On 10/9/2023 1:09 PM, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Dan Purgert to Anton Shepelev:
>>> Ben Collver:
>>>
>>>> I finally broke down and killed @gmail.com for all of
>>>> comp.lang.c
>>>
>>> Did you kill me, too? Please, unkill, and filter by:

Me too. :^)

>>
>> You're (allegedly) posting with the email address
>> <foo@bar.baz>, so presumably not.
>
> That was a very rare exception.
>

On 2023-10-09, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Dan Purgert:
>
>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>
> This is an extensive and expert comment on your proposal:

Indeed, though it's one of those things that I think the server admins
end up with "a fine line to walk", insofar as making decisions for
everyone else.

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

> On 2023-10-08, Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>
>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>
> I finally broke down and killed @gmail\.com for all of comp.lang.c

Up to you, of course, but filtering on the Message-ID or the User-Agent
will have the right effect without filtering innocent people who just
happen to post with a gmail.com address.

Many people who don't use Gmail for "proper" email use a gmail.com
address as a throw-away account for public-facing interactions.

--
Ben.

John McCue <jmccue@fuzzball.jmcunx.com> writes:
[...]
> A simple google search will list many free
> USENET providers.

That doesn't appear to be correct. One of the top hits is an article
titled "Best free Usenet servers of 2023", which is a list of 10 Usenet
services that offer free trials; all charge for access.

I know of only two free NNTP servers: news.eternal-september.org (which
I've been using for years), and news.i2pn2.org (which I just learned
about recently). news.aioe.org is dead. Do you know of any others?
(groups.google.com provides Usenet access, but not an NNTP server.)

[...]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Will write code for food.
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> writes:

> John McCue <jmccue@fuzzball.jmcunx.com> writes:
> [...]
>> A simple google search will list many free
>> USENET providers.
>
> That doesn't appear to be correct. One of the top hits is an article
> titled "Best free Usenet servers of 2023", which is a list of 10 Usenet
> services that offer free trials; all charge for access.
>
> I know of only two free NNTP servers: news.eternal-september.org (which
> I've been using for years), and news.i2pn2.org (which I just learned
> about recently). news.aioe.org is dead. Do you know of any others?

There's news.solani.org. I've used that recently to see how bad
comp.lang.c is/was (it's still bad) compared to Ray's efforts with
Eternal September.

--
Ben.

On Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:01:09 -0700
Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know of only two free NNTP servers: news.eternal-september.org (which
> I've been using for years), and news.i2pn2.org (which I just learned
> about recently). news.aioe.org is dead. Do you know of any others?

Yes , I know of several and if you visit

From: Syber Shock <admin@sybershock.com>
Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,news.admin.peering,rocksolid.shared.general
Subject: Free News Servers Listing
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2023 03:59:49 -0500
Message-ID: <58bf2fd3797762301411b3ba2b4ad265$1@sybershock.com>

and read all the posts in the thread and explore some of the web links in
some of the posts , you'll learn about them yourself. Which goes to show what
I pointed out recently : it's important to discuss the right kind of topic on
the right kind of newsgroup.

Look also in the header of this post where it was posted from.

On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:37:35 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
> > On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> >> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
> >
> > ... or just set your killfile properly?
> >
> >
> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>
> This is something that needs to be dealt with at source not with
> individual kill files. Which in the case of Thunderbird, had no way of
> dealing with all those shape-shifting posts in exotic alphabets.

It was 2400 few days ago.
Now more like 24,000 spam posts per day, may be even more.
Would it be 240,000 per day next week?

On 10/10/2023 08:39, Michael S wrote:
> On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:37:35 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>
>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>
>>>
>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>
>> This is something that needs to be dealt with at source not with
>> individual kill files. Which in the case of Thunderbird, had no way of
>> dealing with all those shape-shifting posts in exotic alphabets.
>
> It was 2400 few days ago.
> Now more like 24,000 spam posts per day, may be even more.
> Would it be 240,000 per day next week?
>

I've just looked at googlegroups and there were 13 posts with a
time-stamp of 11:31, which would be 18/19000 per day.

One wonders what the point of all those messages is. Are there 1000s of
competing businesses, or the same handful sending out endless
permutations of spam? Who in their right mind would engage with any of
those?

Something is seriously broken. People are suggesting letting these huge
amounts of spam continue, but put the onus on individual users to deal
with the deluge.

