On Thu, 16 Nov 2023 08:30:45 -0800 (PST), "pete...@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 11:08:56?AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <7b2a7665-5187-46f5...@googlegroups.com>,
>> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 9:41:23?AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
>> >> Is there an elegant solution for killing the deluge of spam that
>> >> doesn't involve simply killfiling everything originating from
>> >> google?
>> >
>> >I don't have access to the headers at the moment, but is crossposting
>> >being used?
>> >if so, look for multiple commas in the Newsgroups header, and kill on
>> >that, Very, very
>> >little legit traffic in this group is crossposted.
>> I dropped all cross-posted articles into the kill file back in 1999...
>>
>> As far as I can tell, this new crowd of spammers generates a new ID
>> for each spam. On the plus side, it's easy to see spam subject lines
>> and I can just k my way through before opening articles but it's a
>> pain.
>
>Another thought - can you check the byte values in the subject line, to
>identify characters outside US-ASCII?
>
>If the spam is using UTF-8, a character with the high bit set
>(control characters) only occurs in non-US-ascii.
>
>I don't think we're seeing many legit subject lines using non-US-ASCII,
>and the current spam flood is mostly Thai.

I suspect that any subject line with fancy quote marks (the ones that
slant and differ at different ends of the quoted text) in
non-US-ASCII, and probably Unicode.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

In article <cc691e2f-148c-468a-a2a1-54612d7d108bn@googlegroups.com>,
"pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 1:01:32?PM UTC-5, Robert Woodward wrote:
> > In article <uj59me$rpb$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> > jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> >
> > > Is there an elegant solution for killing the deluge of spam that
> > > doesn't involve simply killfiling everything originating from
> > > google?
> > Get a 'news.individual.net' account? That will cost you some money, a
> > bit less then half the price of a hardcover book a year. They are
> > filtering out google groups except for posters they are white-listing
> > (e.g., William Hyde, Robert Carnegie, etc.).
>
> How does one get on that whitelist (though I suspect that Robert
> won't see this).
>

You have been whitelisted. How it happened, I don't know. My guess is
that an admin has been looking at the feed of r.a.sf.w & r.a.sf.f (if
not the entire r.a.sf.* hierarchy) and selecting posters for
whitelisting (BTW, Quadibloc was white listed so the criteria was not
strict). I have noticed that when a legitimate google groups poster
appeared Supernews (but not 'new.individual.net') on Day xx, they showed
up on 'individual.news.net' on Day xx+1.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
....
>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>> taunting him.
>>
>> Lynn
>
> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>
> Pt

The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.

Lynn

Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.

A MAN
A PLAN
USENET SPAM
FROM JAPAN
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Thursday, 16 November 2023 at 23:14:36 UTC, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> "pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> writes:
> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 12:42:49=E2=80=AFPM UTC-5, Scott Lurndal =
> >wrote:
> >> "pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> writes:=20
> >> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 11:08:56=3DE2=3D80=3DAFAM UTC-5, James=
> > Nicoll w=3D
> >> >rote:=20
> >> >> In article <7b2a7665-5187-46f5...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> >> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=3D20=20
> >> >> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 9:41:23=3DE2=3D80=3DAFAM UTC-5, Jam=
> >es Nicoll=3D=20
> >> > wrote:=3D20=20
> >> >> >> Is there an elegant solution for killing the deluge of spam that=3D=
> >20=20
> >> >> >> doesn't involve simply killfiling everything originating from=3D20=
> >=20
> >> >> >> google?=3D20=20
> >> >> >=3D20=20
> >> >> >I don't have access to the headers at the moment, but is crossposting=
> >=3D20=20
> >> >> >being used?=3D20=20
> >> >> >if so, look for multiple commas in the Newsgroups header, and kill on=
> >=3D20=20
> >> >> >that, Very, very=3D20
> >> >> >little legit traffic in this group is crossposted.
> >> >> I dropped all cross-posted articles into the kill file back in 1999...=
> >=3D20=20
> >> >>=3D20=20
> >> >> As far as I can tell, this new crowd of spammers generates a new ID=3D=
> >20=20
> >> >> for each spam. On the plus side, it's easy to see spam subject lines=
> >=3D20=20
> >> >> and I can just k my way through before opening articles but it's a=3D2=
> >0
> >> >> pain.=20
> >> >=20
> >> >Another thought - can you check the byte values in the subject line, to
> >> >identify characters outside US-ASCII?=3D20=20
> >> >=20
> >> >If the spam is using UTF-8, a character with the high bit set=3D20
> >> >(control characters) only occurs in non-US-ascii.=20
> >> >=20
> >> >I don't think we're seeing many legit subject lines using non-US-ASCII,=
> >=20
> >> >and the current spam flood is mostly Thai.
> >> Lynn Mcguire's posts often have UTF-8 subject lines. FWIW.
> >
> >UTF-8 is fine. The test is: is the high bit set in any of the bytes? That i=
> >s the
> >indicator of a character outside the US-ASCII character set.
> >
> >'US Ascii' in UTF-8 will have all the bytes as 7F or less.=20
>
> I'd wager that it's smart quotes[*], or en/em characters that trigger
> UTF-8 in his case.
>
> [*] worst idea ever.

