On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:39:50 PM UTC-7, Darrell E. Larocque wrote:
> On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 7:56:07 PM UTC-4, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 4:39:59 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 13:14:51 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 01:57:11 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength.
> > > > Luckily almost all of the spam has been removed.
> > > > I suppose we will have to get used to such spam attacks regularly.
> > > The attack has resumed at full strength again.
> > > There is part of me that thinks the newsgroup is too spam ridden to continue to be used. What do you think?
> > Am I the only one reporting these messages as spam? If so, then all y'all are not doing your part to stop it.
> > In Google newsgroups, "report abuse" is in the dropdown menu attached to the three vertical dots to the right of the reply arrow.
> > PLEASE REPORT THESE AS SPAM (or stop whinging about it.)
> You do realize that marking 140 straight messages as spam today isn't a viable solution, right? Who knows how long this will go on for?
>
> Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.

It seems simple, but it is not. There is no real mechanism to stop an individual account from posting to Usenet, other than to kick them off of the service they are using to post (or block all messages coming from that system, if they won't police their own members). Except, as already explained, modern spammers (this is not the 1990s) invariably use spoofed 'From:' fields, so the identify of the actual sender is very difficult to ascertain. Sure, you can block the listed senders, but the actual sender will just shift to a different set of spoofed addresses. You have to track down who is actually sending it, and that involves identifying the server where the message is first injected into the Usenet flow (the logs of which will then identify who is actually depositing it). There is hidden code for that in every Usenet message, but again, modern spammers spoof that information, making it a tedious process involving a chain of sysops tracking it back to its source.

And again, this is not the 1990s. Progressively fewer Usenet hosts have employed dedicated and knowledgeable administrators with the expertise to do this, and there may not even be enough around anymore to complete the chain of investigation necessary to identify the true source. Hence, modern Usenet spam control has largely abandoned this approach in favor of recipient moderation. Those admins who still known how will write a script to screen out specific spam as it arrives to their system, and the really good ones (if there are any of them still around) will write a script to send out a deletion message across Usenet when they detect such spam, but the majority of Usenet services just leave it to their subscribers to sort through on their own. That is modern Usenet.

A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 02:51:28 UTC+1, taf escreveu:
> On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:39:50 PM UTC-7, Darrell E. Larocque wrote:
> > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 7:56:07 PM UTC-4, pj.ev...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 4:39:59 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 13:14:51 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 01:57:11 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength.
> > > > > Luckily almost all of the spam has been removed.
> > > > > I suppose we will have to get used to such spam attacks regularly..
> > > > The attack has resumed at full strength again.
> > > > There is part of me that thinks the newsgroup is too spam ridden to continue to be used. What do you think?
> > > Am I the only one reporting these messages as spam? If so, then all y'all are not doing your part to stop it.
> > > In Google newsgroups, "report abuse" is in the dropdown menu attached to the three vertical dots to the right of the reply arrow.
> > > PLEASE REPORT THESE AS SPAM (or stop whinging about it.)
> > You do realize that marking 140 straight messages as spam today isn't a viable solution, right? Who knows how long this will go on for?
> >
> > Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
> It seems simple, but it is not. There is no real mechanism to stop an individual account from posting to Usenet, other than to kick them off of the service they are using to post (or block all messages coming from that system, if they won't police their own members). Except, as already explained, modern spammers (this is not the 1990s) invariably use spoofed 'From:' fields, so the identify of the actual sender is very difficult to ascertain. Sure, you can block the listed senders, but the actual sender will just shift to a different set of spoofed addresses. You have to track down who is actually sending it, and that involves identifying the server where the message is first injected into the Usenet flow (the logs of which will then identify who is actually depositing it). There is hidden code for that in every Usenet message, but again, modern spammers spoof that information, making it a tedious process involving a chain of sysops tracking it back to its source.
>
> And again, this is not the 1990s. Progressively fewer Usenet hosts have employed dedicated and knowledgeable administrators with the expertise to do this, and there may not even be enough around anymore to complete the chain of investigation necessary to identify the true source. Hence, modern Usenet spam control has largely abandoned this approach in favor of recipient moderation. Those admins who still known how will write a script to screen out specific spam as it arrives to their system, and the really good ones (if there are any of them still around) will write a script to send out a deletion message across Usenet when they detect such spam, but the majority of Usenet services just leave it to their subscribers to sort through on their own. That is modern Usenet.
Again, I wonder if we should leave Usenet for another platform, like Reddit..
What do you think, Todd?

Op 19-10-2023 om 02:16 schreef Paulo Ricardo Canedo:

>> Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.

> As Todd said, no one can be prevented from posting to this newsgroup as it's unmoderated.

Except that, if it's Google that lets the spammers access their systems,
and that's how it looks, they should be able to block them too, in some
way or another.

