What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers? I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

Stu Fields

On 2007-11-30, Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers? I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

comp.os.linux.misc is even worse. The shoe spammers keep changing
their email addresses, they get a lot of disposable email addresses
from Gmail, so they change them every so often.

i

I agree. This newsgroup has so much good information and machining ideas!
But along with it I have to put up with so much cross posting, spam, and
right wing crap that probably 1/2 the posts along with some good one's are
in my kill-file.

What to do?????

Al

"Ignoramus22774" wrote in message
...
On 2007-11-30, Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers?
I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe
ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has
about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

comp.os.linux.misc is even worse. The shoe spammers keep changing
their email addresses, they get a lot of disposable email addresses
from Gmail, so they change them every so often.

i

"Al" wrote in message
...
I agree. This newsgroup has so much good information and machining ideas!
But along with it I have to put up with so much cross posting, spam, and
right wing crap that probably 1/2 the posts along with some good one's are
in my kill-file.

What to do?????

Al

Remember what John Wanamaker said about advertising: "I know that half of my
advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half."

I apply the same rule here. Just peek in an look; if it's junk, ignore the
thread, unless it goes on for more than a few days. If it does, the topic
probably has changed completely. d8-)

And don't get too serious about it. Remember what P.J. O'Rourke said -- I
think he must have stopped by this NG before he wrote it:

"Specialization increases economic value. As an example Smith famously used
the 'trifling manufacture' of a pin. Without specialization and specialists'
machinery it would take us all day to make one pin. In an early draft of
_Wealth_, Smith noted that if we went so far as to dig in the iron mines,
smelt our own ore, and so forth, we could 'scarce make one pin in a year.'
And somewhere a group of hobbyists -- contactable via the Internet -- is
doing just that, to the irritated mystification of their wives." -- P.J.
O'Rourke, _On The Wealth of Nations_

--
Ed Huntress

What to do?????


They won't go away until that .001% of people who are stupid enough to buy
anything from a spammer are killed by the rest of us.
Those who buy chinese tools and complain about the lack of quality tools on
the market should be next.

"Stuart & Kathryn Fields" wrote in message
.. .
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers?
I've been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis
shoe ads as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender
list has about 150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking
seems to attract more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

Stu Fields

I don't see much point in filtering spammer's addresses since they change
addresses more frequently than their shorts.

It's much more beneficial to filter on those that post mostly political crap
since they post so frequently and rarely have anything interesting to say
about metalworking anyway.

Mike

Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:

For some reason, Â*rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

**** attracts flies.
As long as Gunner Arsch, Cliff, Igiot, Unka G., Gwinn, Wes, Ed Huntress, Bob
Engelhardt, Millwright Ron, TMT, ... and all the other OT'lers dump their
crap here, you'll find flies.


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:33:53 -0800, Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers? I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

Because, for quite some time, regulars here toyed with the muslim
spammers/trolls instead of just blocking them. So they've targeted with
more. I pointed out misc.emerg-services serveral times as an example of
groups which were laid waste for _years_ because of people who wanted a
harmless dialog with trolls/kooks, but, well, it could be worse. But it
could be better.

For what it's worth, all I see lately are the nym-shifters. Anything
crossposted to more than 2 groups, is in my killfile. I use
news.individual.net as a newsfeed (15 bux a year or so), and they filter
out obvious spam as well. So it's not all that bad, if you go through a
few steps.

Might have been easier not to have encouraged them a year or three ago.

"Nick Mueller" wrote in message
...
Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:

For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

**** attracts flies.
As long as Gunner Arsch, Cliff, Igiot, Unka G., Gwinn, Wes, Ed Huntress,
Bob
Engelhardt, Millwright Ron, TMT, ... and all the other OT'lers dump their
crap here, you'll find flies.


Nick

Actually, Nick, the flies just like to annoy you. It's not that everyone is
out to get you, it's just that...well, they're all out to get you.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:

Actually, Nick, the flies just like to annoy you. It's not that everyone
is out to get you, it's just that...well, they're all out to get you.

Have you eaten too much ****?


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

"Nick Mueller" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Actually, Nick, the flies just like to annoy you. It's not that everyone
is out to get you, it's just that...well, they're all out to get you.

Have you eaten too much ****?

I've avoided eating it but a lot of it sure flies in here from your
direction. Mostly I just duck when you open your mouth.

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 12:14:30 +0100, Nick Mueller
wrote:

Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:

For some reason, *rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

**** attracts flies.
As long as Gunner Arsch, Cliff, Igiot, Unka G., Gwinn, Wes, Ed Huntress, Bob
Engelhardt, Millwright Ron, TMT, ... and all the other OT'lers dump their
crap here, you'll find flies.


Nick
Damned few till after you showed up.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

On 2007-11-30, Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers?

I think that the spamers are targeting many of the rec.crafts.*
newsgroups, not just this one. But this is the only one which I follow,
so I can't be sure.

