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Archive-name: net-abuse-faq/part1
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The Net Abuse FAQ
Last changed $Date: 1998/12/23 19:28:32 $, making this $Revision: 3.2 $.
NOTE: Parts of this FAQ may be out of date. Please send me any
suggestions or corrections.
The most frequently asked question is always "Who do I complain to about
this?"
Please see sections 3.8 through 3.12 for answers.
If you read no other part of this FAQ, read section 3.21.
POLITICS
1.1) What are the news.admin.net-abuse groups, and why were they
created?
1.2) (this section has been merged into 1.1)
1.3) What is net-abuse?
1.4) What is the purpose of this FAQ?
1.5) What questions does it leave unanswered?
1.6) Who's responsible for this FAQ?
1.7) Where can I get it?
1.8) Is this the only Net Abuse FAQ?
1.9) I don't understand a word of this.
SPAM, SPAMMERS, and MOOSES
2.1) What is Spam?
2.2) What is Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP)?
2.3) What about cross-posting?
2.4) Where did the term come from?
2.5) Tell me about the Great Spammers.
2.6) Who were Canter and Siegel?
2.7) Where can I get more info on them?
2.8) What should we do about the book?
2.9) Who is Cancelmoose
2.10) Who are the current spam cancellers?
2.11) Has this problem really been going on for FOUR YEARS?!
NITTY-GRITTY
3.1) Yeah, but how many times is 'X'?
3.2) What is the Breidbart Index (BI)?
3.3) What is NoCeM?
3.4) Is there a blacklist of net-abusers?
3.5) How can I tell if a post is forged?
3.6) How do I know when I've got spam on my hands?
3.7) My group is full of crap. Why isn't it being cancelled?
3.8) OK, I think I've spotted a spam. Who should I mail-bomb?
3.9) OK, I think I've spotted a spam. What should I do?
3.10) What about e-mail spam?
3.11) I e-mailed a complaint to {so-and-so} about their {e-mail,
post} and now they're threatening to complain to my system
administrator. What should I do?
3.12) List of Basic Adminstrative Addresses
3.13) What's a cancel-bot?
3.14) Where can I get me one?
3.15) How do spam-cancellers cancel spam?
3.16) Can I sic The Man on these MAKE.MONEY.FAST losers (or other
types of net abusers)?
3.17) What is a killfile, and how do I use one?
3.18) How do I killfile all crossposted messages?
3.19) What is the Usenet Death Penalty (UDP)?
3.20) Do all hierarchies have the same rules?
3.21) How about we start a campaign to stop all the spammers?
GROAN
4.1) Why are you net-abuse people such net-cops?
4.2) Isn't cyberporn a bigger issue than spamming?
4.3) Hey, I think my newsgroup is being invaded by
alt.syntax.tactical!
4.4) Hey, I think my newsgroup is being invaded by the Usenet
Freedom Council!
4.5) Hey, somebody posted an ad in {newsgroup}!
4.6) Hey, so-and-so's not being nice in {newsgroup}!
4.7) Hey, the Good Times virus--
4.8) Hey, there's this (AT&T, Jerry Garcia, whatever) banner
message in the newsgroup descriptions!
4.9) Hey, one of those net.cops posted an ad for {something}! Haw!
Haw!
_________________________________________________________________
POLITICS
1.1) What are the news.admin.net-abuse groups, and why were they created?
Originally, news.admin.net-abuse.misc was created to replace
alt.current-events.net-abuse and news.admin.policy. The former was
one of the most widely read and respectable alt.* groups, while the
latter had become largely a mess of messages cross-posted from
a.c-e.n-a and news.admin.misc.
news.admin.net-abuse.misc was then, not surprisingly, for
discussions of net-abuse (see "What is net-abuse", below):
definitions, occurances, objections, complaints, battle plans,
peace plans, etcetera.
As you can guess, that generated amazing amounts of traffic. By
early 1996, it had gotten to the point where it was impossible to
keep up with the group without investing hours and hours of time.
In November of 1996, after many months of hard work from Tim
Skirvin and others, the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups were
reorganized. The charters are stored at:
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/nana
1.3) What is net-abuse?
