I may have read a previous post on why this isn't practical in a previous
post but I can't find it. It has become difficult to even scan the
'Subjects' and separate the legit ones from all of the advertising. Sorry
for my obvious ignorance.
TIA,
Chuck

In article , "C & E" wrote:
I may have read a previous post on why this isn't practical in a previous
post but I can't find it. It has become difficult to even scan the
'Subjects' and separate the legit ones from all of the advertising.

Yes, there is: www.nfilter.org

Download and install that. Then set up this filter:
* drop message-id:@googlegroups

This one filter, which drops every post that originates from googlegroups.com,
will catch nearly all of the spam.

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.

"Bert Byfield" wrote in message
46.128...
I may have read a previous post on why this isn't practical in a
previous post but I can't find it. It has become difficult to
even scan the 'Subjects' and separate the legit ones from all of
the advertising. Sorry for my obvious ignorance.

The spammers keep (on purpose) making new subjects to avoid being
filtered into the trash. So spam filtering is an art, not a science.

And, as swatting mosquitos, an exercise in futility. Learn to dance around
the dog****.

Steve

On Mar 8, 12:01 am, G. Morgan wrote:

My GG filter is:
alt.home.repair drop Message-ID: *googlegroups.com

--

I kill all Google Group posts, you can too.
Take back Usenet --http://improve-usenet.org

I understand the need to filter out the spam, and wanting to kill all
Google Group posts because of it, but isn't there a way to do this to
allow legitimate GG posts and filter out the junk? I haven't had a
chance to check out NewsProxy, but I would imagine there's a way to
filter messages based on regular expressions or a series of text
strings that would do the trick without killing legitimate posts to
the group.

Belittle me all you like, but I happen to like the Google Groups UI
and some of its featureset, which is why I use it rather than a
newsgroup reader app that sits on my computer which I might not always
have access to when I want to read posts. If you filter Google Groups
and I happen to post something that is relevant or otherwise could
speak to the issue and you've filtered me out (I'm not talking to G.
Morgan 'cause it's obvious he won't get this post) then it's your
loss...

Kyle wrote:
On Mar 8, 12:01 am, G. Morgan wrote:
My GG filter is:
alt.home.repair drop Message-ID: *googlegroups.com

--

I kill all Google Group posts, you can too.
Take back Usenet --http://improve-usenet.org

I understand the need to filter out the spam, and wanting to kill all
Google Group posts because of it, but isn't there a way to do this to
allow legitimate GG posts and filter out the junk? I haven't had a
chance to check out NewsProxy, but I would imagine there's a way to
filter messages based on regular expressions or a series of text
strings that would do the trick without killing legitimate posts to
the group.

Belittle me all you like, but I happen to like the Google Groups UI
and some of its featureset, which is why I use it rather than a
newsgroup reader app that sits on my computer which I might not always
have access to when I want to read posts. If you filter Google Groups
and I happen to post something that is relevant or otherwise could
speak to the issue and you've filtered me out (I'm not talking to G.
Morgan 'cause it's obvious he won't get this post) then it's your
loss...

The problem is that as long as Google is the spammers best friend and
won't do anything about the massive newsgroup spamming the few
legitimate posts from googlegroups will be affected as people just
decide to filter out googlegroups.

C & E wrote:
I may have read a previous post on why this isn't practical in a previous
post but I can't find it. It has become difficult to even scan the
'Subjects' and separate the legit ones from all of the advertising. Sorry
for my obvious ignorance.
TIA,
Chuck


Best just ignore the noise. I use Thunderbird and there are ways to
block certain senders but as others have mentioned, they just keep
changing addresses. Then to ban all Google or gmail, you might miss
something legitimate.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world but I believe it
is not high enough with all the crooks that pester us daily.

"Kyle" wrote in message
...
On Mar 8, 12:01 am, G. Morgan wrote:

My GG filter is:
alt.home.repair drop Message-ID: *googlegroups.com

--

I kill all Google Group posts, you can too.
Take back Usenet --http://improve-usenet.org

I understand the need to filter out the spam, and wanting to kill all
Google Group posts because of it, but isn't there a way to do this to
allow legitimate GG posts and filter out the junk? I haven't had a
chance to check out NewsProxy, but I would imagine there's a way to
filter messages based on regular expressions or a series of text
strings that would do the trick without killing legitimate posts to
the group.

Belittle me all you like, but I happen to like the Google Groups UI
and some of its featureset, which is why I use it rather than a
newsgroup reader app that sits on my computer which I might not always
have access to when I want to read posts. If you filter Google Groups
and I happen to post something that is relevant or otherwise could
speak to the issue and you've filtered me out (I'm not talking to G.
Morgan 'cause it's obvious he won't get this post) then it's your
loss...

To answer the original question, yes, there is a way to killfile a spammer.
Just hit BLOCK SENDER and he's gone forever. However, he'll just change his
name and be back in an hour.

I see all these Pollyannas who want their e mail and newsgroups all arranged
and in perfect order. They need to hire personal assistants. If a person
is willing to kick out entire domains because of one person, that's a little
anal to me.

Mailwasher is a management program that gives one the ability to block an
entire domain. When it came out, and I got spam from a domain I never heard
of, I just killed the whole domain. Then in conversation, I saw posters
from that domain, but I didn't see their posts, only them quoted. That's
when I knew there is no way to filter out spammers that way. And spammers
change names quicker than I change my mind, so it is not any trouble for
them to have a new identity in a few minutes.

