OT:Reporting spam

They don't appear to do much, except respond, but I believe they do cut off the address though, because I have done it a couple of times. What results is that the spammer just continues with another address.

I sent it to them a few times but it doesn't seem to have done much good. I will try again anyway.

I am probably flogging a dead horse, but let me try once again for the umpteenth time, to suggest the best thing for spammers, advertising, and other fly-by-night operators is to ignore them. The total yearly traffic on rctn runs to somewhere around 50,000 messages at the present time. In the past, this has been even higher. The total of the messages we object to is a minute fraction of this total. If they are ignored, then they get no encouragement that they have been noticed. The same goes, IMHO, to discussions about advertising. I cannot tell the difference, for genuine rctners like Mary Pulver (Monica Ferris), between what is advertising, and what is passing useful information. So far better to just ignore these as well, if you find them objectionable. Again they are a minute fraction of total rctn traffic.

"Lucille" ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.net) writes:

-- Jim Cripwell. From Canada. Land of the Key Bird. This creature of doom flies over the frozen tundra in winter, shrieking its dreaded call; "Key, Key, Key, Key rist but it's cold!!"

When the bible thumper one started up, he had a yahoo addy. I sent it off and sure enough, he morphed seamlessly into another one. It's the crossposters he generates (which is success for him) that are irritating. I get the impression they don't even realize they are cross posting.

The other yahoo address one who irritated was that woman Yolanche (?) who kept posting her ads to rctnp - I sent that to yahoo abuse and she finally seems to have stopped. Well, till the next time perhaps lol

On 28 May 2005 16:07:58 GMT, F.James Cripwell muttered something like:

It may not seem that reporting them makes a difference--but I've seen newsgroups where the contributing members stopped making an effort to keep the spam down, and the spam took over until the only people posting there were the spammers.

It's not necessary to announce it every time, although an occasional post to help new folks know how to report it might be useful. It's especially helpful to point the abuse desk to the group FAQ, so they know the charter does prohibit advertising. Usually I just get the automated bot response, but now and then they do follow up with a note to the effect of "this account has been terminated, thanks for the report."

-Bertha

-- Brenda

On Sat, 28 May 2005 17:06:13 GMT, Brenda Lewis muttered something like:

I know how to do it in slrn, but not in thunderbird.

-Bertha

I don't block the cross posting but do have mine (Agent) set to warn me when I go to post if the thread I am responding to is cross posted. That leaves me the option to take out the other groups and just leave the one I am reading.

I dont buy this argument for rctn. First it would be of interest to know the annual number of messages on the newsgroup to which you are referring. My guess is that it was nothing like as many as we get on rctn. I cannot understand why spammers would post to a newsgroup to which no-one else was subscribing. If spammers were to try and flood rctn, and drown out the normal messages, we are not just passive people who would take this lying down. Rctn does not have any offensive ambitions on Usenet, but believe you me, if spammers were to try anything with us, we can be a pretty formidable adversary; as past history has shown.

-- Jim Cripwell. From Canada. Land of the Key Bird. This creature of doom flies over the frozen tundra in winter, shrieking its dreaded call; "Key, Key, Key, Key rist but it's cold!!"

ROFLMAO! Me, Sheena or Pat "passive"?! ROFLMAO

I could see Sheena starting a hundred threads in the first five minutes about every stitching topic she could think of, as well as Tardises (Tardii?), bridge and red wine.

Oy! Don`t just pick on us! There`s a MUCH longer list than that!

Pat P

ROFLMAO - many, many things I have been called, many not nice, but 'passive' - never! Thank god!