Could the admin do something about the spam please?

[Petro Kazmirchuk]

Since a few weeks the amount of spam made this group unreadable.
Is it something that the admin can fix, or everybody has to block senders individually ?
Thanks in advance,
Petro

[Scott Pitcher]

Hi Petro,
I'm reading with Claws Mail at Eternal September and I get an
occasional spam message, but not much really. I just opened Google
Groups for the first time this year and yes you are correct, it has much
more spam that ordinary messages!
Kind regards,
Scott



--

[Alex P]

Already advised by et99 to use the link:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/comp.lang.tcl/-interwin%20and%20-slot

Though some idiots still penetrate this, most are filtered.

[Alan Grunwald]

+1

I'm reading with Thunderbird; it seems that the filtering is being done
by Eternal September. As noted elsewhere, the occasional piece of spam
does get through but it's very few - I see less than one spam message
per week.

Alan

[Gerald Lester]

There is no such thing as an admin for this group -- unless you want to
volunteer?

[Peter Dean]

I am using eternal september now and seeing very little spam. I used to
use astraweb but they are not filtering at all. So good job eternal
september.

[Petro Kazmirchuk]

Thank you so much for the link, Alex, it is indeed a good workaround.
This is the only Google Group that I occasionally read (in a browser) or search thru old emails - often it is more useful than the Tcl Wiki.
So, I don't have an email client, and I never heard of "Eternal September" before. Being ignorant about how Google groups work, I thought there was somebody who could tweak some settings to solve the problem for us all, but apparently this is not the case. So, now I can't recommend this place anymore to other people looking for Tcl advice. Well, at least there's Stack Overflow still.

[Rich]

Petro Kazmirchuk <petro.ka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you so much for the link, Alex, it is indeed a good workaround.

> This is the only Google Group that I occasionally read (in a browser)
> or search thru old emails - often it is more useful than the Tcl
> Wiki.

This is *NOT* a google group. You are reading the USENET
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) group comp.lang.tcl by using the
google groups interface (which, by the way, is the absolute worst way
to read USENET), but this group is not a google groups.

With that said, google is the source of 99.9% of the spam you are
seeing.

> So, I don't have an email client, and I never heard of "Eternal
> September" before.

https://www.eternal-september.org/

Accounts are free, you just have to signup, and then choose a proper
newsreader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders)
and you can continue to read/post to the newsgroup, but because the
eternal september admin is prefiltering out the google spam, you will
not see the spam (other than an occasional one that sneaks through the
filter).

> Being ignorant about how Google groups work, I thought there was
> somebody who could tweak some settings to solve the problem for us
> all, but apparently this is not the case.

There is, but *they* are not google, nor google groups. You have to
setup a free account on Eternal September and use a proper newsreader
and the spam issue will be solved for you.

> So, now I can't recommend this place anymore to other people looking
> for Tcl advice. Well, at least there's Stack Overflow still.

I suggest you tweak your recommendation slightly. The problem is not
with USENET or comp.lang.tcl, the problem is google. So you should
stop recommending use of google's web interface, and instead recommend
use of a proper USENET newsreader (and experience a better way to
read/interact with USENET).

[Le Ak]

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.time.ntp
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms

All comp groups are affected by spammer and scammers

500 000 post in google with scam in few days

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <23e29f1d-bd67-465e...@googlegroups.com>,
Le Ak <zalesk...@gmail.com> wrote:
...

>> I suggest you tweak your recommendation slightly. The problem is not
>> with USENET or comp.lang.tcl, the problem is google. So you should
>> stop recommending use of google's web interface, and instead recommend
>> use of a proper USENET newsreader (and experience a better way to
>> read/interact with USENET).
>
>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.time.ntp
>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex
>https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms
>
>All comp groups are affected by spammer and scammers
>
>500 000 post in google with scam in few days

Like Hamas, Google just needs to be taken out.

For the good of all humanity.

--
Modern Conservative: Someone who can take time out from flashing her
wedding ring around and bragging about her honeymoon to complain that a
fellow secretary who keeps a picture of her girlfriend on her desk is
"flauting her sexuality" and "forcing her lifestyle down our throats".

[heinrichmartin]

On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:52:59 AM UTC+1, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <23e29f1d-bd67-465e...@googlegroups.com>,

> Le Ak wrote:
> ...
> >> I suggest you tweak your recommendation slightly. The problem is not
> >> with USENET or comp.lang.tcl, the problem is google. So you should
> >> stop recommending use of google's web interface, and instead recommend
> >> use of a proper USENET newsreader (and experience a better way to
> >> read/interact with USENET).
> >
> >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.protocols.time.ntp
> >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.text.tex
> >https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.vms
> >
> >All comp groups are affected by spammer and scammers
> >
> >500 000 post in google with scam in few days
> Like Hamas, Google just needs to be taken out.
>
> For the good of all humanity.

Ignore or speak up? I will not go into the political aspect (i.e. although having a clear option, I won't bring it here), but let me ask you to reconsider whether to compare physical war with big tech behavior, i.e. compare loss of life, health, and home with spam and other first world problems!

Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually sending through a Google interface? I have the feeling that the wording in this thread incrementally changed from "is there a way", via "they should", to "their fault" - this happens and has happened too often in all kinds of conversation all over the world without considering facts.

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <f429297e-05bc-4232...@googlegroups.com>,
heinrichmartin <martin....@frequentis.com> wrote:
...

>Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually sending
>through a Google interface? I have the feeling that the wording in this
>thread incrementally changed from "is there a way", via "they should", to
>"their fault" - this happens and has happened too often in all kinds of
>conversation all over the world without considering facts.

It is well-established that they are posting "from Google" - i.e., they are
using Google as the portal to Usenet.