I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

You can make the list much smaller and more efficient by
blocking on the "NNTP-Posting-Host: " header entry, instead of the
"From: " header. Note that the shoe ads all come from China, and mostly
from a single Class-B range. Many others come from India, and the
make-money-fast type spams are coming from Mexico at present.

So, instead of doing something like:

59.94.105.210

(an actual example from previous spam from India), you first do a
whois on the IP address, and get back a range of addresses:

59.88.0.0 - 59.99.255.255

Then you block using wildcards.

59.94.*.*

will get all of that Class-B range. You would have to do eleven of them
to get rid of all from that block in India -- unless your newsreader is
capable of handling one of the other formats for specifying a range of
IPs, such as:

it breaks down to two entries in "netmask" format:

59.88.0.0/255.248.0.0
59.96.0.0/255.252.0.0

or -- two entries in CIDR format:

59.88.0.0/13
59.96.0.0/14

Oh yes -- the pro-Islam spam all seems to come from Saudi Arabia.

So -- observe where things are coming from, and if they are from
somewhere where you don't expect any valid participants in this
newsgroup, block by the range.

Also -- if your newsreader's killfile feature can block on
content, look for URLs frequently used -- such as anything ending in
".cn" after the "//" and before the first single "/". Anything blocking
on content instead of headers is likely to be much more expensive, since
every article has to be downloaded several times -- once each to test
against all of the content entries, and a final time for actually
reading it (assuming that you don't block it.)

Even blocking on the "Subject: " header can be made more
efficient by blocking on one or two things unlikely to be showing up in
valid subject headers, but common in the spam, such as "nike" or
"prada". Use wildcards as necessary.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Thanks DoN very informative. I'll try it.
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2007-11-30, Stuart & Kathryn Fields wrote:
What is it about this news group that attracts the nuts and spammers?

I think that the spamers are targeting many of the rec.crafts.*
newsgroups, not just this one. But this is the only one which I follow,
so I can't be sure.


I've
been accumulating blocked senders to eliminate the penis and tennis shoe
ads
as well as the become a millionaire ads and my blocked sender list has
about
150 entries. For some reason, rec.crafts.metalworking seems to attract
more crap than other NGs that I monitor.

You can make the list much smaller and more efficient by
blocking on the "NNTP-Posting-Host: " header entry, instead of the
"From: " header. Note that the shoe ads all come from China, and mostly
from a single Class-B range. Many others come from India, and the
make-money-fast type spams are coming from Mexico at present.

So, instead of doing something like:

59.94.105.210

(an actual example from previous spam from India), you first do a
whois on the IP address, and get back a range of addresses:

59.88.0.0 - 59.99.255.255

Then you block using wildcards.

59.94.*.*

will get all of that Class-B range. You would have to do eleven of them
to get rid of all from that block in India -- unless your newsreader is
capable of handling one of the other formats for specifying a range of
IPs, such as:

it breaks down to two entries in "netmask" format:

59.88.0.0/255.248.0.0
59.96.0.0/255.252.0.0

or -- two entries in CIDR format:

59.88.0.0/13
59.96.0.0/14

Oh yes -- the pro-Islam spam all seems to come from Saudi Arabia.

So -- observe where things are coming from, and if they are from
somewhere where you don't expect any valid participants in this
newsgroup, block by the range.

Also -- if your newsreader's killfile feature can block on
content, look for URLs frequently used -- such as anything ending in
".cn" after the "//" and before the first single "/". Anything blocking
on content instead of headers is likely to be much more expensive, since
every article has to be downloaded several times -- once each to test
against all of the content entries, and a final time for actually
reading it (assuming that you don't block it.)

Even blocking on the "Subject: " header can be made more
efficient by blocking on one or two things unlikely to be showing up in
valid subject headers, but common in the spam, such as "nike" or
"prada". Use wildcards as necessary.

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Spammers are not targeting any newsgroups, they spam all
newsgroups. They spam mostly using a program called "GGMP", or "Google
Groups Message Poster", that posts their spam to all groups through
Google Groups.

i

Nick Mueller wrote:
... As long as ... Bob Engelhardt, ... and all the other OT'lers dump their
crap here,...

What? *I* am a OT'ler ("OT'ler"?)? I didn't realize it! Wait, let me
check ... OK, since Aug '02 when you (Nick) started posting to RCM, I
have had 1790 posts, of which 143 (8%) had "OT" in the subject. Of
those, I was the OP for 21 of them, but 5 were only marginally OT (e.g.,
nitrile gloves for shop use).

So in 5+ years, I was the OP for 16 genuinely OT threads, none of which
were political, religious, or gun related. I do think that you are way
too sensitive. Or, maybe it was this reply that I made to one of your
posts that that got me on your **** list:
"Surely your newsreader has a filter. You can avoid Iggy's posts
without subjecting the rest of us to your crude replies. Would it
surprise you to know that we don't care what you think about him? "

Oh, of *your* 1160 posts to RCM, 69 (6%) have been on OT subjects.
Never the OP, I assume, but nevertheless contributing to the problem.