In Microsoft Word, quote marks ' and " are immediately
changed to start-quote or end-quote "appropriately".
In that case, pressing Ctrl+Z next undoes it. This may
work elsewhere and for other "smart" changes.

On 11/17/2023 1:37 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>
>
> A MAN
> A PLAN
> USENET SPAM
> FROM JAPAN

*giggles as he waps you for that*

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 14:51:08 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, 16 November 2023 at 23:14:36 UTC, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> "pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> writes:
>> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 12:42:49=E2=80=AFPM UTC-5, Scott Lurndal =
>> >wrote:
>> >> "pete...@gmail.com" <pete...@gmail.com> writes:=20
>> >> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 11:08:56=3DE2=3D80=3DAFAM UTC-5, James=
>> > Nicoll w=3D
>> >> >rote:=20
>> >> >> In article <7b2a7665-5187-46f5...@googlegroups.com>,
>> >> >> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=3D20=20
>> >> >> >On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 9:41:23=3DE2=3D80=3DAFAM UTC-5, Jam=
>> >es Nicoll=3D=20
>> >> > wrote:=3D20=20
>> >> >> >> Is there an elegant solution for killing the deluge of spam that=3D=
>> >20=20
>> >> >> >> doesn't involve simply killfiling everything originating from=3D20=
>> >=20
>> >> >> >> google?=3D20=20
>> >> >> >=3D20=20
>> >> >> >I don't have access to the headers at the moment, but is crossposting>> >=3D20=20
>> >> >> >being used?=3D20=20
>> >> >> >if so, look for multiple commas in the Newsgroups header, and kill on>> >=3D20=20
>> >> >> >that, Very, very=3D20
>> >> >> >little legit traffic in this group is crossposted.
>> >> >> I dropped all cross-posted articles into the kill file back in 1999...>> >=3D20=20
>> >> >>=3D20=20
>> >> >> As far as I can tell, this new crowd of spammers generates a new ID=3D=
>> >20=20
>> >> >> for each spam. On the plus side, it's easy to see spam subject lines>> >=3D20=20
>> >> >> and I can just k my way through before opening articles but it's a=3D2=
>> >0
>> >> >> pain.=20
>> >> >=20
>> >> >Another thought - can you check the byte values in the subject line, to
>> >> >identify characters outside US-ASCII?=3D20=20
>> >> >=20
>> >> >If the spam is using UTF-8, a character with the high bit set=3D20
>> >> >(control characters) only occurs in non-US-ascii.=20
>> >> >=20
>> >> >I don't think we're seeing many legit subject lines using non-US-ASCII,=
>> >=20
>> >> >and the current spam flood is mostly Thai.
>> >> Lynn Mcguire's posts often have UTF-8 subject lines. FWIW.
>> >
>> >UTF-8 is fine. The test is: is the high bit set in any of the bytes? That i>> >s the
>> >indicator of a character outside the US-ASCII character set.
>> >
>> >'US Ascii' in UTF-8 will have all the bytes as 7F or less.=20
>>
>> I'd wager that it's smart quotes[*], or en/em characters that trigger
>> UTF-8 in his case.
>>
>> [*] worst idea ever.
>
>In Microsoft Word, quote marks ' and " are immediately
>changed to start-quote or end-quote "appropriately".
>In that case, pressing Ctrl+Z next undoes it. This may
>work elsewhere and for other "smart" changes.

