Re: What is going on in this newsgroup?

[Beemer Biker]

Clark L. Coleman wrote:
> 80% of the postings here are gibberish. Is this newsgroup under
> attack, or what? Are these all legitimate foreign language postings
> that I cannot read on my US-English locale computer? If so, why this
> newsgroup and no other similar technical newsgroups that I read?
>
> Just curious.

This ng is configured for posting using email.  Whoever set up up left
it configured that way as it is easy to post using email (I am being
nice).   What you are seeing is typical spam that is sent from an
email harverster.  I tried looking the charters to see who is
responsible here, but couldnt find any reference for gnu news groups.

You can easily see what is happening by looking at your own posting,
as appended below:  Look for the "Approved:
address@hidden" line and the "Sender:"  They are the
same.  As far as I know this is the only news group that requires
approval to post and automatically approves all posts.  FWIW that puts
it in the class of an "Unmoderated moderated news group".    The
problem comes about when email harvesters go thru the headers of this
news group looking for email addresses.  The harverster will find
easily find address@hidden and BINGO this news group
gets spammed.  Since the spam does not bounce (it gets posted here),
the address is then sold to the  "50million verified email" CDROM
bulkers.  If you check the headers of other news group I doubt if you
will see any "Approved" posts.  IANE but I believe the premium news
groups, such as supernews, do not cancel or filter if the news header
shows "Approved' for any post.

======your post starts here Clark=========
x-uunet-gateway: mr1.ash.ops.us.uu.net from bug-gdb to gnu.gdb.bug;
Mon, 15 Apr 2002 18:17:09 GMT
Path:
newssvr12.news.prodigy.com!newssvr11.news.prodigy.com!newscon03.news.p
rodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!newscon04.news.prodigy.com!prodi
gy.com!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplan
et.com!news.gtei.net!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!spool090
1.news.uu.net!wendy-fate.uu.net!clc5q
From: "Clark L. Coleman" <address@hidden>
Subject: What is going on in this newsgroup?
Date: 15 Apr 2002 18:16:59 GMT
Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cobra.cs.virginia.edu
X-Trace: murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU 1018894619 10745 128.143.137.16 (15
Apr 2002 18:16:59 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: address@hidden
NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 Apr 2002 18:16:59 GMT
Approved: address@hidden
Newsgroups: gnu.gdb.bug
Sender: address@hidden
Lines: 8
Xref: newsmst01.news.prodigy.com gnu.gdb.bug:6601


80% of the postings here are gibberish. Is this newsgroup under
attack, or what? Are these all legitimate foreign language postings
that I cannot read on my US-English locale computer? If so, why this
newsgroup and no other similar technical newsgroups that I read?

Just curious.


--
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Beemer   Biker       address@hidden
10.7K seti units, 18.6 years            Ask about my 99'R1100RT
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