SPAM: Why are we getting all the spam ??

David Binnie

"David Binnie" <> wrote:

>

Google groups seem to have let a captcha-cracking spam-botnet slip beyond
their control for the moment since it hits them from multiple IPs.

Also readnews.com is spammer friendly due to rubbish security which allows
a forged NNTP-Posting-Host, forged preloaded path, and forged abuse
address (it's not really Usenet Monster) -- and their claims to have fixed
the problem are demonstrably false for now.

--
Dave Farrance

Dave Farrance

On Fri, 22 May 2009 08:46:10 GMT, Dave Farrance
<> wrote:

>"David Binnie" <> wrote:
>
>>
>
>Google groups seem to have let a captcha-cracking spam-botnet slip beyond
>their control for the moment since it hits them from multiple IPs.
>
>Also readnews.com is spammer friendly due to rubbish security which allows
>a forged NNTP-Posting-Host, forged preloaded path, and forged abuse
>address (it's not really Usenet Monster) -- and their claims to have fixed
>the problem are demonstrably false for now.

One option to de-spam your feed is to run your own feed. There are
several free apps out there that can be setup as mini-newsservers on
your PC, to which you then connect via the loopback IP (127.0.0.1:119).

The benefit of this is that the local server has access to all header
lines and the entire body, so it's easy to set rules that drop any posts
with an HTTP link to the site the spammer is flogging. Dropping by body
content means that it doesn't matter which IP they come in from or what
account they use; it all goes into the bit-bucket.

On the downside, that does mean that one's machine is downloading all
traffic in the groups that one follows. That's not so much of an issue
for most text groups but is something to be aware of.

http://improve-usenet.org/ has info on several local servers. I use
Hamster but mostly because it was the one I tried first and it meets my
needs. NewsProxy also seems to be pretty popular.

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Rich Webb