Since the first net-abuse newsgroup, many curious forms of Usenet
behavior have been discussed. Of these, spam is the one most
universally accepted as 'net-abuse', which is why it gets its own
section below. Other Frequently Aired Complaints are discussed
throughout the FAQ.
However, as Neil Pawson says, "it's for abuse *of* the net, NOT
abuse *on* the net." Just because somebody does something vile
doesn't mean we can do anything about it on n.a.n-a. To qualify as
true panic-inspiring net-abuse, an act must interfere with the
net-use of a large number of people. Examples of this: newsgroup
flooding, widespread or organized forgery campaigns, widespread or
organized account hackery, widespread or organized censorship
attempts, etcetera.
1.4) What is the purpose of this FAQ?
This FAQ is *not* intended as a comprehensive guide to netiquette.
That is covered in RFC 1855. Many things that this FAQ appears to
treat lightly are, in fact, extreme breaches of netiquette. The FAQ
primarily attempts to answer: are these situations "net-abuse", in
the sense that the whole world should hear about them?
1.5) What questions does the FAQ leave unanswered?
Probably quite a few. If you have questions that you think should
be added to the FAQ, feel free to contact me -- especially if you
also have the answers.
I'd also love to have a section on network/address tracking and
informational tools (telnet, traceroute, nslookup, etc.) a la "The
Spam-tracker's Handbook". Whatever happened to that?
Anyways, feel free to contribute whole new entries.
1.6) Who's responsible for this FAQ?
It's currently maintained by J.D. Falk ([email protected]),
and was originally maintained by by Scott Southwick
([email protected]). The information has been gleaned from
various Usenet sources --primarily posts to the net-abuse groups
made by a wide variety of authors-- and so the maintainer must
actively disclaim all responsibilty for the veracity, advisability
and/or legality of anything contained in the FAQ. Thanks to the
following people who have contributed to it, or at least discussed
its contents in a non-threatening manner:
Arthur Byrne, Pekka Pirinen, Keith "Justified and Ancient" Cochran,
Lamont Granquist, Victoria Fike, Steve Patlan, Wilf Leblanc, Seth
Cohn, Neil Pawson, Bram Cohen, Mitchell Golden, Rahul Dhesi,
Stephen Boursy, Mary Branscombe, David Cortesi, Alexander Lehmann,
Greg Lindahl, Jack Hamilton, Morten Welinder, Axel Boldt, Richard
Lee, an48985, Phil Pfeiffer, John van Essen, Pierre Beyssac,
Michael Shields, Travis Corcoran, Tim Skirvin, Chris Lewis, Daniel
J. Barrett, Ricardo H. Gonzalez, Dave Hayes, Ed Falk (no relation),
Nathan J. Mehl (Nathan says hi), Peter Kappesser, Robert Braver,
Loy Ellen Gross, booter, Johann Beda, Shaun Davis-Gluyas, John R.
Birch, Penn Hackney, David Grabiner, Brendan O'Sullivan-Hale, Bob
Allisat, John Moreno, and many others we have undoubtedly missed
over the years.
Contributions are always warmly welcomed, as are suggestions,
corrections and criticism. However, you know where to shove the
flames.
1.6.1) What are the big changes made in 1998?
After letting this FAQ languish for a while, I realized that it was
time to go through and clean stuff up, as well as adding new
information. To tell you the truth, I'm quite dismayed at how
little has changed.
This Net Abuse FAQ will continue, however, to focus on usenet.
There are a lot of other good documents about e-mail abuse, and
that's an area which changes way too often.
1.7) Where can I get it?
This FAQ will be posted thrice monthly (on the 1st, 11th, and 21st)
to the following newsgroups:
* news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
* news.admin.net-abuse.misc
* news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins
* news.admin.misc
* news.groups.questions
* news.answers
It will also be available at the various public FAQ archives,
including rtfm.mit.edu and its mirror sites. The master hypertext
version is available at:
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
1.8) Is this the only Net Abuse FAQ?
Unfortunately, the topic of Net Abuse is so vast and so
controversial that it cannot be covered completely in one document.
