A Googleless Usenet?
NewsAdmin Staff Writer

It's a beautiful day. The sunny is shining, the birds are singing, and the world is at your fingertips... chips, dip, bbq, beverages & remote. You locate the sweet spot on your sofa, and as your posterior greets the well worn cushion, you settle yourself in front of the TV for a weekend of playoff football. Howie Long is 30 seconds into his rambling predictions for the Cardinals/Falcons game when you begrudgingly pry yourself from the sofa to answer an unexpected knock at your front door.

You twist the knob, swing the door open, and find a stranger on your front porch announcing a limited supply of Nike sneakers and Gucci handbags that could be yours at a steep discount. You ponder the unusual product pairing for a moment, cut the conversation short with a quick "Thanks, but no thanks", and close the door.

Halfway to the sofa you hear a persistent tapping and turn to see the same stranger in front of your window yelling about a once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase Viagra at wholesale prices. Disappearing for a moment, he quickly reemerges in front of a different window promising to lower the interest rate on your home loan and add 3" to a specific part of your anatomy. Law enforcement arrives to arrest the annoying pest, but not before he's disrupted your afternoon & delivered a final plug for 1/2 price Rolex watches as he's being stuffed into a squad car.

You may find that a similar scenario plays out as you try to avoid unsolicited advertisements that have found their way into your favorite newsgroups. Usenet enthusiasts do not have the option of having spammers handcuffed & jailed... though it is a pleasing image to process... but you may want to consider some of the following options for minimizing your exposure to newsgroup spam.

When selecting a newsgroup service provider (NSP), take a moment to find out what precautions (if any) they take to reduce spam postings on their news servers. At a minimum, a quality NSP should have an abuse or support staff that addresses spam complaints in a timely fashion. Reputable NSPs understand that spam is disruptive to newsgroup users & wastefully consumes resources (storage, bandwidth, etc.), so they're usually quick to remove spam once it's been reported. If you're using a NSP that doesn't respond to email sent to their "abuse@" address, or if they're unwilling to remove spam once it's been reported, you may be better off with a provider that operates their Usenet service more responsibly.

Nowadays many premium providers run some type of spam filtering logic on their news servers. The arrangement allows valid posts to reach the newsgroups, but blocks unwanted spam posts on the front end before they have an opportunity to disrupt the groups. In fact some NSPs report that they block upwards of 1/2 million spam postings per day! Each provider ultimately uses a different filtering scheme... some more effective than others... so this may be a point of comparison to consider when test driving various NSPs. We've evaluated a number of 2nd & 3rd tier providers over the years that promote themselves as "unfiltered" or "uncensored" services, and more often than not this simply means that their news servers are overrun with spam and provide less in the way of relevant newsgroup content.

As a newsgroup user you also have some control over your destiny. Most NNTP newsreaders include a "kill filter" area where you can establish rules for filtering content within the newsgroups you frequent. Depending upon the newsreader, you should have the ability to filter on a variety of posting details (From, Subject, NNTP Posting Host, etc.), and we'd recommend choosing a reader that provides flexible filtering options. For those who prefer to use a Web interface to access the newsgroups, select a NSP that incorporates some type of kill filtering within their Web reader.

If you find yourself dealing with a persistent spammer in the newsgroups, rally your fellow newsgroup compatriots and send a complaint to the news server from which the spammer posts. When viewing the header information for a post, the originating server will typically be noted within the "NNTP Posting Host" header. More often than not, you can contact the server administrators via email by appending "abuse@" to the server's domain name (example: abuse@newsguy.com, abuse@giganews.com, etc.) Most news server admins are responsive to spam complaints, and will simply require a single example header from an offending spam post to address the problem on their end.

In rare instances you'll find some news servers that are run carelessly and without much regard to Usenet guidelines. Google for example provides free newsgroup access through their website, and they have a poor reputation when it comes to preventing spammers from abusing their news servers. If the problem only impacted Google's free newsgroup users it wouldn't be a great concern, unfortunately Google propagates their spam to other NSPs where people are paying for their newsgroup access. If the majority of the content being distributed by a provider is spam, and a provider shows no interest in correcting that problem, other NSPs may consider suspending content exchanges (peering) with those spam sources. Providers such as Google would be forced to operate their service more responsibly, and there would be less spam circulated throughout Usenet, which would benefit both NSPs and newsgroup users alike. A Googleless Usenet may be an extreme notion to some, but if the majority of their content is spam, what value are they bringing to Usenet & newsgroup users?

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