Also, on the news server that I use, provided by eternal september.org,
I don't see most of the spam that you're talking about, so it can be
stopped.

On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 4:46:05 AM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 02:51:28 UTC+1, taf escreveu:
> > On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:39:50 PM UTC-7, Darrell E. Larocque wrote:
> > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 7:56:07 PM UTC-4, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 4:39:59 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 13:14:51 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 01:57:11 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength.
> > > > > > Luckily almost all of the spam has been removed.
> > > > > > I suppose we will have to get used to such spam attacks regularly.
> > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength again.
> > > > > There is part of me that thinks the newsgroup is too spam ridden to continue to be used. What do you think?
> > > > Am I the only one reporting these messages as spam? If so, then all y'all are not doing your part to stop it.
> > > > In Google newsgroups, "report abuse" is in the dropdown menu attached to the three vertical dots to the right of the reply arrow.
> > > > PLEASE REPORT THESE AS SPAM (or stop whinging about it.)
> > > You do realize that marking 140 straight messages as spam today isn't a viable solution, right? Who knows how long this will go on for?
> > >
> > > Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
> > It seems simple, but it is not. There is no real mechanism to stop an individual account from posting to Usenet, other than to kick them off of the service they are using to post (or block all messages coming from that system, if they won't police their own members). Except, as already explained, modern spammers (this is not the 1990s) invariably use spoofed 'From:' fields, so the identify of the actual sender is very difficult to ascertain. Sure, you can block the listed senders, but the actual sender will just shift to a different set of spoofed addresses. You have to track down who is actually sending it, and that involves identifying the server where the message is first injected into the Usenet flow (the logs of which will then identify who is actually depositing it). There is hidden code for that in every Usenet message, but again, modern spammers spoof that information, making it a tedious process involving a chain of sysops tracking it back to its source.
> >
> > And again, this is not the 1990s. Progressively fewer Usenet hosts have employed dedicated and knowledgeable administrators with the expertise to do this, and there may not even be enough around anymore to complete the chain of investigation necessary to identify the true source. Hence, modern Usenet spam control has largely abandoned this approach in favor of recipient moderation. Those admins who still known how will write a script to screen out specific spam as it arrives to their system, and the really good ones (if there are any of them still around) will write a script to send out a deletion message across Usenet when they detect such spam, but the majority of Usenet services just leave it to their subscribers to sort through on their own. That is modern Usenet.
> Again, I wonder if we should leave Usenet for another platform, like Reddit.
> What do you think, Todd?

That would mean abandoning over 25 years of postings

On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 6:04:45 AM UTC-7, Enno Borgsteede wrote:
> Op 19-10-2023 om 02:16 schreef Paulo Ricardo Canedo:
> >> Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
>
> > As Todd said, no one can be prevented from posting to this newsgroup as it's unmoderated.
> Except that, if it's Google that lets the spammers access their systems,
> and that's how it looks, they should be able to block them too, in some
> way or another.
>
> Also, on the news server that I use, provided by eternal september.org,
> I don't see most of the spam that you're talking about, so it can be
> stopped.

Google Groups accesses Usenet.
It's only displaying what is already present

Op 19-10-2023 om 20:06 schreef Will Johnson:

> Google Groups accesses Usenet.
> It's only displaying what is already present

I know that, but on the server that I use, the number of new arrivals is
very small, so someone must be filtering it somewhere.

Fact is, that I only saw one new spam message today.

Op 19-10-2023 om 20:06 schreef Will Johnson:

> Google Groups accesses Usenet.
> It's only displaying what is already present

Follow-up:

When I check the group on-line, I see about 10 spam messages sent today.

And via eternal-september.org, only 1 arrived here.

On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 6:04:45 AM UTC-7, Enno Borgsteede wrote:
> Op 19-10-2023 om 02:16 schreef Paulo Ricardo Canedo:
> >> Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
>
> > As Todd said, no one can be prevented from posting to this newsgroup as it's unmoderated.
> Except that, if it's Google that lets the spammers access their systems,
> and that's how it looks, they should be able to block them too, in some
> way or another.
>

Google should be able to filter spam coming from Usenet. They used to. You would see a burst, their systems would 'learn' to recognize the spam, and it would go away. That is not happening. I suspect that Google has deprioritized this.

> Also, on the news server that I use, provided by eternal september.org,
> I don't see most of the spam that you're talking about, so it can be
> stopped.