It's like every household in a country getting sackfuls of unwanted mail
every day, but expected each household to deal with the problem itself
(like burning it all). It /has/ to be fixed further up the chain.

ES is much better now, but the spam is still swamping the real messages.

I'm viewing on i2pn2 but posting on ES.

Bart:

> I'm viewing on i2pn2 but posting on ES.

Clever, if you don't want to register!

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

On 10/10/2023 11:41, Bart wrote:
> On 10/10/2023 08:39, Michael S wrote:
>> On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:37:35 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>
>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>>
>>> This is something that needs to be dealt with at source not with
>>> individual kill files. Which in the case of Thunderbird, had no way of
>>> dealing with all those shape-shifting posts in exotic alphabets.
>>
>> It was 2400 few days ago.
>> Now more like 24,000 spam posts per day, may be even more.
>> Would it be 240,000 per day next week?
>>
>
> I've just looked at googlegroups and there were 13 posts with a
> time-stamp of 11:31, which would be 18/19000 per day.

Google Groups could easily rate-limit the posts they allowe/minute.
Nothing but a bot can possibly post > 1.

>
> One wonders what the point of all those messages is. Are there 1000s of
> competing businesses, or the same handful sending out endless
> permutations of spam? Who in their right mind would engage with any of
> those?

The people posting the spam get paid 0.001p/email (I made this number
up) - they probably don't even know they are posting articles to usenet
- but they don't care: it doesn't affect how they get paid.

>
> Something is seriously broken. People are suggesting letting these huge
> amounts of spam continue, but put the onus on individual users to deal
> with the deluge.

ES is much cleaner and I hear nothing but good things about i2pn2.
ES and i2pn2 can filter GG through spam-assassin, or cleanfeed, or
something, and drop the high scorers. But they can't just drop anything
from GG, because it might bea perfectly good article and they are not
censors.

>
> It's like every household in a country getting sackfuls of unwanted mail
> every day, but expected each household to deal with the problem itself
> (like burning it all). It /has/ to be fixed further up the chain.

Yes. Google could fix it. But GG is abandon-ware to them. It wouldn't
even surpise me if they were blissfully unaware of any spam probem.

>
> ES is much better now, but the spam is still swamping the real messages.
>
> I'm viewing on i2pn2 but posting on ES.

On 2023-10-09, Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> wrote:
> Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:
>
>> On 2023-10-08, Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>
>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>
>> I finally broke down and killed @gmail\.com for all of comp.lang.c
>
> Up to you, of course, but filtering on the Message-ID or the User-Agent
> will have the right effect without filtering innocent people who just
> happen to post with a gmail.com address.

Thanks for that suggestion. I'll do that instead.

-Ben

On 2023-10-09, Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> wrote:
> On 2023-10-09, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>> On 2023-10-08, Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>
>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>
>> I finally broke down and killed @gmail\.com for all of comp.lang.c
>
> That is egregiously stupid.

I think i'll killfile @kylheku.com too. :-)

-Ben

On Monday, October 9, 2023 at 10:50:10 PM UTC+3, Michael S wrote:
> On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 4:27:44 PM UTC+3, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> > Usenet server i2pn2 carries comp.lang.c without the Thai SPAM, but with
> > normal GG articles. You can check via anonymous read-only access at
> > news.i2pn2.org:119 , but you must registed to post:
> >
> > https://www.i2pn2.org/?page_id=9
> Thank you.
>
> I never used newsreaders, or, may be, used them, but it was so many years ago
> that I completely forgot about it.
> So, being Firefox user, downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird. Found it unusable.. Uninstalled.
> Downloaded MicroPlanet Gravity. So far it looks fine, at least for reading.

Tried from work. Can't connect to server. Tried other server - same result.
Tomorrow I'd ask our admins why it does not connect, but from past
experience the chance to get an answer is less than half and the
chance to get a fix is less than 20%.

Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

> On 2023-10-09, Kaz Kylheku <864-117-4973@kylheku.com> wrote:
>> On 2023-10-09, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
>>> On 2023-10-08, Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>>
>>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>>
>>> I finally broke down and killed @gmail\.com for all of comp.lang.c
>>
>> That is egregiously stupid.
>
> I think i'll killfile @kylheku.com too. :-)
>
> -Ben

\o/

--
|rom The Future. +++ Breaking News From The Future. +++ Breaking News F|
| The USoA are switching to the binary number system because |
| having more than 1+1 distinct digits is far too woke. |
|+ #MABA + #makeAmericaBinaryAgain + #USA + #USoA + #woke + #MABA + #ma|

Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote:
> John McCue <jmccue@fuzzball.jmcunx.com> writes:
> [...]
>> A simple google search will list many free
>> USENET providers.
>
> That doesn't appear to be correct. One of the top hits is an article
> titled "Best free Usenet servers of 2023", which is a list of 10 Usenet
> services that offer free trials; all charge for access.

