As most of you already know, there is a serious pandemic problem facing readers
in news groups. There is a glut of spammers and sock puppets who seem to spam with
impunity, many through the Google Groups web to usenet interface. I am talking
about commercial spam, people selling things, people who want your money. I had
always thought that posting commerical spam links to groups with charters against it
was considered abuse, and could get the spammer's account cancelled. That no longer
seems to be the case, at least not with Google.
Complaints to <groups-abuse@google.com> seem to be ignored. You copy the complete
spam message with headers and send it to them, with "Commercial SPAM link complaint"
or other obvious wording in the subject title, but no bananas. The spam continues,
and new Google sock puppets keep popping up like summer dandelions.
A few months ago, I began tracking the IP addresses in the spam and sock puppet
message headers, of all spam that has been disrupting our groups, noticing that some
of the messages had been cross posted to other groups, and in very odd combinations.
I began to notice that the Google IP addresses in the spam headers are coming
from all over the place, from Australia, the US, UK, everywhere that Google Groups
is accessible.
I don't get it. I can't believe that spammers around the world could be working
in cahoots, could they? Have spammers created a global usenet link-exchange program,
where they agree to constantly create new Google sock puppets, each from their own
injection points that Google identifies by IP block, then keep posting each other's
spammy links in usenet messages, and maybe to proprietary Google web groups too?
I know there are plenty of other spammy ISPs and what not. But how many other
Google Groups are there? It's like they are working tag teams. One Google user
posts a newbie message "I am new here," "I need information." Then the spammer
responds right on que, usually with their own Google Groups account, or other usenet
service.
So I guess I have two questions. Is an international spammer's "link-exchange"
program really going on here? And if it is, then is there any practical way to stop
them? Maybe I'm just being paranoid, or don't fully understand how the whole Google
Groups posting thing works. Spam sucks. Whatever happened to the UDP?
Paranoid


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