Of course, that didn't stop Daniel Barrett from trying, and doing a
very good job. He wrote a book (published by O'Reilly Publishing)
with the unfortunate but fitting title of Bandits on the
Information Superhighway. More information is available at:
http://www.ora.com/item/bandits.html
I've removed much of the rest of this list, because Stan Kalisch
III is doing a much better job of keeping his list of
news.admin.net-abuse.* Newsgroups' Documents updated. You can view
it at:
http://www.crl.com/~sjkiii/news-admin-net-abuse.html, or
ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/sj/sjkiii/pub/usenet/news-admin-net-abuse.t
xt
For an almost totally different viewpoint, see Dave Hayes's
long-awaited document, "An Alternative Primer on Net Abuse, Free
Speech, and Usenet," which at first denied the existence of this
FAQ. You can find it and some related documents at:
http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/
My answer to Dave's Alternative Primer is also worth reading:
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/dave-hayes.html
There are a number of very good indices of net abuse-related
documents:
Fight Spam on the Internet! (Scott Hazen Mueller)
http://spam.abuse.net/
news.admin.net-abuse.* homepage (Tim Skirvin)
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/nana/
1.9) I don't understand a single word of this.
One of the best starting places for learning about Usenet has
historically always been Indiana University's Usenet Resources
page, which is now at:
http://kb.indiana.edu/menu/usenet.html
It has links to most Usenet primers, netiquette documents and news
FAQs, Son-of-RFC-1036, some charters, newsreader man pages,
etcetera. Also, perhaps one of the following resources will help:
http://www.landfield.com/usenet/
http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/8211/
______________________________________________________________
SPAM, SPAMMERS, and MOOSES
2.1) What is Spam?
It's a luncheon meat, kinda pink, comes in a can, made by Hormel.
Most Americans intuitively, viscerally associate "Spam" with "no
nutritive or aesthetic value," though it is still relatively
popular (especially in Hawaii) and can be found in almost any
grocery store.) The canned luncheon meat has its own newsgroup,
alt.spam.
The term "spam," as used on this newsgroup, means "the same article
(or essentially the same article) posted an unacceptably high
number of times to one or more newsgroups." CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT.
'Spam' doesn't mean "ads." It doesn't mean "abuse." It doesn't mean
"posts whose content I object to." Spam is a funky name for a
phenomenon that can be measured pretty objectively: did that post
appear X times? (See 3.1, "Yeah, but how many is X?')
There have been "customized" spams where each post made some effort
to apply to each individual newsgroup, but the general thrust of
each article was the same. A huge straw poll on news.admin.policy,
news.admin.misc, and alt.current-events.net-abuse (December 1994)
showed that as many of 90% of the readers felt that cancellations
for these posts were justified. So, simply put: if you plan to post
the same or extremely similar messages to dozens of newsgroups, the
posts are probably going to get cancelled.
If you feel that a massive multi-post you are planning constitutes
an exception, you are more than welcome to run the idea past the
readers of news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for feedback first.
2.2) What is Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP)?
Spam (and spam by any other name still stinks.)
Some people feel that "spam" is an inappropriately misleading name
for messages of this type. Others feel that "EMP" is misleading.
Since spam is the most widely recognized term, that's what we use
in this FAQ.
2.3) What about cross-posting?
Here's the difference between cross-posting and multi-posting:
cross-posting is where you list all the groups on the Newsgroups:
line of a single post. Multi-posting is where you have some idiotic
program fire an individual copy of the post to each group. (If you
do it manually, that's even more idiotic.) A cross-post only takes
up the space of 1 post (one on every newsserver in the world), no
matter how many groups; multi-posting takes up the space of dozens
or hundreds of posts (on every newsserver in the world), which is
why it infuriates so many people.
So, cross-posting is better than multi-posting. It's still very
often a bad idea, and if you get carried away it'll still get
cancelled (see 3.2, "What is the Breidbart Index (BI)?") This is
often called Excessive Cross-Posting, or ECP. Some folks still call
it "velveeta" because they like cutesy names.
If you *must* cross-post, set the followups to a single appropriate
group by adding a header line like:
Followup-to: group.name.here
This prevents the readers of all the groups from having to deal
with the thread for weeks afterwards if the readers of only one or
two of the groups take an interest in it.
