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From: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn on 10 Jul 2010 15:26
Garrett Smith wrote:

> On 2010-07-08 02:48 AM, Andrew Poulos wrote:
>> On 8/07/2010 6:32 PM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
>>> Andrew Poulos wrote:
>>>> I realise this is off-topic but is there a way I can set thunderbird to
>>>> not download the headers of spam?
>>> If you give it a little bit more thought, you will see that the correct
>>> answer to that question must be "No."
>> Ok, what about the spam not appearing with the ng in thunderbird?
>
> You can add a filter. Go to Tools > Message Filters. Use keywords from
> the spam subject headers as keywords in the subject to filter out.
>
> Set those messages to be deleted.

The only problem is that although you can know about false positives by
enabling and looking at the filter log, you cannot easily restore them then,
if at all. Therefore, a View (all versions) or Search Folder
(Thunderbird/Icedove 3.0+) is the better solution here.


PointedEars
--
var bugRiddenCrashPronePieceOfJunk = (
navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE 5') != -1
&& navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac') != -1
) // Plone, register_function.js:16
From: Garrett Smith on 11 Jul 2010 02:47
On 2010-07-08 06:02 AM, Tim Slattery wrote:
> Andrew Poulos<ap_prog(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I realise this is off-topic but is there a way I can set thunderbird to
>> not download the headers of spam? The amount of spam I've been getting
>> in this ng in the last week has skyrocketed.
>
> It can't tell whether a message is SPAM without download *something*
> to examine. That something is the headers.
>
> I don't run Thunderbird myself, but I'm sure you can set a filter to
> killfile posts with "prescription" or "no prescription" in the subject
> line.
>
> FWIW, I've been sending them to groups-abuse(a)google.com. For all the
> good it does that might as well be a bit bucket. I don't think they
> give a fsck.
>

They don't seem to care much for groups. The search has always been
broken in a few ways. There was recently a report of an infinite meta
refresh loop, there have been cases of messages being truncated, or
where viewing a message leads to redirection to the login page, or where
the submit button in post message form becomes disabled, which can cause
the user some issues if his connection is lost.

You have to be pretty optimistic to believe google cares about groups
abuse and spam.

Garrett
From: David Mark on 11 Jul 2010 03:27
On Jul 11, 2:47 am, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitc...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2010-07-08 06:02 AM, Tim Slattery wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Andrew Poulos<ap_p...(a)hotmail.com>  wrote:
>
> >> I realise this is off-topic but is there a way I can set thunderbird to
> >> not download the headers of spam? The amount of spam I've been getting
> >> in this ng in the last week has skyrocketed.
>
> > It can't tell whether a message is SPAM without download *something*
> > to examine. That something is the headers.
>
> > I don't run Thunderbird myself, but I'm sure you can set a filter to
> > killfile posts with "prescription" or "no prescription" in the subject
> > line.
>
> > FWIW, I've been sending them to groups-ab...(a)google.com. For all the
> > good it does that might as well be a bit bucket. I don't think they
> > give a fsck.
>
> They don't seem to care much for groups. The search has always been
> broken in a few ways. There was recently a report of an infinite meta
> refresh loop, there have been cases of messages being truncated, or
> where viewing a message leads to redirection to the login page, or where
> the submit button in post message form becomes disabled, which can cause
> the user some issues if his connection is lost.
>

It's not that they don't care much for groups. Like MS, Yahoo!,
Apple, Amazon, eBay, etc., they can't seem to get good help when it
comes to Web development. Inexplicably, most (if not all) of their
Web properties are badly botched. Google Code comes to mind and their
front page has always been laughably inept. What else is new?

And I'm sure somebody will chime in that the above reads like a "Who's
who" list of major online concerns. It does and they all compete
fiercely with each other for hits. That makes it hard to understand
the pathetic efforts as needlessly excluding or confounding visitors
can only detract from the number of deals closed or ads sold. It's
like they all spend every cent on advertising the sites and zip on
their design and development.
From: Richard Cornford on 12 Jul 2010 07:56
On Jul 11, 7:47 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
> On 2010-07-08 06:02 AM, Tim Slattery wrote:
>> Andrew Poulos wrote:
>
>>> I realise this is off-topic but is there a way I can set
>>> thunderbird to not download the headers of spam? The amount
>>> of spam I've been getting in this ng in the last week has
>>> skyrocketed.
>
>> It can't tell whether a message is SPAM without download
>> *something* to examine. That something is the headers.
>
>> I don't run Thunderbird myself, but I'm sure you can set a
>> filter to killfile posts with "prescription" or "no prescription"
>> in the subject line.
>
>> FWIW, I've been sending them to groups-abuse(a)google.com. For
>> all the good it does that might as well be a bit bucket. I don't
>> think they give a fsck.
>
> They don't seem to care much for groups.

