Google Groups has been the major source of Usenet spam for months now.
So many people, both News administrators and individual users, have been
so fed up with it that they taken the drastic step to filter anything
coming from Google Groups. This is easy to do, given that Google Groups
adds a header unique to articles injected through it.

Ray Banana, News administrator of news.eternal-september.org, and
four other people have been creating NoCeMs to counter Google Groups
spam. Unlike cancel messages, a NoCeM is not a control message but pattern
matches for filtering. Unlike cancel messages, it cannot be abused. The
News administrator must affirmatively process them.

The process of creating NoCeMs involves SpamAssasin, which is typically
used as a countermeasure for email spam but because Usenet articles and
email messages share a common format but with a different set of required
headers, Usenet articles can be fed through SpamAssasin.

There have been a handful of false positives. In the last few days,
they've affected several regular posters in alt.obituaries.

SpamAssasin has a filter that looks for patterns indicating the use of a
different email address in the comment section of the From header. This
is where one's full name or pseudonym is placed, and it's derived from a
username field at Google Groups.

Google Groups munges email addresses. If the user leaves the username
field blank, then Google Groups uses a munge of the email address.
SpamAssasin sees two different email addresses.

If you fill in the username field at Google Groups with something that
does not appear to be an email address, then your articles won't trip
this SpamAssasin filter.

Listen to me. The people writing the NoCeMs, for which no one is paying
them, are going to get fed up with doing so at some point. Google Groups
has never had any interest in eliminating spam that originates with
them, and it's been a problem off and on for years.

More and more News sites are going to filter everything from Google
Groups. Your articles will appear in fewer and fewer places.

If you want to participate on Usenet and you want your articles to
propogate, stop using Google Groups entirely. Just stop. Become a user
on a genuine News server. Use a genuine newsreader as the client, not
your browser.

Otherwise nearly no one will be able to read your articles.

On Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 4:12:40 PM UTC-6, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Google Groups has been the major source of Usenet spam for months now.
> So many people, both News administrators and individual users, have been
> so fed up with it that they taken the drastic step to filter anything
> coming from Google Groups. This is easy to do, given that Google Groups
> adds a header unique to articles injected through it.
>
> Ray Banana, News administrator of news.eternal-september.org, and
> four other people have been creating NoCeMs to counter Google Groups
> spam. Unlike cancel messages, a NoCeM is not a control message but pattern
> matches for filtering. Unlike cancel messages, it cannot be abused. The
> News administrator must affirmatively process them.
>
> The process of creating NoCeMs involves SpamAssasin, which is typically
> used as a countermeasure for email spam but because Usenet articles and
> email messages share a common format but with a different set of required
> headers, Usenet articles can be fed through SpamAssasin.
>
> There have been a handful of false positives. In the last few days,
> they've affected several regular posters in alt.obituaries.
> SpamAssasin has a filter that looks for patterns indicating the use of a
> different email address in the comment section of the From header. This
> is where one's full name or pseudonym is placed, and it's derived from a
> username field at Google Groups.
>
> Google Groups munges email addresses. If the user leaves the username
> field blank, then Google Groups uses a munge of the email address.
> SpamAssasin sees two different email addresses.
>
> If you fill in the username field at Google Groups with something that
> does not appear to be an email address, then your articles won't trip
> this SpamAssasin filter.
>
> Listen to me. The people writing the NoCeMs, for which no one is paying
> them, are going to get fed up with doing so at some point. Google Groups
> has never had any interest in eliminating spam that originates with
> them, and it's been a problem off and on for years.
>
> More and more News sites are going to filter everything from Google
> Groups. Your articles will appear in fewer and fewer places.
>
> If you want to participate on Usenet and you want your articles to
> propogate, stop using Google Groups entirely. Just stop. Become a user
> on a genuine News server. Use a genuine newsreader as the client, not
> your browser.
>
> Otherwise nearly no one will be able to read your articles.

Yesterday I had to solve several picture "spot the bike etc" before posting.. I ain't going to any rooskie usenet reader trap.