Steve

"G. Morgan" wrote in message
news:38f20c2529d217d3c5eaab69cc253854np@goofysplac e.com...
SteveB wrote:


"Kyle" wrote in message
...
On Mar 8, 12:01 am, G. Morgan wrote:

My GG filter is:
alt.home.repair drop Message-ID: *googlegroups.com

--

I kill all Google Group posts, you can too.
Take back Usenet --http://improve-usenet.org

I understand the need to filter out the spam, and wanting to kill all
Google Group posts because of it, but isn't there a way to do this to
allow legitimate GG posts and filter out the junk? I haven't had a
chance to check out NewsProxy, but I would imagine there's a way to
filter messages based on regular expressions or a series of text
strings that would do the trick without killing legitimate posts to
the group.

Belittle me all you like, but I happen to like the Google Groups UI
and some of its featureset, which is why I use it rather than a
newsgroup reader app that sits on my computer which I might not always
have access to when I want to read posts. If you filter Google Groups
and I happen to post something that is relevant or otherwise could
speak to the issue and you've filtered me out (I'm not talking to G.
Morgan 'cause it's obvious he won't get this post) then it's your
loss...

To answer the original question, yes, there is a way to killfile a
spammer.
Just hit BLOCK SENDER and he's gone forever. However, he'll just change
his
name and be back in an hour.

Block sender is only useful for blocking an individual that gets on your
nerves
and doesn't morph, i.e. a newsgroup regular. Block user, or kill filing
as it's
known in news reader software does nothing to stop SPORGE and SPAM.


I see all these Pollyannas who want their e mail and newsgroups all
arranged
and in perfect order. They need to hire personal assistants. If a person
is willing to kick out entire domains because of one person, that's a
little
anal to me.

It's not just one 'person' I'm kill filing by rejecting all of Google
Group
posts. Google Groups does nothing to stop the spammers that so frequently
use
that horrible web interface to post tons of spam. Also, since most Google
Grouper's are not even aware they are posting to Usenet (or even know what
Usenet is) they lack etiquette and often are "hit and run" types. If you
analyze the posts that emanate from Google Groups and compare them to
posts of
real Usenet users you'll quickly see the overall lack of quality posts
coming
from those users. Yes, I miss some legit postings, but the overall signal
to
noise ratio improvement is well worth it. Besides, if a thread becomes
interesting I can still participate when replies from "normal" users show
up.


Mailwasher is a management program that gives one the ability to block an
entire domain. When it came out, and I got spam from a domain I never
heard
of, I just killed the whole domain. Then in conversation, I saw posters
from that domain, but I didn't see their posts, only them quoted. That's
when I knew there is no way to filter out spammers that way. And spammers
change names quicker than I change my mind, so it is not any trouble for
them to have a new identity in a few minutes.

As I mentioned - you can still participate in threads with GG'ers kill
filed.
Also, you can "white list" certain Googlers you want to read.

I rarely see any spam or sporge with my current setup, and if folks would
not
reply to spam it would make it even better.


Whatever works for you. One size does not fit all.

Steve

According to SteveB meagain@rockvilleUSA:

"Bert Byfield" wrote in message
46.128...
I may have read a previous post on why this isn't practical in a
previous post but I can't find it. It has become difficult to
even scan the 'Subjects' and separate the legit ones from all of
the advertising. Sorry for my obvious ignorance.

The spammers keep (on purpose) making new subjects to avoid being
filtered into the trash. So spam filtering is an art, not a science.

And, as swatting mosquitos, an exercise in futility.

Not necessarily if you do it right.

[I (currently) do email spam filtering for a living. Used to do a
lot with Usenet spam filtering. But retired from that almost 8 years
ago.]

Trying to do spam filtering just for yourself by tuning your own filters
by hand, usually is a huge waste of effort. Except in relatively limited
circumstances, you have to understand a lot more about the underlying
technologies, and understand what the better techniques are.

Blocking individual froms or even domains is usually an exercise
in futility, and is mostly ineffective at blocking spam. Something
smarter/self-tuning like cleanfeed (server level utility) or Bayesian
will do better.

Killfiles (blocking domains, path tails, messageids etc) is usually
most effective for ignoring trolls and the like, not spam.

Though, if you've decided that Google is the source of all spam
in this group (I would disagree with that characterization),
something simple suffices. But you probably won't be that
pleased with the result.

Learn to dance around the dog****.

Getting a better newsreader always helps ;-)

I use something particularly prehistoric (trn - a UNIX command line reader
with roots more than 20 years ago). The reason it does well is because
it shows a threaded view of the subjects. Rather than seeing each article
in the index, you just see the thread. Thus, each index page has
a lot of threads, and it's easy to discard (ignore unread) whole pages
of thread listings. I scan thru 1000+ postings in a matter of a minute
or two, only reading the ones that look interesting. I barely notice
any spam in the group.

There are other readers these days with such capabilities. Such
as Gnus, slrn, and Forte Agent. The latter is Windows-based, and lots
of people really like it.

I'm somewhat out of touch on the newer readers. But neither Outlook
nor Netscape are much good with high volume groups.

Thunderbird isn't too bad, but I prefer my trn ;-)
--
Chris Lewis,

Age and Treachery will Triumph over Youth and Skill
It's not just anyone who gets a Starship Cruiser class named after them.