I never searched, I found out about eternal-september.org
from a post I put out there from google ages ago. I figured
some would show up :)

> I know of only two free NNTP servers: news.eternal-september.org (which
> I've been using for years), and news.i2pn2.org (which I just learned
> about recently). news.aioe.org is dead. Do you know of any others?
> (groups.google.com provides Usenet access, but not an NNTP server.)

Hopefully people will see your post and move over to a
real server.

On 2023-10-09, Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote:
> On 2023-10-08, Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>
>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>
> I finally broke down and killed @gmail\.com for all of comp.lang.c
>
> That did the trick.

As has been said before, that kills people just with a gmail address
which is NOT the same thing.

I kill on the message-id containing googlegroups - which shows it
originated there, others filters on the agent name.

On 10/10/2023 11:41, Bart wrote:
> On 10/10/2023 08:39, Michael S wrote:
>> On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:37:35 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>
>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>>
>>> This is something that needs to be dealt with at source not with
>>> individual kill files. Which in the case of Thunderbird, had no way of
>>> dealing with all those shape-shifting posts in exotic alphabets.
>>
>> It was 2400 few days ago.
>> Now more like 24,000 spam posts per day, may be even more.
>> Would it be 240,000 per day next week?
>>
>
> I've just looked at googlegroups and there were 13 posts with a
> time-stamp of 11:31, which would be 18/19000 per day.

I've checked googlegroups again. There were 30 posts time-stamped 20:32,
which would be 43,000 per day. That is just insane.

I wonder how long it would take, even with viable set of filter rules,
to discard those 40,000-odd posts if you checked say once a day (or came
back to it after a 2-week holiday!).

This is actually fascinating to see how much more intense this
spam-bombardment will get, and either googlegroups grinds to a halt, or
they are forced to do something about. Hopefully not just shutting it down.

Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.com> writes:
[...]
> Google Groups could easily rate-limit the posts they
> allowe/minute. Nothing but a bot can possibly post > 1.
[...]

100 seemingly independent bots could post 100 articles per minute.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Will write code for food.
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

On 2023-10-09, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
> On 2023-10-09, Geeknix wrote:
>> On 2023-10-08, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:
>>> On 2023-10-08, Bart wrote:
>>>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
>>>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
>>>>>
>>>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
>>>>
>>>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
>>>
>>> I just burned anything sent in with a (source) Message-ID including
>>> "googlegroups.com". Alternatively, others have stated killing the
>>> posting User-Agent "G2/1.0" also works.
>>
>> I'm really bad at writing killfiles, write once then forget a bit like
>> Perl. My SLRN has this which seems to works as I don't see any of the
>> mentioned spam:
>>
>> [*]
>> Score: -9999
>> Injection-Info: googlegroups
>> Message-ID: googlegroups\.com
>> X-Trace: posting\.google\.com
>>
>> Would I just add:
>>
>> User-Agent: G2/1\.0
>>
>> per your example?
>
> It is not required to have both, in fact my killfile entry for them is
> simply:
>
> %BOS
> [*]
> %no more gg spam!
> Score: =-9999
> Message-ID: .*@googlegroups\.com.*$
> %EOS
>
> The alternate approach would (to my understanding) be:
>
> %BOS
> [*]
> %no more gg spam!
> Score: =-9999
> User-Agent: G2/1\.0
> %EOS
>
> NOTE: the above are typed out in the message here, I might've missed
> some (required) indentation.

Thank you, I'll try those and see what happens. I noticed 27k messages
were killed by SLRN when I entered this group. So far is doing good.