I used to have a problem with Eternal September and allegedly-smart
quotes, but selecting "Quoted printable" and checking "MIME headers in
Agent appears to have solved it.

Well, unless it was something else. It's been a while.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
<lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>...
>>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>>> taunting him.
>>>
>>> Lynn
>>
>> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
>> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>>
>> Pt
>
>The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.

Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.

I would be happy if I could convince Agent to treat, say "?????"
(without the quotes) as a valid search term, but it is so into regular
expressions that it won't accept them.

Fortunately, the Subject: usually has more than just question marks in
it, and so does work when Author: does not.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

In article <45rhlild86dlge40ctua5dn4bqqlss350m@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
><lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>
>Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
>ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.

The responsible country of 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View,
California?

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>In article <45rhlild86dlge40ctua5dn4bqqlss350m@4ax.com>,
>Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
>><lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>>
>>Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
>>ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.
>
>The responsible country of 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View,
>California?

Who actually has more than a hundred buildings in the 100+ square miles
containing the former SGI headquarters building now occupied
by google adjacent to Moffett field.

On 18 Nov 2023 at 17:00:39 GMT, "Paul S Person"
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>> ...
>>>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>>>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>>>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>>>> taunting him.
>>>>
>>>> Lynn
>>>
>>> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
>>> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>>>
>>> Pt
>>
>> The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>
> Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
> ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.
>
> I would be happy if I could convince Agent to treat, say "?????"
> (without the quotes) as a valid search term, but it is so into regular
> expressions that it won't accept them.

It wouldn't work anyway; those aren't question marks they're Thai
characters that Agent and/or Windows are not rendering appropriately.

Similar to Pete, I set up killfilters to 'or'-match five thai letters
(without diacritics/modifiers/whatever they are called) and that has
worked fine.

Cheers - Jaimie

--
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use
as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no
longer figure out how to use my telephone
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

On 2023-11-19, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
> On 18 Nov 2023 at 17:00:39 GMT, "Paul S Person"
><psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
>> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>>>>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>>>>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>>>>> taunting him.
>>>>>
>>>>> Lynn
>>>>
>>>> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
>>>> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>>>>
>>>> Pt
>>>
>>> The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>>
>> Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
>> ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.
>>
>> I would be happy if I could convince Agent to treat, say "?????"
>> (without the quotes) as a valid search term, but it is so into regular
>> expressions that it won't accept them.
>
> It wouldn't work anyway; those aren't question marks they're Thai
> characters that Agent and/or Windows are not rendering appropriately.
>
> Similar to Pete, I set up killfilters to 'or'-match five thai letters
> (without diacritics/modifiers/whatever they are called) and that has
> worked fine.
>
> Cheers - Jaimie

Jaimie, since you're on individual.net, you could also just ignore them and
they will very quickly disappear. I don't know how often they run their
spam detection and deletion but articles disappear rapidly. They
do a good job!

Chris

On 19 Nov 2023 09:39:43 GMT, Jaimie Vandenbergh
<jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:

>On 18 Nov 2023 at 17:00:39 GMT, "Paul S Person"
><psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
>> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>>>>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>>>>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>>>>> taunting him.
>>>>>
>>>>> Lynn
>>>>
>>>> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
>>>> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>>>>
>>>> Pt
>>>
>>> The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>>
>> Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
>> ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.
>>
>> I would be happy if I could convince Agent to treat, say "?????"
>> (without the quotes) as a valid search term, but it is so into regular
>> expressions that it won't accept them.
>
>It wouldn't work anyway; those aren't question marks they're Thai
>characters that Agent and/or Windows are not rendering appropriately.

If that were the case, then using the mostly-? titles wouldn't work
either. And yet they do.

