Subject: Re: money making/saving reports

From: [email-masked] (David N. Gaines)
Date: 8 Jul 1996 15:18:23 GMT

In article <01bb6c75.8e548da0$608545c7@system>, [email-masked] says...
>
>Get lots of expensive stuff free by paying me

What sort of sleasy scam is this, and what does it have to do with 
mycology???????

---

From: "Fred K. Lenherr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 1996 07:08:15 -0400

> What sort of sleasy scam is this, and what does it have to do with

It's the same sleasy scam described in every book ever written about
how to make money in mail order. You buy these "reports" and resell them.

The question is, how do we keep ads/pyramid schemes/junk email out of
the unmoderated newsgroups?

I find that Money.com is retrieved by AltaVista:

Welcome to Cambridge Interactive, a company that specializes in harnessing Internet tools to build an 
Extended
     Enterprise. We create financial research...
     http://www.money.com/ - size 4K - 21 Apr 96

But DNS doesn't find it.

 -- Fred

---

From: [email-masked] (Tom Schneider)
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 17:35:47 GMT

Fred K. Lenherr ([email-masked]) wrote:

: The question is, how do we keep ads/pyramid schemes/junk email out of
: the unmoderated newsgroups?

You can't.  However the people who run the news group can send email to the
people on the side.  In bionet.info-theory the rule (stated in the faq) is
that nobody responds to the postings on the group.  If you want to object,
you do it by email and so save everybody multiple bother.  This has been
pretty effective for bionet.info-theory.  Generally I send a message to the
"perp" and to postmaster@ the same address, asking the postmaster to
permanently revoke internet access by the "perp".  I also ask the postmaster
to teach their people not to do this again.  I point out that it has wasted
lots of medical scientist's time.  On rare occasion they will apologize.
Usually they don't have the guts and we never hear from them again.  For a
the second offense (which has not occured yet) harsher measures can be
taken.

This is the relevant section in the bionet.info-theory faq
(ftp://ftp.ncifcrf.gov/pub/delila/bionet.info-theory.faq):

***********************************************************

|-| What Can I Do About Inappropriate Postings?

The short form of this news group's name, bio-info, can be a little confusing
to some people inexperienced in network communications or with little
knowledge of the discipline (if there is any :-) of biological information
theory.  It can and has been mistaken as a news group for general biological
information.  Our readers should be aware that when such postings come to our
attention, we do attempt to inform, privately, the people who make these
inappropriate postings of the error of their ways and suggest alternative or
more appropriate venues.

Subjecting the writers of inappropriate posting to public excoriation is not a
good policy because the mistake is usually inadvertent and the follow-up
postings add further to the irritation of our regular readers.  When others
publicly reply to such posts in this news group, although they may think they
are being polite to the original poster, they are still annoying our regular
readers.  We suggest that a better policy for readers who do wish to reply to
inappropriate posts is to do so privately or to an appropriate news group.

For information about how to deal with intransigent cases, see:
http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/blacklist.html

***********************************************************

  Tom Schneider
  National Cancer Institute
  Laboratory of Mathematical Biology
  Frederick, Maryland  21702-1201
  [email-masked]
  http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/

---

From: [email-masked] (Wayne R. Baker)
Date: 9 Jul 1996 19:10:13 GMT

In bionet.molec-model,  Fred K. Lenherr <[email-masked]> wrote
:David N. Gaines wrote:
:> In article <01bb6c75.8e548da0$608545c7@system>, [email-masked] says...
:> >
:> >Get lots of expensive stuff free by paying me
:> 
:> What sort of sleasy scam is this, and what does it have to do with
:> mycology???????
: [ ... ]
:The question is, how do we keep ads/pyramid schemes/junk email out of
:the unmoderated newsgroups?

  From the biosci.* FAQ:

1) What to do about "spams," i.e., junk mail, ads, etc.
-------------------------------------------------------
BIOSCI is a set of parallel USENET newsgroups (the "bionet" groups)
and mailing lists.  The same postings are distributed on both media
(except for a small number of mailing-list-only groups at
net.bio.net).  Unfortunately it is becoming a despicable practice on
the Internet (by a few people out to make a fast buck) to do automated
mass postings to thousands of newsgroups and mailing lists.  These
attempts to grab free advertising are refered to as "spams" in the
usual, somewhat boneheaded, net terminology.  USENET is more
susceptible to this practice, and many spams originate on the USENET
groups and then are passed on to the mailing lists.  However, spammers
also get lists of mailing addresses and hit these too, so neither
medium is immune.

:I find that Money.com is retrieved by AltaVista:

  The From: line carries little meaning now-days. If you look at
the path of the post, you'll find that it originated at att.net:

Path: news.iastate.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.physics.uiowa.edu!newsfeed.ksu.ksu.edu!news.mid.net!newsfeeder.gi.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!hunter.premier.net!netnews.worldnet.att.net!newsadm
                       ^^^^^^^
  money.com doesn't look like they run their own news spool. When I see
posts like the one that started this, I forward a copy to news at the
site of origin. In trn, this is done by  

	s | mail -s "(fwd) money making/saving reports" [email-masked]

  If the newsadmin gets enough complaints, they'll take action. I'm over
in bionet.molec-model which has low enough traffic that posts like this
are annoying, but not too frequent. If it's worse in your group, you
could opt for moderation but that doesn't guarantee stuff like this won't
show up again. Getting boneheads like the original poster spanked is
about all that can be done. 

-- 
Wayne Baker ([email-masked])  	He who has a why to live for
4288 Molecular Biology Building  	can bear almost any how.
Iowa State University            	--Nietzsche
Ames IA 50011    (515) 294 0781

---

From: [email-masked] (Sven Haul)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 96 18:52:23 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>> In article <01bb6c75.8e548da0$608545c7@system>, [email-masked] says...

[snipped scam]

>     http://www.money.com/ - size 4K - 21 Apr 96
If you look at the full headers, you'll see this is from an dial-in account:

From: "Try this" <[email-masked]>
Subject: money making/saving reports
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 21:31:23 -0500
Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services
Message-ID: <01bb6c75.8e548da0$608545c7@system>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 96.dallas-2.tx.dial-access.att.net
Mime-Version: 1.0
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1085

You can set the from: line as you like, but it takes more brains to tinker 
with the NNTP-posting host. The message-ID is generated by the local 
newsreader and can be set as you like.
Maybe if we all write to the newsmaster of the posting host...
But you cannot kill the spammers as fast as they evolve. Use a killfile for 
your newsreader instead (Netscape can't do this, but News Xpress and Free 
Agent, for example). I kill everything with "money" and "cash" in the 
subject...

Regards,
Sven

Sven E. Haul                           Heinrich-Heine-University
Institute of Physiology II             Duesseldorf
Dpt. of Neurophysiology                Germany

---

From: Brett Burkholder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 16:17:18 +0000

Your posting to the group bionet.molbio.yeast was inappropriate.

This is the equivalent of e-junk-mail, and I, for one, would appreciate
your refraining form such posting in the future.  I see you have tried 
to cleverly hide your posting address.  Let me assure you that no posting
is completely anonymous, and someone CAN find out who you are, if they 
are so inclined.  

If you continue to make such inappropriate postings--an act known as 
"spamming"--we can find out where you are gaining net access and contact 
the postmaster or SYSOP of that system.  Postmasters and SYSOP's, even 
commercial access companies such as AOL, frown heavily upon spamming. You 
may even lose your net access if you continue to ignore nettiquette.

Send your junk mail somewhere else.

Brett Burkholder