You can also add Followup-to: poster, which will (in most
newsreaders) ask anybody who tries to follow up to e-mail you
directly instead.
2.4) Where did the term 'Spam' come from?
The prevailing theory is that it is from the song in Monty Python's
famous spam-loving vikings sketch that goes, roughly, "Spam spam
spam spam, spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam..." The
vikings, who were sitting in a restaraunt whose menu only included
dishes made with spam, would sing this refrain over and over,
rising in volume until it was impossible for the other characters
in the sketch to converse (which was, of course, a large part of
the joke.)
The term is rumored to have originated, as far as the Internet is
concerned, from the MUD/MUSH community. Blue-haired former
newsadmin Nathan J. Mehl tells the most reliable story known to
date...
Well, briefly summarized:
My friend-who-shall-remain-nameless was, ah, a younger and callower
man, circa 1985 or so, and happened onto one of the original Pern
MUSHes during their most Sacred Event -- a hatching. After trying
to converse sanely with two or three of the denizens, he came
quickly to the conclusion that they area all of bunch of
obsessive-compulsive nitwits with no life and less literary taste.
(Probably true.)
Editors' Note: another source tells me that this actually happend
in the summer of 1991.
So, as the 'eggs' were 'hatching', he assigned a keyboard macro to
echo the line:
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
SPAM
...and proceeded to invoke it once every couple of seconds, until
one of the wizards finally booted him off.
...which would have probably been that last that anyone ever heard
or thought of it, except that it apparently ingrained itself into
the memory of the PernMUSHers, and forever after there was the
legend of 'that asshole who spammed us.'
Every once in a while, this story makes it back to my friend, and
he tries very hard to keep a straight face...
Another theory is related to throwing a "brick" of the luncheon
meat at a rotating metal fan. However, none of the long-time "spam
watchers" have any idea where that theory was from before it showed
up in a Time magazine article.
The term wasn't first used to describe mass news posting, however.
See the Hacker's Jargon File for previous uses of the word.
2.5) Tell me about the Great Spammers.
To paraphrase Yoda, spam does not make one great. However, a
surprising number of people prefer infamy to obscurity, and would
rather be hated than unknown. Some of those people take up spamming
as a way to gain the notoriety that their warped psyches crave.
So as not to duplicate effort, here's an excellent archive devoted
to the various bug- and honey-bears of the Net:
* The Kook of the Month site (particularly the Net.Legends FAQ)
http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/faqs/legends.html
Not all of the kooks and legends discussed there are spammers, or
even villains. Spam fans should pay particular attention to the
entries on Serdar Argic, the spiritual ancestor of today's
spammers. In fact, any would-be spammers should try to be more like
him. At least he was kinda interesting. Today's kooks are just
sociopaths.
2.6) Who were Canter and Siegel?
They were lawyers, authors, and Usenet newbies _par excellence_.
Super-newbies. Honorary Permanent Newbies. When they sit around the
net, they sit *around the net*...
C+S weren't the first spammers, but they were so gothically clumsy
about it, and so intent on making a buck, that people were
terrified and infuriated into starting alt.current-events.net-abuse
(which has since been replaced by the news.admin.net-abuse.*
groups.
Since then, they've parted ways (rumour has it they were married
when they spammed, and have since gotten a divorce.) Lawrence
Canter was permanently disbarred, in part because of his history of
net abuse. Martha Siegel was last heard from a few years ago, when
she was trying to go on a lecture tour promoting her new, revised
version of the book she and Canter wrote together on how to abuse
the net.
2.7) Where can I get more information about them?
The best known source is Thomas Leavitt's "The Canter & Siegel
Report," available via anonymous ftp from:
ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/leavitt/
Those files are zipped. Users with access to 1990s technology
should check out the WWW versions at:
ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/leavitt/html/cands.report.html
ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/leavitt/html/candsrpt.two.html
ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/leavitt/html/candsrpt.three.html
There's also a wonderful article on the pair available at:
http://www.eye.net/Howling/Kooks/Kreeps/CS2.htm (apparently now an
invalid link; anybody know where it went?)
Many, many more docs are available, but I'll stop there, because
there's really no reason to dwell on the past. In fact, Canter &
Siegel have both posted to news.admin.net-abuse.misc and other
groups from time to time (always multiposted -- they seem
genetically unable to crosspost), and it has always been quite
obvious that all they wanted was to generate more publicity for
themselves.
