How is spam dealt with on Usenet and why did it become such a huge issue in the past? It seems like, at least here on the rocksolid hierarchy spam isn't a problem.

I always read about spam being a huge issue but I wasn't around at the time to have experienced it.

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Posted on RetroBBS

Anonymous <Anonymous@rocksolidbbs.com> wrote:
> How is spam dealt with on Usenet

Filters, both set by users and news server operators. Also reports
sent to the abuse email address in the post header which server
admins can use to block users (except for the obvious problem of
them re-registering on free servers).

> and why did it become such a huge issue in the past?

Servers that don't bother filtering or blocking spammers and too
much spam for individuals to filter easily themselves.

> It seems like, at least here on the rocksolid hierarchy spam
> isn't a problem.

I think this is because the main source of spam today is from
Google Groups, a prime example of a news server/gateway that has
shown zero interest in filtering or blocking spammers,
unfortunately.

Google Groups doesn't carry the rocksolid groups. In fact they
don't seem to be adding new groups at all - comp.infosystems.gemini
hasn't been added. So they're safe. news.groups and many others
get fed a steady stream of spam from GG, but users can at least
filter out all posts that come from GG if they like. Unfortunately
some groups have a lot of valid GG users posting too though.

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Anonymous wrote:

> How is spam dealt with on Usenet and why did it become such a huge issue in the past?

Spam is currently dealt with by filters (cleanfeed, NoCeM, etc.) at the server end, and
as always news clients contain their own filtering features.

In the past it was (still is) easy to spam Usenet as you can post to one server and all
the others get your spam. When Usenet was popular, this made sense. With the decline of
people using Usenet, there was no reason to keep spamming (though some still do).

I think most of the Google Groups spam is people thinking it's a popular web forum so
why not spam there. I doubt most GG spammers know anything about Usenet, as most GG users
probably don't realize it either. I've actually been accused by some GG users of scraping
GG for my sites, and have been threatened to take their posts down (which I don't).

> It seems like, at least here on the rocksolid hierarchy spam isn't a problem.

rocksolid had quite some spam problems a while back, mostly from tor users (markets). It
was pretty heavy (lots of spam). The only real way to address that was to stay on top of
it with filtering and manual intervention when it started. Finally, some spammers give up,
and now I just use filtering and then NoCeM for what gets through. So if your spam gets
through the filters, it can still be deleted and that propagates to all other servers
who wish to honor your deletion messages.

> I always read about spam being a huge issue but I wasn't around at the time to have experienced it.

I was around for the whole thing, from pre-spam to heavy spam to now. Pre-spam days were the best :) Now it's just nice to see some still using Usenet as it's still a very useful way to carry forums without the fear that the site will be closed by the admin and all the messages lost.

I could leave now (I'm the admin of rocksolid.*) and the hierarchy can go on all over the world without me.

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Retro Guy