Yes. There are basically five approaches, in order of increasing effectiveness but also increasing effort:
1. leave it for readers to set up their own filters
2. institute filtering at the news server, which works for their own customers but not the rest of Usenet
3. institute a script to not only identify spam, but to send out a deletion message for each, which removes it from most of Usenet (but takes time for the deletion to propagate)
4. track it back to its source server and block that server (potential collateral damage)
5. track it back to the individual posting it and yank their Usenet access

On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 2:42:43 PM UTC-7, taf wrote:
> On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 6:04:45 AM UTC-7, Enno Borgsteede wrote:
> > Op 19-10-2023 om 02:16 schreef Paulo Ricardo Canedo:
> > >> Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
> >
> > > As Todd said, no one can be prevented from posting to this newsgroup as it's unmoderated.
> > Except that, if it's Google that lets the spammers access their systems,
> > and that's how it looks, they should be able to block them too, in some
> > way or another.
> >
> Google should be able to filter spam coming from Usenet. They used to. You would see a burst, their systems would 'learn' to recognize the spam, and it would go away. That is not happening. I suspect that Google has deprioritized this.
> > Also, on the news server that I use, provided by eternal september.org,
> > I don't see most of the spam that you're talking about, so it can be
> > stopped.
> Yes. There are basically five approaches, in order of increasing effectiveness but also increasing effort:
> 1. leave it for readers to set up their own filters
> 2. institute filtering at the news server, which works for their own customers but not the rest of Usenet
> 3. institute a script to not only identify spam, but to send out a deletion message for each, which removes it from most of Usenet (but takes time for the deletion to propagate)
> 4. track it back to its source server and block that server (potential collateral damage)
> 5. track it back to the individual posting it and yank their Usenet access

[this went out prematurely, without the concluding remark]

september.org seems to be taking approach 2, which is self-contained, protecting their users but not the rest of Usenet. Google has largely taken a hybrid approach in the past - minimal level 2 but predominantly just doing nothing and assuming that there were enough people out on Usenet using approach 3 that the problems would be solved with minimal effort on their part. It used to be that there were a substantial number of server admins doing 3, and a few doing 4 and 5, and that would eventually solve the problem for everyone (which let Google be lazy) but these interventions are not happening to nearly the same extent these days, or the problem would have been solved already.

taf

Op 19-10-2023 om 23:42 schreef taf:

> Google should be able to filter spam coming from Usenet. They used to. You would see a burst, their systems would 'learn' to recognize the spam, and it would go away. That is not happening. I suspect that Google has deprioritized this.

I do believe the latter, and assume that they don't earn much from most
groups. But in this case I think that, based on what I see in the
message headers, the spam is not coming from Usenet, but is injected
directly into a Google server. And I think that, because I see the same
user agent as in your messages, and some other tags are similar too,
except for the posting host.

I can't verify this right now, because today I got no spam whatsoever in
this group, and I don't know how to check those headers on the groups
site itself. I can see that the whole 1st page is filled with the usual
spam, now all with Latin characters in the message titles.

>> Also, on the news server that I use, provided by eternal september.org,
>> I don't see most of the spam that you're talking about, so it can be
>> stopped.
>
> Yes. There are basically five approaches, in order of increasing effectiveness but also increasing effort:
> 1. leave it for readers to set up their own filters
> 2. institute filtering at the news server, which works for their own customers but not the rest of Usenet

Right. That's what they do.

> 3. institute a script to not only identify spam, but to send out a deletion message for each, which removes it from most of Usenet (but takes time for the deletion to propagate)

That would be nice, and benefit the whole net, including Google groups.

> 4. track it back to its source server and block that server (potential collateral damage)

Google might be doing that, and then the spammer switches to a new server.

> 5. track it back to the individual posting it and yank their Usenet access

That would be lovely, especially if it's a Google user.

What I wrote here is based on the assumption that most of the header
lines are genuine. Changing the user agent is probably quite easy
though, so the fact that the spam seems to be coming from the same user
agent as your messages doesn't say that much. Posting hosts are probably
harder to spoof.

