Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / March 2008

Those of us using Supernews don't see the problem.

-j

Unfortunately, a large amount of NNTP and SMTP traffic originating on
netblocks owned by Chinese and Korean interests is simply spam.

For example, the greylisting spam system I use blocks all SMTP messages
originating on any IP from those places, as a /default/ setting.  I've
gone further and blocked entire netblocks owned by some US hosting
companies right at our routers, since they can't seem to manage all the
zombies in their network.

Scorched earth, maybe, but it's the way things are going.  The SNR from
these sites is so low it isn't worth routing the traffic.  Many NNTP and
SMTP relays drop this traffic as a matter of course.

Switch to a news provider that takes an active interest in killing the
crap at their servers. Supernews does a damned good job.

It's amazing how many groups have been taken over by chyneeze spammers.
Does anyone here remember a time when spammers were actively hunted
down by zealous group members?  I see none of that anymore.  It seems
as if the veteran spam hunters have disappeared and been replaced with
people who are more accepting of spam, or who see it and move on.

My ISP manager says that USENET is finished.  He can't wait until the
last few people stop using it so he can get rid of it.

I may be mistaken, but it's my impression that USENET is the only place
left where one can express an opinion without fear.  Most every website
wants registration, and requires javascript.  

Javascript is such a huge security risk and yet it's being forced on
everyone.  I don't understand it.  Everyone in the industry is security
conscious, yet they promote scripting and hire the javascript kiddies
out of the colleges with their professors' latest scripting techniques.
Now I can't even access my own ISP's services without javascript being
turned on.

Sorry, javascript is my pet peeve.

The point is, fewer people will contribute to these forums as spam
increases.  Ultimately, this spells the end of the medium.  It's sad.
The chyneeze angle is interesting.  I wonder if part of the overall
cyber-attack strategy they have is to suddenly flood all of the USENET
groups with an endless stream of spam as a form of service denial?  It
could be that we are seeing is just a test of the system for the
upcoming deluge.

I agree the open relays are a problems and there is a heap more spam on both
USENET and via email these days.  Of course the biggest Spamers are not the
Chinese but the USA.

http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso

An while China is number 2 right now I suspect they will have the dubious
honour of number 1 sooner rather than later.

Nigel

You're talking about the shoe and sporting good spammer?

That would actually be Google's fault.  Google as a company refuses to
provide any kind of direct customer service.  That means that they will
not read complaints of crime, spamming, and exploited vulnerabilities in
their servers. They've rapidly become a favorite with crime gangs in the
past couple of years.  Filtering Google Groups drops the spam from 50%
to less than 1% for me.  They really need a UDP (Usenet Death Penalty).

Discard articles with the header
Organization: http://groups.google.com

All Gmail to me is rejected for the same reasons.  Anyone who thinks
that Google would make a good wireless provider is smoking crack.  The
billions of dollars worth of bandwidth will be owned by criminals.

I use easynews, and haven't seen all that much of a problem.  Occasional
spams, but then I get that in my mail inbox too, depite my massive
filters.

I suspect you just need a better news feeder.

I use NewsWatcher and setting a kill filter for "Organization:  contains
http://groups.google.com " has improved things dramatically.  It's
eliminating from my view 40-100 posts daily on rec.food.cooking.  I'm
much calmer now.