Any Ideas on Turning off the Spammer?

On 2007-08-13 13:56:16 -0700, "Martin X. Moleski, SJ"
said:

On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:46:41 -0700, C J Campbell
wrote in
2007081313464116807-christophercampbell@hotmailcom:

Ignore the sporgers. About half a dozen news groups that I subscribe to
got hit with sporge threats from someone purporting to be Supernews.
(Shame on Supernews if they were the ones who really made these
threats.)

Which is more likely?

A. Someone with a resentment against Supernews uses their
name as part of a flood attack on sci.crypt.

B. Supernews, one of the largest and best news services
in existence, decided to sign its name to a flood attack
so that everyone would despise them.

I am a paying customer of Supernews and know which case
seems more likely to me.

Marty

Well, exactly. Still, if they resent Supernews, why did they urge
switching to Supernews in order to avoid their attack?
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:58:10 -0500, "Gig 601XL Builder"
wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in
:

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 14:05:59 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote in
:

As far as I can tell, these people most likely get their kicks by
reading the responses to their efforts.

Are you able to provide any evidence that what you purport actually
occurs?

You ask that question right after you post this in the same thread?
You got anything to back that up?


You may have failed to recognize the fact that Mr. Henriques said he
was able to tell how the sporger(s) got their kicks, while I merely
offered possibilities. There is a difference between the two types of
statements. One implies that there is some evidence that leads Mr.
Henriques to his conclusion. The other is merely my unsubstantiated
opinion reached by examining the facts.

If Mr. Henriques is able to provide some evidence that the sporger(s)
actually read the responses to their attacks, I'd like to see if it
provides any further clues to their identity.

Do you have anything constructive to add to this discussion?


Since he clearly wrote "As far as I can tell" it sounds like opinion to me
and hence calls for no cite. Especially considering there is no way to prove
that someone does or doesn't read the responses and it is just an assumption
made on human nature.

Your theory, on the other hand, makes a great leap that it could be some
secret method of encrypted communication. To state something like that you
need a little more to back it up. But then again if random spewing of crap
in a newsgroup is indeed a method of sending secret note to OBL then maybe
DHS needs to come and talk to you.

On 2007-08-13 04:01:00 -0700, "Kyle Boatright" said:

I'm seeing a huge number of spam postings in this group. I'm sure they are
from a bot, but since the address keeps switching, I don't know how to block
the messages in OE.

Suggestions?

Just filter out any messages cross-posted to sci.crypt. This will not
work with Outlook Express 6 on Windows 98/SE, however. That particular
version of OE will attempt to download all 900,000 back-logged messages
on sci.crypt before filtering them out.

I wonder what the sporger has against sci.crypt?
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

Dudley Henriques wrote:
I'm sure, as you well know being a moderator yourself, that there are
lots of moderators out here that are motivated by charitable
incentives. They spend a great deal of time and effort trying to do a
credible job of keeping some semblance of order on their forums; much
of it unappreciated by many.
My experience was unfortunate. It did however turn me away from
thinking of moderators in a positive vein and more into the negative
side of the equation.

Actually I agree that there appear to be a fair number of anal moderators -
or they are at least not very good moderators.

But getting back to the initial topic of a moderator for this group;
I'll tell you in all honesty; with all the "personalities" we have on
this forum considering pilots, their diversified backgrounds and the
natural egos (mine not withstanding :-), I wouldn't want to take on
that job for all the tea in China :-))

Thankfully this group probably could never be switched to a moderated one
for technical and "political" reasons.

Still - on one hand you appear to have the appropriate level of laid-
backness to be a non-anal moderator who would rarely reject a post, yet on
the other hand you have too much good sense to be trapped into such a job.
I envy you your good sense. :-) (Excepting avoidance of yard chores, which
it appears you are not clever enough to avoid. Which reminds me, our yard
needs mowing sometime this week....)

On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:29:34 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote in
:



Larry Dighera wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:44:05 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote in
:

Apparently you missed the preface; "AS far as I can tell". Is there
something about that you don't understand?