--
Don't be afraid of the deep...
--[ bbs.bottomlessabyss.net | https | telnet=2023 ]--
--[ /query geeknix on libera.chat | tilde.chat ]--

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023 at 10:46:58 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
> On 10/10/2023 11:41, Bart wrote:
> > On 10/10/2023 08:39, Michael S wrote:
> >> On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:37:35 PM UTC+3, Bart wrote:
> >>> On 08/10/2023 21:02, Dan Purgert wrote:
> >>>> On 2023-10-08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> >>>>> [Repeating this important message lest it drown in SPAM]
> >>>>
> >>>> ... or just set your killfile properly?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> What filters did you use to deal with 2400 spam posts a day?
> >>>
> >>> This is something that needs to be dealt with at source not with
> >>> individual kill files. Which in the case of Thunderbird, had no way of
> >>> dealing with all those shape-shifting posts in exotic alphabets.
> >>
> >> It was 2400 few days ago.
> >> Now more like 24,000 spam posts per day, may be even more.
> >> Would it be 240,000 per day next week?
> >>
> >
> > I've just looked at googlegroups and there were 13 posts with a
> > time-stamp of 11:31, which would be 18/19000 per day.
> I've checked googlegroups again. There were 30 posts time-stamped 20:32,
> which would be 43,000 per day. That is just insane.
>
> I wonder how long it would take, even with viable set of filter rules,
> to discard those 40,000-odd posts if you checked say once a day (or came
> back to it after a 2-week holiday!).
>

On average it's not THAT bad.
~400 spam messages per hour == 10K per day.
About the same rate as yesterday or even a little slower.

> This is actually fascinating to see how much more intense this
> spam-bombardment will get, and either googlegroups grinds to a halt, or
> they are forced to do something about. Hopefully not just shutting it down.

Unfortunately, on google scale 10K messages per day is nothing. I suspect
that even 100 times more than that is still nothing.

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023 at 7:41:25 PM UTC+3, Michael S wrote:
> On Monday, October 9, 2023 at 10:50:10 PM UTC+3, Michael S wrote:
> > On Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 4:27:44 PM UTC+3, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> > > Usenet server i2pn2 carries comp.lang.c without the Thai SPAM, but with
> > > normal GG articles. You can check via anonymous read-only access at
> > > news.i2pn2.org:119 , but you must registed to post:
> > >
> > > https://www.i2pn2.org/?page_id=9
> > Thank you.
> >
> > I never used newsreaders, or, may be, used them, but it was so many years ago
> > that I completely forgot about it.
> > So, being Firefox user, downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird. Found it unusable. Uninstalled.
> > Downloaded MicroPlanet Gravity. So far it looks fine, at least for reading.
> Tried from work. Can't connect to server. Tried other server - same result.
> Tomorrow I'd ask our admins why it does not connect, but from past
> experience the chance to get an answer is less than half and the
> chance to get a fix is less than 20%.

I did get an answer relatively quickly. And the answer is "Forget about it. As
long as current head of IT group is in charge there is no a chance we are
opening port 119".
So it goes.

Michael S:

> I did get an answer relatively quickly. And the answer is
> "Forget about it. As long as current head of IT group is
> in charge there is no a chance we are opening port 119".
> So it goes.

Many free Usenet servers accept connections at another port.
Eternal September, for example, listens to port 563 (with
SSL).

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

On Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 3:20:21 PM UTC+3, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Michael S:
> > I did get an answer relatively quickly. And the answer is
> > "Forget about it. As long as current head of IT group is
> > in charge there is no a chance we are opening port 119".
> > So it goes.
> Many free Usenet servers accept connections at another port.
> Eternal September, for example, listens to port 563 (with
> SSL).
> --
> () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
> /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

That's of no help. 563 is not any better than 119.
Eternal September also provides connection via port 80, which is more helpful.
But I wanted to read this group through i2pn2 rather than Eternal September..

Michael S:

> But I wanted to read this group through i2pn2 rather than
> Eternal September.

And Eternal September is better now. Ray is improving his
anti-SPAM defences.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

On Wed, 11 Oct 2023 06:05:26 -0700 (PDT)
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 3:20:21 PM UTC+3, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> > Michael S:
> > > I did get an answer relatively quickly. And the answer is
> > > "Forget about it. As long as current head of IT group is
> > > in charge there is no a chance we are opening port 119".
> > > So it goes.
> > Many free Usenet servers accept connections at another port.
> > Eternal September, for example, listens to port 563 (with
> > SSL).
> > --
> > () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
> > /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
>
> That's of no help. 563 is not any better than 119.
> Eternal September also provides connection via port 80, which is more helpful.
> But I wanted to read this group through i2pn2 rather than Eternal September.
>
You could try news.i2pn2.org:8991 it also listens there.

--
Retro Guy