It seems that many newsgroups are crossposted to this one. Is the news server or what?
It's an idiot who seems to have discovered that he can do things others don't like, just to mess things up, without taking any responsibility for it. I grew up calling these people cowards. Anyway, Google for the original, and look at the headers. You'll see that Google is being used to post the original posts, and followups are set to RPD and another photo group. Thus, any responses from the original newsgroup go to the other newsgroups, and don't show up in the original newsgroup. Google won't do anything about it. The newsgroups are one of the last bastions of true anarchy. The best thing to do is what you'd do to any OT post; ignore it. These people are fed by the responses they generate; starve 'em out.
Ignoring it is why up to 90% of e-mail is spam. Fight it. Forward all of the crosspost attacks to Google. Ask your news admin to aggressively filter Google until they secure their Usenet gateway.
It's our mentally-disturbed porno-troll forging crossposts to this group from all over Usenet - again.
Filter Google? Have you any idea of how many people use Google responsibly? "Cut off your nose to spite your face." What, exactly, do you expect Google to do? I mean, exactly? How do you filter this activity without filtering a lot more legimate activity? These idiots thrive on the feedback they get. The more complaints they see, the more they pile it on. It's the way they work; they aren't normal. Ignore them, they starve.
[...] You don't - that's the whole point. Once others get to know how easy it is to use Google to disrupt newsgroups, there'll be no other way BUT to blanket-filter Google groups. But then others come along, and do the same, and then others, and more; and more; and more....This is just the tip of the iceberg if Google allow unrestricted free and unaccountable access - had any email spam recently?
Google Groups could refuse to post an article where the Followup-to: newsgroups isn't a subset of the To: newsgroups. Is there any legitimate reason to set a followup to a newsgroup which your article isn't posted to? I don't think so. If you're attempting to migrate a discussion to a more appropriate newsgroup, you'd post your own article to that new newsgroup. For example, suppose a question about goldfish is posted to alt.salmon. You'd forward the discussion by posting to both alt.goldfish and alt.salmon, setting the followups to alt.goldfish. Another thing that Google Groups could do is prepend a warning to any post with Followup-to: set to anything other than the To: newsgroups. This warning could look something like: WARNING! WARNING! FOLLOWUPS SET TO REC.PHOTO.DIGITAL, REC.PHOTO.35MM WARNING! With this warning in place, anyone posting a followup reply would know something was unusual. Google Groups already has some anti-spam restrictions, like not accepting a posting to more than 5 newsgroups. Isaac Kuo
If google doesn't allow their user to set the "follow up to:" field to anything except the group they're posting to that would end a lot of it.
There is a world wide attack in progress on an international on-line conference. It will pass soon, and possibly one of the guys in white hats will track me back, figure something out, and put a stop to it before it gets worse. Don't worry though, it will pass soon. Just ignore it, this is not the only usenet (or other type) forum being flooded with crap. Google and Yahoo won't help because they are tracking it for the authorities (or being used by same, which is a chicken vs egg "who came first" kind of thing...at our expense). Jeff
Oh, one other thing. The FBI used to, but does not now, care about this type of Denial of Service attack anymore. Best advice: ignore the trolls ignore the computer generated posts ignore any seeming attacks Jeff
It's a form of terrorism on a westernized social network. The Department of Home Security should care about this. Google is evil for allowing these posts to originate from their network.
Not at all. All they are saying is that the follow-up field is automatically set to only the newsgroup that the post is being posted to. Also, limiting the number of newsgroups that a post can be posted to to 2 or 3.
I think that you don't understand that it isn't necessary for anyone at Google to read any post, in order for the followup newsgroup to be automatically set to the newsgroup from where the post is originating. Actually I think you do understand this, you're just being obnoxious.
Or how about only between groups with some close relation in title. There's a legitimate reason sometimes to post to a few closely related groups-- i. e. when a single topic gets fragmented. (misc.transport.rail.* has several regional groups) A probability-of-spam score may be done based on cross-posting, the complaints recieved of spam (both texts and users). High enough ones could get rejected. I could see (based on posters and content analysis), a "relative similarity" index for groups (rec.photo.digital is probably fairly close to rec.photo.35mm, but miles from alt.fan.dragons) to see if crossposting's likely beneficial.
: Or how about only between groups with some close relation in title. : There's a legitimate reason sometimes to post to a few closely related : groups-- i. e. when a single topic gets fragmented. : (misc.transport.rail.* has several regional groups) You are talking about multiple problems. If a message is crossposted to multiple groups (related or not) that is one problem. But the problem being discussed is the setting of "followup to" to a group that is not included in the original groups. Thus a message from a google account (or any other ISP) with an improper followup setting would spam the unsuspecting group (like this one) with all the replys while the instigating message remains "innocently" off the spammed group. So if a requirement that the Followup setting must be at least a portion of the Groups line would ensure that malicious postings could be traced to the instigator easier. : A probability-of-spam score may be done based on cross-posting, the : complaints recieved of spam (both texts and users). High enough ones : could get rejected. : I could see (based on posters and content analysis), a "relative : similarity" index for groups (rec.photo.digital is probably fairly close : to rec.photo.35mm, but miles from alt.fan.dragons) to see if : crossposting's likely beneficial. Computers are dumb. There would have to be a massive undertaking to collect a database of "similarities" between all the newsgroups. And the comparison of any posted message to all the possible crossover subjects would take a huge amount of computing when you concider the huge number of postings made each hour. So I suspect that a relational check is not likely to ever be done. But a broad "no more than 3 groups in a single posting" and a "followup must be at least a subset of the groups line" rule would reduce the problem. I am not so silly to believe that all malicious postings will be eliminated with these rules, but it would make it less easy and thus less prevalent. JMHO Randy ========== Randy Berbaum Champaign, IL