2.8) What should we do about the book?
What book?
2.9) Who is Cancelmoose[tm]?
Cancelmoose[tm] is, to misquote some wise poster, "the greatest
public servant the net has seen in quite some time." Once upon a
time, the 'Moose would send out spam-cancels and then post notice
anonymously to news.admin.policy, news.admin.misc, and
alt.current-events.net-abuse. The 'Moose stepped to the fore on its
own initiative, at a time (mid 1994) when spam-cancels were
irregular and disorganized, and behaved altogether admirably--
fair, even-handed, and quick to respond to comments and criticism,
all without self-aggrandizement or martyrdom. Cancelmoose[tm]
quickly gained near-unanimous support from the readership of all
three above-mentioned groups.
Nobody knows who Cancelmoose[tm] really is, and there aren't even
any good rumors. However, the 'Moose now has an e-mail address
([email protected]) and a web site (http://www.cm.org.)
By early 1995, several others had stepped into the spam-cancel
business, and appeared to be comporting themselves well, after the
Moose's manner. The moose has now gotten out of the business, and
is more interested in ending spam (and cancels) entirely (see "What
is NoCeM?")
2.10) Who are the current spam cancellers?"
Chris Lewis and Robert Braver take care of most of the spam (John
Milburn has retired from the spam-cancelling biz), while Richard
Depew cleans up spews from horribly misconfigured news servers,
large misplaced binaries, and the like. Somebody calling himself
The Unknown News Administrator has been helping as well, and so
have a few others. Michael Scheidell and others deal with problems
(usually out-of-area postings) in various local hierarchies.
Overall, Chris Lewis is considered to be the expert on spam
cancelling, and one of the experts on Usenet in general.
For a good overview of who's doing what right now, hop over to
news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins and check headers. It changes every
few months.
2.11) Has this problem really been going on for FOUR YEARS?!
Yes.
The obvious next question is "why hasn't everybody just given up?"
Well, some have. Many others have confined their reading to a
small, selected set of groups, usually from behind a mass of
killfiles and other filtering methods. Some folks even went as far
as starting a new, "parallel" usenet alternative, called Usenet2,
which you can read about at:
http://www.usenet2.org/
But I think Stanford newsadmin Russ Allbery explained it best in a
post to Usenet2's net.subculture.usenet in March of 1998:
http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/docs/russ-usenet.txt
______________________________________________________________
NITTY-GRITTY
3.1) Yeah, but how many times is 'X'?
How many posts does it take to push the spam envelope? To use up
all your spam charity points? For a bare-bones spam? To trigger the
raging-spam-cancellers-from-Hell?
Among those who agree that spam should be defined solely by
quantity,
-----------------> 20 <--------------------
appears to be the magic number, or at least a number so
middle-of-the-road that it provokes very little passionate dissent
in either direction. Notably, Cancelmoose[tm] refused to set a firm
number, in the belief that people would simply post [X-1] messages.
It's safe to say that a couple incidents of 19-post spams would
cause the magic number to plummet. Thus, 20 should be considered a
vague approximation only.
Passionately dissenting note: Rahul Dhesi [[email protected]], one of
the fathers of the cancel-bot movement, sticks by the following
definition:
More than five physically distinct postings with substantially
identical content posted within a period of ten days.
The most reliable document describing current spam thresholds and
guidelines is a draft FAQ posted weekly to
news.admin.net-abuse.misc by Chris Lewis. It also describes the
Breidbart Index (see below) in greater detail. That FAQ is not now
available on the web at:
http://spam.abuse.net/spam/others/thresholds.html
It is important to note that some ISP's set different limits on
what their users may or may not do, so if you try to push the
envelope with the Briedbart Index it's still quite possible that
you'll lose your account.
3.2) What is the Breidbart Index (BI)?
The Breidbart Index (BI) is a measure of the breadth of any
multi-posting, cross-posting, or combination of the two. BI is
defined as the sum of the square roots of how many newsgroups each
article was posted to. If that number approaches 20, then the posts
will probably be cancelled by somebody.