From what information were you doing the 'telling?'




For Pete's sake Dighera; give it a rest will you? This is Usenet. Nobody
here gives a rat's ass what I think or what you think or what anyone
else thinks for that matter. Just post your opinions and stop bugging
people to "prove" this and "prove" that.
DH


You asked me a question. Then you admonish me for responding to it.
Please don't ask if you don't want an answer. Thanks.

alexy wrote:

Larry Dighera wrote:



It has been suggested that the free nfilter program will permit
filtering on any news header field to be used with any news reader:
http://www.nfilter.org/ . I haven't tried it yet.

Great little freeware program. I use it, primarily for another forum
frequently plagued by abusive posts, for which one user has written
filter files that he shares with the group. I didn't bother with it
for this little incident, but if it continued, it would be easy for me
to add a filter based on the forums to which it was cross posted.
E.g., in the other forum I mentioned, filters used include cross posts
to a couple of unrelated forums that some of the abusers hit in
tandem, as well as any post crosss-posted to more than 4 forums.

BTW, I went ahead and set up a rule for this. And I don't see the test
post I sent ] and cross posted to sci.crypt. Here's the rule if anyone
is using nfilter:
################################################## ##########################################
#
# Filter for rec.aviation.piloting sporge
rec.aviation.piloting drop xref:sci\.crypt
################################################## #########################################

Of course, you will lose all those r.a.p. posts legitimately
cross-posted to sci.crypt! g

--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

Jim Logajan wrote:

I envy you your good sense. :-) (Excepting avoidance of yard chores, which
it appears you are not clever enough to avoid. Which reminds me, our yard
needs mowing sometime this week....)

Oh I can avoid the yard chores all right. They're inanimate. It's my
WIFE looking for me to do the yard chores I can't avoid!!! I've tried 3
different makes of running shoes so far. I think New Balance might turn
out to be the "weapon of choice" :-))
DH

Larry Dighera wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:29:34 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote in
:


Larry Dighera wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:44:05 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote in
:

Apparently you missed the preface; "AS far as I can tell". Is there
something about that you don't understand?
From what information were you doing the 'telling?'

For Pete's sake Dighera; give it a rest will you? This is Usenet. Nobody
here gives a rat's ass what I think or what you think or what anyone
else thinks for that matter. Just post your opinions and stop bugging
people to "prove" this and "prove" that.
DH


You asked me a question. Then you admonish me for responding to it.
Please don't ask if you don't want an answer. Thanks.


I'll take that advice and do all I can to avoid you in the future. I'd
appreciate it as well if you will please consider doing the same.
Thank you
DH

In article ,
Larry Dighera wrote:
While I have not yet found a method of filtering out the sporge
articles, I have found some promising leads:

Each article is crossposted to the sci.crypt newsgroup.

The 'Path:' header field always contains:
news.isoc.lu!news.grnet.gr

The 'Subject:' header field always begins with a lower-case letter

Perhaps filters can be successfully written to exploit these
consistencies.

I killfiled sci.crypt, and it took care of it nicely. I've never read
that group, so I'm not likely to be missing any content.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/

Kyle Boatright wrote:
I'm seeing a huge number of spam postings in this group. I'm sure they are
from a bot, but since the address keeps switching, I don't know how to block
the messages in OE.

Suggestions?


I run NewsProxy (aka Nfilter) together with Outlook Express. In its
configuration file, I have the following rules which appear to have tamed this
particular beast. I saw about a dozen messages with just rule 1; after I added
rules 2 and 3 there have been no more messages. So I credit NewsProxy with
deleting the 1700+ bogus messages in this and other beleagured newsgroups.

* drop xref:[^:]+{1,}
* drop xref:sci.crypt
* drop xpost:sci.crypt

I'm not exactly sure whether the xref or xpost parameter is correct but the
program seems to be happy with both and the supply of bogus messages has
completely dried up. The first rule nukes crossposted messages... period.
Pretty much every off-topic message on usenet is crossposted, so why allow it?



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com