Re: Newsreader with anti-spam?

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.suse, in article
<d082$466ba116$546a0826$7632@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Chris Maaskant wrote:

Chris schreef:

John Bowling wrote:

Given the amount of recent spam on the group

[compton ~]$ grep ^06 newslog | grep alt.os.linux.suse | grep killed |
awk '{ print $1,$4,$5,$6 }' | column
06/01/2007 42/42 (1 killed), 06/06/2007 53/53 (5 killed),
06/02/2007 53/53 (1 killed), 06/07/2007 79/79 (3 killed),
06/03/2007 36/36 (0 killed), 06/08/2007 43/43 (11 killed),
06/04/2007 32/32 (5 killed), 06/09/2007 71/71 (1 killed),
06/05/2007 48/48 (3 killed), 06/10/2007 41/41 (4 killed),
[compton ~]$

Hmmm... nothing obvious

is there a newsreader that has a good working spam filter?

From the FAQ that is posted to a number of Linux newsgroups twice a
week ("Subject: A new reader? Welcome to $NEWSGROUP, read this first if
you're new here (FAQ)"):

"How to make killfiles for use with various newsreaders."
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/killfilefaq.htm

Most web browsers used to read news have little or no filtering
capability, which makes a good reason to use a proper news reader
rather than some toy.

I use knode and setup filters. I can filter on any header field.

don't think automagic spam detection would work with newsgroups like
it does with email addressed specifically to you. I think it would be
close to impractical perhaps even impossible due to the nature of
usenet?

Some news _servers_ filter out the obvious trash. But after that, it is
your call of how you set up filters, such as subjects, posters, even
whole domains, or similar that you don't want to see. One fairly common
suggestion is to filter cross-posts to off-topic, or objectionable
groups. An example is to kill any posts that are also posted to any
newsgroup with the word "advocacy" in the name.

So if you would like to have spam filtering like with email, you have
to setup your newsreader so that it dowloads the headers and body's of
messages so it could filter on contentalso and not only on headers.

Not entirely true. The "headers" get downloaded, but they only contain
certain fields: "Subject:", "From:", "Date:", "Message-ID:",
"References:", "Bytes:" (rarely used), "Lines:" (not mandatory, and may
not be set), and a message number supplied by _your_ news-server
("Xref:"). You can filter _directly_ on those. Other headers (there are
a number, such as User-Agent:, MIME-Version:, Organization: and so on)
_MAY_ be used for filtering, but the news client has to ask the server
for that specific header, which takes additional time when on-line. Not
all news clients support that mode, so it's best to try to get by with
the eight default fields. Those clients that don't support the specific
header option may either not filter on extra headers, or may need to
download the entire article before filtering on them.

I don't filter anything software wise, i just use my eyes.

[compton ~]$ grep -vE '^([%\[ ]|Score|$)' /var/spool/news/score | cut
-d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq -c | column
807 From: 36 Message-ID: 77 Xref:
2 Lines: 246 Subject: 2 ~Subject:
[compton ~]$

You have to look at the headers of posts you don't think are worth
seeing. Some things are obvious, some not. Don't like posters from
google? The obvious header would be "User-Agent:" but that's
"expensive" scoring. A better one is to kill on the "Message-ID:".
It does help if you (and your news client) understand "regular
expressions" and "wild cards".

Old guy

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: Newsgroup filtering
    ... has all but destroyed the newsgroup. ... obviously removing any identifiable headers and there's nothing really ... filter into NewsHound Global to limit posts to say 10K. ... Or, if they are playing around with headers, is there a common header ...
    (comp.sys.acorn.misc)
  • Re: Slightly OT: News Reader
    ... out the ridiculous plethora of spam which is swamping this newsgroup? ... Gravity allows one to filter on the body of the message as well as the ... headers. ...
    (uk.rec.cycling)
  • Re: OT: Would appreciate suggestions of filters for all the spam here in A.Home.Repair for Agent v4
    ... alt.binaries.test is a very large newsgroup. ... most recent headers to download the pic. ... To start a filter just do this: Right click the spam message then ...
    (alt.home.repair)
  • Re: Server Side filtering (as pertains to Google Groups)
    ... headers are included in the overview headers, ... don't need a proxy to filter on that header). ... The effect is to retrieve bodies only for articles whose headers have ... the user can choose to download it or not. ...
    (news.software.readers)
  • Re: Spam and using a real email address
    ... the person who had reported on individual modems. ... run into spam filters, or firewalls - it's a "best effort" mechanism ... to look at the headers on the POP server, ... still seeing maybe one in twenty that get past the filter being spam. ...
    (news.software.readers)
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