Unreadable NG

Nuke Google Groups?

"TT_Man" skrev i en meddelelse news:pk0Jj.8466$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...

for a start Kill anything from google groups and anything with ..com in the host name. that would lose about 80% of the spam.

Yes, do what I do - add Outlook "filters" to the messages that are downloaded. If message title inclides "mi.5", "mi 5", "watches", "paypal", "wholesale", "persecu", etc., then "delete".

It may not trap all SPAM, but it gets most of 'em. Works for me :-)

BR Harry

There are some earlier threads that discussed this in more detail but, in summary, you're best bet is probably to install a local usenet (NNTP) server to which your current client software will connect using the local loopback address.

The benefit of doing this is that *all* lines in the posting header are exposed to the local server for filtering. You can set it so that googlegroup postings (the current source of the majority of the spam) are never even loaded. The balance of the post is available once it is in the server, so the rest of the header lines (as well as the entire message body) can be examined.

The filters can be fine-tuned so that every post from googlegroups is dropped except for those from specific individuals that you whitelist.

It's not as difficult to implement as it may sound. I got Hamster installed and working over a lunch break. Lots of other folks are successfully using nfilter as the server.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

I just added gmail.com to my blocked senders list and all the spam has gone.

Sure it is.

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aioe.org is home to cowards and terrorists

Add this line to your news proxy nfilter.dat file
* drop Path:*aioe.org!not-for-mail to drop all aioe.org traffic.

http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

I'm working on a newgroup reader that will allow you full control over what you see(as best it can). I'm in the middle finishing it and got distracted + have some other projects I have to finish. Right now I just have the ability to view messages and such and need to work on the interface a bit more but eventually will allow full regex control over all the header info and potentially more stuff(such as offsite filters that can be regularly imported and some special stuff that will help keep out the spammers. (I also plan to have a few other special features to make usenet life a little more interesting)

Hopefully one day I'll be able to finish.

Michael Terrell's sig alludes to a solution, but to be more specific, take a look at

and in particular if you use Mozilla Thunderbird, FreeAgent or Outlook Express as a newsreader. (Similar pages for other newsreaders are also available.)

Finally, if you decide to go this route take a look at

I can't give any direct comment - I'm only now (as in this evening) in the process of installing and configuring these tools. However comments from other users seem positive.

Bob Pownall

Following up on my earlier post, to let people know of my experiences...

Installing NewsProxy to filter what my newsreader (Mozilla Thunderbird) see is working for me. I put the line:

• drop Message-ID:*googlegroups* in my nfilter.dat file and eliminated easily 80% of the spam. (The line blows away everything coming from Google Groups, so Thunderbird never even sees it.)

To paraphrase Hattori Hanzo, another poster in this thread, a newsreader with more capable filtering wouldn't need NewsProxy, but I like Thunderbird and open-source software. He(?) appears to use Forte Agent, based on the header lines of his(?) post. I tried FreeAgent for a while several years ago, but never could figure out the user interface to my satisfaction. Maybe FreeAgent been improved since I tried it, or maybe Agent is significantly better to use than FreeAgent.

Only problem I had with NewsProxy was that I initially put a blank space between Message-ID: and *googlegroups*. That apparently caused NewsProxy to choke.

Bob Pownall

I have written a simple regex-based filter -- just a hack, nothing good enough to publish -- and have come up with an additional filtering technique that really helps a lot.

After each of the usual regex "decide to kill this post" pattern-matchers, I have an option to also kill some or all replies to the post. As the filter decides that a post should be killed, it remembers the Message-ID of that post and makes a filter that kills any post with that Message-ID in the first N entries of the References line. I find that N=1, N=2, and N=3 are the most useful. More than that kills too many desirable posts.

Publish it! Sounds good! Gets rid of "master-baiters" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

We need to kill off the amateurs as well. :(

-- aioe.org is home to cowards and terrorists

Add this line to your news proxy nfilter.dat file

• drop Path:*aioe.org!not-for-mail to drop all aioe.org traffic.

Seems like a solution that penalizes the NG user. I'm on the trailing edge of usenet savvy and implementation, but I still have an interest in this group. I'd be willing to spend time and resources tracking down and eliminating the spammers themselves, instead of constantly revising filters.

Frank

-)

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Frank Raffaeli wrote:

It's a losing battle. Google doesn't care and the Chinese ISPs don't care.[1] Those who continue to use Google Groups to post will have to resign themselves to being auto-plonked by many. (The pages at Terrell's link describe how to use blunt tools and most folks will do that without any whitelisting.)

Ironically, it's Google Groupers who play by the rules that get screwed worst by Google's indifference.

If you are limited to Port 80 access and want to avoid the batch- plonk, there are other Web-based portals where you can post. If you cut a unique sentence from a 3-week-old post and paste it into Google's Web search, you'll find those. (Latency varies widely among those.) =2E =2E [1] I don't know if it's cause-and-effect but (other than the few spam-friendly Chinese ISPs) most of the stuff I report to ISPs goes away soon.

Of course, it could be that most of what I report are just hit-and-run spammers who get over it quickly. The *real* PITA spammers are going to do it forever =2E..and we all know where *they* access Usenet.

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Indeed

I have some ideas. You can contact me privately if you want to collaborate.

Frank