of what the size and complexity of
a project _should_ be often matches reality rather poorly. Maybe I'm
being excessively optimistic in guessing that what I had in mind
would end up smaller and simpler. I've downloaded the source code,
and I'm taking a look at it now...
--
Later,
Jerry.
Balwinder S Dheeman
Yeah, it is not a small project; I did a Ruby NNTP Client Library, see
http://nntp.rubyforge.org/ and http://nntp.rubyforge.org/rdoc/, in
around May 2005 which was around 4-5 days of work including learning,
researching, coding, documenting and testing it. Hence, I'm confident
enough that I shall/can write a similar client and server parts of NNTP
in C++ in around 8-10 days working on a part-time basis.
Please keep me informed on your progress.
JustBoo
> "IMPORTANT: Thunderbird requires you to have an SFF email account
before you
> can use the Newsreader functions"
>
> Not quite what I was looking for then.
I'm using Thunderbird (2.0.0.22) right now to view this usenet message
in comp.lang.c++. I don't know what a SFF account is. Is this to allow
programming Thunderbird?