For instance, four identical posts to nine newsgroups each (4 times
3) has a BI of 12. However, nine identical posts to four newsgroups
each (9 times 2) has a BI of 18.
3.3) What is NoCeM?
NoCeM is an end to all this spam, and an end to all this
cancelling. With NoCeM (pronounced "No See 'Em"), your newsreader
goes out and gets certain posts (from trusted parties) that contain
lists of junk articles (ECP, spam, etc.) Your newsreader then hides
those articles from you.
Note that right now most NoCeM newsreaders are only for Unix. The
only exception is Gnus, the newsreader for EMACS, which will work
on any platform that supports a fully functioning version of GNU
EMACS.
The move to NoCeM is headed by the Cancelmoose[tm] ([email protected]),
and the moose's web site has all the info you might want about
NoCeM:
http://www.cm.org/
Also check out the newsgroup alt.nocem.misc, which will degenerate
into a Big 7 newsgroup (news.lists.nocem?) one of these days.
3.4) Is there a blacklist of net-abusers?
Yes, Axel Boldt maintains the world-renowned "Blacklist of Internet
Advertisers" at:
http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/blacklist.html
Now, before you get really worried about McCarthyism and such, go
and look at Axel's self-imposed rules for maintaining the
blacklist. He's much fairer than most of those people deserve.
3.5) How can I tell if a post is forged?
Gandalf ([email protected]) has written the alt.spam FAQ, or
"Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts," which focuses on how to track
spam. It is available at:
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
For a rough article on forgery, originally constructed for this FAQ
out of information contributed by Robert Bonomi, Arthur Byrne, Emma
Pease, and Alan Bostick, see:
http://sckb.ucssc.indiana.edu/kb/data/all.afco.html
For more information on headers, see RFC-1036, "Standard for
Interchange of Usenet Messages," at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc1036.html
3.6) How can I tell how many newsgroups an article was posted to?
For people who can't use the classic "grepping the newsspool"
method, nn or nngrab may be able to help. (The following is adapted
from a posting by Lee Rudolph--thanks.)
You can force the Unix newsreader nn to ignore your .newsrc and
create a "merged newsgroup" consisting only of articles containing
a certain word in their subject line. For instance, to gather all
articles at your site containing the word "spam" in their subject
line, use this command:
% nngrab spam
That's basically a faster version of
% nn -i -s"spam" -mXx
Caution: this latter method can be a long, tedious process. See the
nn man page for more details.
3.7) My group is full of crap. Why isn't it being cancelled?
Lots of groups are full of inappropriate posts, widely crossposted
advertising, and so forth -- just pop into misc.misc or alt.sex for
as many examples as you can possibly handle.
As annoying as it may be, these posts may not be cancellable spam.
Keep in mind that the cancel thresholds err in the favor of the
excessive poster, and still leave *lots* of room to post in a
manner that most people find inappropriate.
A single, excessively crossposted post can not be cancellable in
and of itself. In order for a single post to be cancelled, it would
have to be posted to 400 groups (sqrt(400) = 20). This is not
possible due to limits of news software.
Robert Braver reports "When checking for spam, I often must pass
over groups of messages that are likely considered off-topic
intrusions in each of the newsgroups it is posted to, but it
doesn't hit the cancel threshold."
One good solution here would be for the newsadmins of a particular
locality to come to a consensus for more stringent thresholds for
their respective local hierarchies, as has been done in the atl.*
and fl.* hierarchies.
Of course, the messages may actually be cancellable spam,
especially when you consider the current 45-day window. But, this
type can be harder for the automatic spam detectors to find.
Once a slow spam is detected and posted to
news.admin.net-abuse.announce, it makes it easier to keep tabs on a
particular poster or series of messages in the future. This kind of
spam is probably where "field reports" to news.admin.net-abuse.misc
are the most useful.
3.8) OK, I'm certain it's spam. Who should I mail-bomb?
Don't mail-bomb anybody. Harrassment is illegal everywhere. If
somebody's done something truly evil, they'll get enough single
responses from individuals to achieve the same effect.
3.9) OK, I'm certain it's spam. What should I do?