A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 12:46:05 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 02:51:28 UTC+1, taf escreveu:
> > On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:39:50 PM UTC-7, Darrell E. Larocque wrote:
> > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 7:56:07 PM UTC-4, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 4:39:59 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 13:14:51 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 01:57:11 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength.
> > > > > > Luckily almost all of the spam has been removed.
> > > > > > I suppose we will have to get used to such spam attacks regularly.
> > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength again.
> > > > > There is part of me that thinks the newsgroup is too spam ridden to continue to be used. What do you think?
> > > > Am I the only one reporting these messages as spam? If so, then all y'all are not doing your part to stop it.
> > > > In Google newsgroups, "report abuse" is in the dropdown menu attached to the three vertical dots to the right of the reply arrow.
> > > > PLEASE REPORT THESE AS SPAM (or stop whinging about it.)
> > > You do realize that marking 140 straight messages as spam today isn't a viable solution, right? Who knows how long this will go on for?
> > >
> > > Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
> > It seems simple, but it is not. There is no real mechanism to stop an individual account from posting to Usenet, other than to kick them off of the service they are using to post (or block all messages coming from that system, if they won't police their own members). Except, as already explained, modern spammers (this is not the 1990s) invariably use spoofed 'From:' fields, so the identify of the actual sender is very difficult to ascertain. Sure, you can block the listed senders, but the actual sender will just shift to a different set of spoofed addresses. You have to track down who is actually sending it, and that involves identifying the server where the message is first injected into the Usenet flow (the logs of which will then identify who is actually depositing it). There is hidden code for that in every Usenet message, but again, modern spammers spoof that information, making it a tedious process involving a chain of sysops tracking it back to its source.
> >
> > And again, this is not the 1990s. Progressively fewer Usenet hosts have employed dedicated and knowledgeable administrators with the expertise to do this, and there may not even be enough around anymore to complete the chain of investigation necessary to identify the true source. Hence, modern Usenet spam control has largely abandoned this approach in favor of recipient moderation. Those admins who still known how will write a script to screen out specific spam as it arrives to their system, and the really good ones (if there are any of them still around) will write a script to send out a deletion message across Usenet when they detect such spam, but the majority of Usenet services just leave it to their subscribers to sort through on their own. That is modern Usenet.
> Again, I wonder if we should leave Usenet for another platform, like Reddit.
> What do you think, Todd?
Maybe we should just abandon the newsgroup and not a create an alternative which would probably fail. After 25 years, maybe we have already discussed everything we needed. What do you think?

Op zondag 22 oktober 2023 om 13:54:42 UTC+2 schreef Paulo Ricardo Canedo:
> A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 12:46:05 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > A quinta-feira, 19 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 02:51:28 UTC+1, taf escreveu:
> > > On Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 3:39:50 PM UTC-7, Darrell E.. Larocque wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 7:56:07 PM UTC-4, pj.ev...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 4:39:59 PM UTC-7, Paulo Ricardo Canedo wrote:
> > > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 13:14:51 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > > A sábado, 14 de outubro de 2023 à(s) 01:57:11 UTC+1, Paulo Ricardo Canedo escreveu:
> > > > > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength.
> > > > > > > Luckily almost all of the spam has been removed.
> > > > > > > I suppose we will have to get used to such spam attacks regularly.
> > > > > > The attack has resumed at full strength again.
> > > > > > There is part of me that thinks the newsgroup is too spam ridden to continue to be used. What do you think?
> > > > > Am I the only one reporting these messages as spam? If so, then all y'all are not doing your part to stop it.
> > > > > In Google newsgroups, "report abuse" is in the dropdown menu attached to the three vertical dots to the right of the reply arrow.
> > > > > PLEASE REPORT THESE AS SPAM (or stop whinging about it.)
> > > > You do realize that marking 140 straight messages as spam today isn't a viable solution, right? Who knows how long this will go on for?
> > > >
> > > > Reporting it ISN'T DOING THE JOB. It's up to the admin to block the accounts from posting.
> > > It seems simple, but it is not. There is no real mechanism to stop an individual account from posting to Usenet, other than to kick them off of the service they are using to post (or block all messages coming from that system, if they won't police their own members). Except, as already explained, modern spammers (this is not the 1990s) invariably use spoofed 'From:' fields, so the identify of the actual sender is very difficult to ascertain.. Sure, you can block the listed senders, but the actual sender will just shift to a different set of spoofed addresses. You have to track down who is actually sending it, and that involves identifying the server where the message is first injected into the Usenet flow (the logs of which will then identify who is actually depositing it). There is hidden code for that in every Usenet message, but again, modern spammers spoof that information, making it a tedious process involving a chain of sysops tracking it back to its source.
> > >
> > > And again, this is not the 1990s. Progressively fewer Usenet hosts have employed dedicated and knowledgeable administrators with the expertise to do this, and there may not even be enough around anymore to complete the chain of investigation necessary to identify the true source. Hence, modern Usenet spam control has largely abandoned this approach in favor of recipient moderation. Those admins who still known how will write a script to screen out specific spam as it arrives to their system, and the really good ones (if there are any of them still around) will write a script to send out a deletion message across Usenet when they detect such spam, but the majority of Usenet services just leave it to their subscribers to sort through on their own. That is modern Usenet.
> > Again, I wonder if we should leave Usenet for another platform, like Reddit.
> > What do you think, Todd?
> Maybe we should just abandon the newsgroup and not a create an alternative which would probably fail. After 25 years, maybe we have already discussed everything we needed. What do you think?

My position is simple. No daily messages. I just read on the newsgroup of SGM, select the unwanted garbage and mark them as spam. Then they are gone. I expect that the troublemakers stop in due time when their fun moment is over.

Hans Vogels

This time, it has been 3 days and Google has taken no action against the spam attack