And, the error is "not a valid search term" not "no matches found".

Oh, and I thought they were Japanese now. Not that I can tell, of
course.

>Similar to Pete, I set up killfilters to 'or'-match five thai letters
>(without diacritics/modifiers/whatever they are called) and that has
>worked fine.
>
> Cheers - Jaimie
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:47:44 -0800, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

>On 19 Nov 2023 09:39:43 GMT, Jaimie Vandenbergh
><jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
>
>>On 18 Nov 2023 at 17:00:39 GMT, "Paul S Person"
>><psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 17 Nov 2023 15:36:24 -0600, Lynn McGuire
>>> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/16/2023 8:28 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> ...
>>>>>> Ray (E-S admin) just blocked all Thai spam in comp.lang.c and several
>>>>>> other comp.lang.*. He had to create several filters with quite a bit of
>>>>>> experimentation. The supposed troll has been posting in e-s.support and
>>>>>> taunting him.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Lynn
>>>>>
>>>>> Good to hear. I suspect that if you dropped msgs with subject lines containing
>>>>> common Thai characters UTF-8 encodings, you could do well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Pt
>>>>
>>>> The newest spam coming in is in Japanese. Sigh.
>>>
>>> Frankly, I don't think the language matters. Well, unless you have an
>>> ICBM you can fire at the responsible country or something.
>>>
>>> I would be happy if I could convince Agent to treat, say "?????"
>>> (without the quotes) as a valid search term, but it is so into regular
>>> expressions that it won't accept them.
>>
>>It wouldn't work anyway; those aren't question marks they're Thai
>>characters that Agent and/or Windows are not rendering appropriately.
>
>If that were the case, then using the mostly-? titles wouldn't work
>either. And yet they do.
>
>And, the error is "not a valid search term" not "no matches found".
>
>Oh, and I thought they were Japanese now. Not that I can tell, of
>course.

And poster names like
??????? 3
also work. It is only all-question-mark terms that are rejected.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On 11/16/2023 4:11 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 11/16/2023 11:42 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>> "pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 11:08:56=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, James Nicoll w=
>>>> rote:
>>>>> In article <7b2a7665-5187-46f5...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=20
>>>>>> On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 9:41:23=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, James Nicoll=
>>>> wrote:=20
>>>>>>> Is there an elegant solution for killing the deluge of spam that=20
>>>>>>> doesn't involve simply killfiling everything originating from=20
>>>>>>> google?=20
>>>>>> =20
>>>>>> I don't have access to the headers at the moment, but is crossposting=20
>>>>>> being used?=20
>>>>>> if so, look for multiple commas in the Newsgroups header, and kill on=20
>>>>>> that, Very, very=20
>>>>>> little legit traffic in this group is crossposted.
>>>>> I dropped all cross-posted articles into the kill file back in 1999...=20
>>>>> =20
>>>>> As far as I can tell, this new crowd of spammers generates a new ID=20
>>>>> for each spam. On the plus side, it's easy to see spam subject lines=20
>>>>> and I can just k my way through before opening articles but it's a=20
>>>>> pain.
>>>>
>>>> Another thought - can you check the byte values in the subject line, to
>>>> identify characters outside US-ASCII?=20
>>>>
>>>> If the spam is using UTF-8, a character with the high bit set=20
>>>> (control characters) only occurs in non-US-ascii.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think we're seeing many legit subject lines using non-US-ASCII,
>>>> and the current spam flood is mostly Thai.
>>>
>>> Lynn Mcguire's posts often have UTF-8 subject lines. FWIW.
>>
>> Really. I post using Thunderbird and Eternal-September. Maybe
>> Thunderbird is doing it.
>
> It's probably you pasting headlines into the subject line that use
> the em or en UTF-8 characters or the soi disant ever-to-be-damned
> smart quotes. Likely exacerbated by using windows.

Windows NT+ is incredibly loosey goosey when copying and pasting from
the clipboard between ASCII and UTF-16.

I have heard that Microsoft is considering adding a UTF-8 version of the
Win32 API but I will believe it when I see it.

Lynn