How much they care about groups is a little non-specific. There are
two aspects to Google groups; Usenet and their own groups. I suspect
that those don't get equal care.

Criticising Google's reaction to spam posting through their accounts
while filtering that spam (hiding it, or from it) would be
hypocritical. Google cannot be executed to do much (if anything) about
spam that is never reported.

Better grounds for criticism would be to observe impotence in Google's
reaction to (preferably widespread) spam reporting. I have been
carrying out an experiment for the last year (and a bit) in which I
have reported each and every spam message posted to this newsgroup
through Google groups. It seemed like a good idea to carry this on for
a significant period before drawing any conclusions.

The outcome can be seen in Google group's own 'profile' pages, such as
this one for the spammer identifying itself as "Doctor Ibolet":-

<URL: http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=pZOW4BQAAAAfcUFSo0_rpUwnA0GBsStIOPANdqfI6prRsqjc7uCt1A&group=comp.lang.javascript
>

Looking at that profile in general the spammer appears to have posted
about 340 spams through that account to date. 87 to
comp.lang.javascript, including 16 in April, 32 in May and 30 in June.
So prior to this month this spammer has been reported a minimum of 78
time to my certain knowledge. It wouldn't take much looking at the
subject lines on the posts to work out that this is a spammer, and
that the account will never be used for anything but spamming, but
apparently that is not enough to get Google to shut the account down.

On the other hand, spammers accounts do appear to be shut down, and my
gestimate, based on 'profiles' like the one above, is that the average
spammer gets away with about 500 spams over 3-4 months before their
account is shut down.

> The search has always been broken in a few ways.

No, there was a time when it seemed to work pretty well; around 2003.
Since then it has probably been 'improved', and certainly hasn't been
too effective on the occasions that I have attempted to use it over
recent years (mostly giving the impression that posts over huge tracts
of time had disappeared from the archive).

> There was recently a report of an infinite meta refresh loop,
> there have been cases of messages being truncated, or where
> viewing a message leads to redirection to the login page, or where
> the submit button in post message form becomes disabled, which
> can causethe user some issues if his connection is lost.

Failures in correctly following NTTP in the posts they originate is
probably more significant.

> You have to be pretty optimistic to believe google cares about
> groups abuse and spam.

On the other hand, other (and particularly commercial) Usenet
providers expend resources removing/filtering spam, including spam
originating with Google groups. So Google's abdication of
responsibility will be having a negative financial impact on them. Any
actual (objective) evidence that Google didn't care about spam being
posted through their accounts could be used by the other providers of
Usenet access as an excuse for blocking everything originating with
Google groups accounts, which would not contribute to Google group's
usefulness.

Richard.
From: Garrett Smith on 12 Jul 2010 12:43
On 2010-07-12 04:56 AM, Richard Cornford wrote:
> On Jul 11, 7:47 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
>> On 2010-07-08 06:02 AM, Tim Slattery wrote:
>>> Andrew Poulos wrote:
[...]

> Better grounds for criticism would be to observe impotence in Google's
> reaction to (preferably widespread) spam reporting. I have been
> carrying out an experiment for the last year (and a bit) in which I
> have reported each and every spam message posted to this newsgroup
> through Google groups. It seemed like a good idea to carry this on for
> a significant period before drawing any conclusions.
>

I did that for a bit. Specifically, I did it with several messages from
kin at kindlesystems, who repeatedly posted jobs for Java, etc, using
his gmail account over a period of time.

[...]

>
> No, there was a time when it seemed to work pretty well; around 2003.

OK.

[...]

>> You have to be pretty optimistic to believe google cares about
>> groups abuse and spam.
>
> On the other hand, other (and particularly commercial) Usenet
> providers expend resources removing/filtering spam, including spam
> originating with Google groups. So Google's abdication of
> responsibility will be having a negative financial impact on them. Any
> actual (objective) evidence that Google didn't care about spam being
> posted through their accounts could be used by the other providers of
> Usenet access as an excuse for blocking everything originating with
> Google groups accounts, which would not contribute to Google group's
> usefulness.

Well, Google Groups would be left with fewer features to focus on, and
then the Groups developers could focus on fixing the broken search. And
plus there would be a lot less spam. How bad is that?

--
Garrett
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