I'd say that I was sorry for offending you but I'm not,
Bob

vOn 2007-12-02, Bob Engelhardt wrote:
Nick Mueller wrote:
... As long as ... Bob Engelhardt, ... and all the other OT'lers dump their
crap here,...

What? *I* am a OT'ler ("OT'ler"?)? I didn't realize it! Wait, let me
check ... OK, since Aug '02 when you (Nick) started posting to RCM, I
have had 1790 posts, of which 143 (8%) had "OT" in the subject. Of
those, I was the OP for 21 of them, but 5 were only marginally OT (e.g.,
nitrile gloves for shop use).

So in 5+ years, I was the OP for 16 genuinely OT threads, none of which
were political, religious, or gun related. I do think that you are way
too sensitive. Or, maybe it was this reply that I made to one of your
posts that that got me on your **** list:
"Surely your newsreader has a filter. You can avoid Iggy's posts
without subjecting the rest of us to your crude replies. Would it
surprise you to know that we don't care what you think about him? "

Oh, of *your* 1160 posts to RCM, 69 (6%) have been on OT subjects.
Never the OP, I assume, but nevertheless contributing to the problem.

I'd say that I was sorry for offending you but I'm not,
Bob

I personally would not buy a Yadro DRO from such a loser as Nuck
Mueller. That is my firm personal opinion. He seem to be very
vindictive.

i

Ignoramus13880 wrote:

I personally would not buy a Yadro DRO from such a loser as Nuck
Mueller. That is my firm personal opinion. He seem to be very
vindictive.

Telling the truth, it doesn't make we sad when you buy something else.



Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

Bob Engelhardt wrote:

Oh, of *your* 1160 posts to RCM, 69 (6%) have been on OT subjects.
Never the OP, I assume, but nevertheless contributing to the problem.

Oh, you counted my complaints about OT. - Never trusts statistics.

And you forgot to count my posts with


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

Nick Mueller wrote:
Oh, you counted my complaints about OT. - Never trusts statistics.
....

Oh, I knew that your replies were complaints. They were still OT. OT
is OT, no exemptions for complaints. This thread is OT and you're
contributing to it.

Bob

Bob Engelhardt wrote:

Oh, I knew that your replies were complaints.

Good observation!

They were still OT. Â*OT is OT,

But then, you didn't notice that I didn't contribute to the OT's subject?

This thread is OT and you're contributing to it.

So you think that no one has the right complain about all the **** going on
in this group? Don't try Catch22 with me.

Something to read for you this Sunday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-discussion


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 09:57:44 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Bob
Engelhardt quickly quoth:

Nick Mueller wrote:
Oh, you counted my complaints about OT. - Never trusts statistics.
...

Oh, I knew that your replies were complaints. They were still OT. OT
is OT, no exemptions for complaints. This thread is OT and you're
contributing to it.

PDFDFT

--
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before
which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
-- John Quincy Adams

Larry Jaques wrote:

PDFDFT

Did you speak to yourself? http://tinyurl.com/yyx3ns


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de

Nick Mueller wrote:
....
So you think that no one has the right complain about all the **** going on
in this group? Don't try Catch22 with me.

I didn't say, or intend to mean, that you shouldn't complain. I just
pointed out the hypocrisy of contributing to the problem that you're
complaining about. You could avoid that by sending your complaint to
the OT poster only. It might even be more effective. But perhaps not
as satisfying.

Something to read for you this Sunday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-discussion

OK, so this is a meta-discussion. So what?

Bob

Bob Engelhardt wrote:

I didn't say, or intend to mean, that you shouldn't complain. Â*I just
pointed out the hypocrisy of contributing to the problem that you're
complaining about.

Catch22? I already asked that.
And I am not contributing to the problem, because I do not contribute to the
OT. I don't contribute to that discussion's subject.

You could avoid that by sending your complaint to
the OT poster only.

With all the forged eMail-addresses? Get real!

It might even be more effective. Â*But perhaps not
as satisfying.

It's more effective to to that in the public. Others should become aware of
that they have the right to complain and that there are people that do
complain. I know, that there are other opinions.

OK, so this is a meta-discussion. Â*So what?

OK. Where would be a place to discuss about the quality of the discussion in
RCM? In RCM? So that's why it is taking place here and that's why it is not
OT. Simply because there is no other place. It is a discussion about this
group, it is group-related.

It only takes two answers to a subject (visit to Zeppelin) to become
political. Is it really *that* hard to stay focused?
And if you want to talk about politics or whatever, why not do it in the
right group? You'll find a lot of others that are interested in your
subject and there won't be a D^WNick who complains that it is OT.


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de