Whether or not they are using "The Google Interface" - in the sense that a
typical human user sitting at a computer (or phone or whatever), running a
thing known as "a web browser" would be said to be using "The Google
Interface" - is unknown but pretty much irrelevant.

The question as to what to do about it, is usually phrased in terms of
"Should we disconnect Google from Usenet (as if we could do such a thing)
to solve the spam mess, but at the cost of disconnecting the legit users
who access Usenet via Google?" Further, it is argued, that Usenet depends
on a steady stream of newusers in order to survive, and most of the
newusers come to us via Google. So, that's the issue we face...

--
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough
men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

[Rich]

heinrichmartin <martin....@frequentis.com> wrote:
> Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually
> sending through a Google interface?

Comparing the headers between a spam and a real gg user shows that they
are either:

1) a really really good forgery, including a Path header that matches a
real GG user's Path.

2) posted via some google interface (either via the web portal, or via
someone's bot using the same API's as used by google's web portal).

> I have the feeling that the wording in this thread incrementally
> changed from "is there a way", via "they should", to "their fault" -
> this happens and has happened too often in all kinds of conversation
> all over the world without considering facts.

Google Groups has been flooding many usenet groups with spam for a very
long time (sci.crypt has had a google groups spam flood [hundreds
daily] for about two years or more now). Google has done nothing until
only very recently to try to stop any of it. So the correct wording
is: "it's their fault".

[heinrichmartin]

On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 5:57:42 PM UTC+1, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <f429297e-05bc-4232...@googlegroups.com>,

> heinrichmartin wrote:
> ...
> >Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually sending
> >through a Google interface? I have the feeling that the wording in this
> >thread incrementally changed from "is there a way", via "they should", to
> >"their fault" - this happens and has happened too often in all kinds of
> >conversation all over the world without considering facts.
> It is well-established that they are posting "from Google" - i.e., they are
> using Google as the portal to Usenet.

This was not evident (to me) from reading c.l.t.; we had occasional, reasonable complaints about the usability of the groups interface, but iirc they referred to formatting rather than spam.
I was an observer only, I neither looked for evidence that nobody pointed out, nor did I know what others consider common knowledge. Sorry, if that covered my intention.

> Whether or not they are using "The Google Interface" - in the sense that a
> typical human user sitting at a computer (or phone or whatever), running a
> thing known as "a web browser" would be said to be using "The Google
> Interface" - is unknown but pretty much irrelevant.

True. I never assumed that these are actually created via an HMI. That's why I vaguely wrote about *a* Google interface.

> The question as to what to do about it, is usually phrased in terms of
> "Should we disconnect Google from Usenet (as if we could do such a thing)
> to solve the spam mess, but at the cost of disconnecting the legit users
> who access Usenet via Google?" Further, it is argued, that Usenet depends
> on a steady stream of newusers in order to survive, and most of the
> newusers come to us via Google. So, that's the issue we face...

Thank you for the details. "Too big to fail" fail comes to my mind. And "laziness/comfort beats privacy/security/safety/younameit". What a pity.
Just to be clear: that wasn't meant to be sarcastic - I can see the problem and I wished I had a solution.

> People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough
> men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
>
> George Orwell

I want to believe that George Orwell intentionally implied defensive violence with the phrases "sleep peaceably" and "stand ready".
And I want to amend that these rough people shall be controlled by us people, i.e. it is up to us whether we embrace violence in our thoughts, words, and acts.
I was unable to find a trusted reference to a single author, but https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/10/watch-your-thoughts/ describes the quote that I have in mind.

Having that said, back to the intended message: "Don't compare bits with bullets" would be tempting, but could be interpreted like ignoring wars on information and cyber space ;-)
I still do not see a reason for comparing Google with Hamas.

[Rich]

heinrichmartin <martin....@frequentis.com> wrote:
> On Monday, November 27, 2023 at 5:57:42 PM UTC+1, Kenny McCormack wrote:
>> In article <f429297e-05bc-4232...@googlegroups.com>,
>> heinrichmartin wrote:
>> ...
>> >Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually sending
>> >through a Google interface? I have the feeling that the wording in this
>> >thread incrementally changed from "is there a way", via "they should", to
>> >"their fault" - this happens and has happened too often in all kinds of
>> >conversation all over the world without considering facts.
>> It is well-established that they are posting "from Google" - i.e., they are
>> using Google as the portal to Usenet.
>
> This was not evident (to me) from reading c.l.t.;

Your headers indicate you are using google groups to post here.
Unfortunately, given the general desire by "big-tech" to dumb-down
everything to the point of uselesness, the google groups interface does
not expose to you the necessary information to see that the spam posts
look to be posted through google's servers.

> I was an observer only, I neither looked for evidence that nobody
> pointed out, nor did I know what others consider common knowledge.
> Sorry, if that covered my intention.

Unfortunately, using the google groups interface, the relevant data was
excluded from your view by google deciding (for you) that it was not
something you would ever want to see.

[Peter Dean]

heinrichmartin <martin....@frequentis.com> wrote:

> Btw, is there evidence that the spammers and scammers are actually
> sending through a Google interface? I have the feeling that the
> wording in this thread incrementally changed from "is there a way",
> via "they should", to "their fault" - this happens and has happened
> too often in all kinds of conversation all over the world without
> considering facts.

"Eternal-September scans all articles for all groups originating from
Google ..."


see https://www.eternal-september.org/index.php?showpage=nocem

[Peter Dean]

google groups ending support for usenet might reduce the spam considerably

https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538?visit_id=638381921477344227-87081626&p=usenet&rd=1

yippee

[Gerald Lester]

Praise The Lord, and pass the ammo!