Regarding Recent Spam on HamSCI Google Group

[Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D.]

Hi HamSCI,

I am sorry that we have all been having to deal with unwelcome spam to this group over the past week. We do have a moderation team (including me) that has been removing the people who post spam and blocking these threads.

Normally, this has not been a big problem on this list because we have a policy of only accepting join requests from people who provide justifications that make it clear they have a legitimate interest in amateur radio and radio science. The most recent spam came from users that seemed to pass that test. You can see the messages we got from some of them below.

In hindsight, these are sufficiently generic that they could have been AI generated or made up by some spammer. In any case, I will work with the moderators to try to come up with a better way of vetting new members.

Thank you for your patience as we work on addressing this problem!

73 de Nathaniel W2NAF

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Nathaniel A. Frissell, Ph.D., W2NAF

Associate Professor

Department of Physics and Engineering

University of Scranton

HamSCI Lead

 

[GENE MCPHEE]

Good morning from Texas. I’m glad to see you are being very proactive re this problem. 

73, Gene N3XUS

On Nov 17, 2025, at 8:36 PM, Dr. Nathaniel A. Frissell Ph.D. <nathaniel...@scranton.edu> wrote:

Hi HamSCI,

I am sorry that we have all been having to deal with unwelcome spam to this group over the past week. We do have a moderation team (including me) that has been removing the people who post spam and blocking these threads.

Normally, this has not been a big problem on this list because we have a policy of only accepting join requests from people who provide justifications that make it clear they have a legitimate interest in amateur radio and radio science. The most recent spam came from users that seemed to pass that test. You can see the messages we got from some of them below.

In hindsight, these are sufficiently generic that they could have been AI generated or made up by some spammer. In any case, I will work with the moderators to try to come up with a better way of vetting new members.

Thank you for your patience as we work on addressing this problem!

73 de Nathaniel W2NAF

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---------------------

Nathaniel A. Frissell, Ph.D., W2NAF

Associate Professor

Department of Physics and Engineering

University of Scranton

HamSCI Lead

 

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[Gerry Creager]

Appreciate all the work you're doing on this.  Thanks for that,  and HamSci itself! 

73

Gerry Creager N5JXS

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -- Walt Disney

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