* Check n.a.n-a.sightings. If somebody's already made a definitive
spotting, there's no sense in an "I've seen it, too" post.
* Include a *complete* header from one copy of the spam in your post
to n.a.n-a.sightings. Set followups to n.a.n-a.misc.
* Say how many newsgroups at your site it was posted to; list 20 or
more of them. (See "How do I know how many newsgroups an article
was posted to?")
* Complain politely to the spammer and the Usenet administrator at
the spammer's site (whose address should be "[email protected]" or
"[email protected]"; if that fails, try "abuse" or "postmaster".)
Request that the Usenet administrator post a response to
n.a.n-a.announce, detailing what actions have been taken. Again,
remember to be polite -- it is rare that the administrators are in
any way responsible for the message.
3.10) What about e-mail spam?
You can always complain about unsolicited e-mail to both the bozo
that sent it to you and the bozo's postmaster. To write to a
postmaster, just substitute the perp's username in their address
(e.g., [email protected]) with "postmaster" (i.e.,
[email protected].) Please be brief and polite with
the postmasters, include a copy of the e-mail you received, and
leave the subject-line intact (in case the postmaster wants to set
up an auto-responder.)
Be sure to include all the headers (not just From, To, Date, and
Subject, which is the default in most mail programs) in your reply,
just in case the e-mail was cleverly forged. That way, the
postmaster can trace it back to its source if necessary.
For more information, see:
http://spam.abuse.net/
3.11) I e-mailed a complaint to so-and-so about their {post, mail}, and now
they're threatening to complain to my system administrator. What should I do?
Let your sys-admin know right away what's happening. Tell them the
story, briefly. Offer to supply the post(s) in question, so that
your admin doesn't have to go searching. Then keep them updated on
any further threats.
If you're brief, polite, and on the right side, you can usually
find an ally in your sys-admin.
3.12) List of Basic Administrative Addresses
The search for the best person to complain to at any site has led
to much speculation and arguments, even among admins at the same
site. However, if a message to the original poster doesn't get you
anywhere, somebody at one of the following addresses might be able
to help.
abuse
A lot of ISP's and network backbones have created 'abuse'
addresses for complaints about net-abuse. That's usually the
best place to start.
usenet or news
For Usenet abuse, you can usually reach a news administrator
through one or both of these addresses. A notable exception is
Compuserve, which utilizes the address
<[email protected]> (this may change now that AOL has
purchased Compuserve.)
postmaster
RFC 822, the document which set most of the current standards
for Internet e-mail back in 1982, makes it mandatory for all
sites which pass e-mail to have a postmaster address so that
problems can be reported. The purpose of postmaster has
expanded at many sites to include net-abuse, both e-mail and
otherwise.
Administrative or Technical Contacts
If you have access to the whois command, you can type (for
example) 'whois example.com' to find out who the administrative
and technical contacts are for a domain. This will list their
e-mail address, and often their phone and FAX numbers (but
remember, be polite, because the contacts aren't usually
responsible for their users' misbehavior, and harassment is
illegal everywhere.)
Upstream Providers
If none of the above get you anywhere, you can try going to a
site's upstream providers. For news, check the Path: header of
the original message. To the right, you'll see the originating
site. Each site between you and them is separated by an
exclamation point, as in the partial example below:
!dummy-host.example.com!nohost.mydomain.com!not-for-mail
As you can see, the message originated at the machine
foobar.mydomain.com. The next news hop is
dummy-host.example.com, so you'd complain to [email protected]
if the admins at mydomain.com were uncooperative.
For e-mail, determining who's upstream can often be confusing
-- many people get it wrong. Unless you're familiar with the
whois and traceroute tools, I'd suggest not even bothering.
If you don't have the time or resources to do this research, you
can send mail to [email protected], and it will (probably) be
sent to the appropriate contact(s) for that domain. You'll need to
register with abuse.net the first time you send mail through it.
3.13) What is a cancel-bot?
First off, "cancel-bot" is an unfortunate misnomer, and one that
the conventional media have understandably misunderstood. "Bot"
implies that something is out there, running unattended, cancelling
whatever meets its nefarious qualifications...but that is quite
rare, and is only done when both the user and their administrators
are completely unwilling to stop spamming. For the most part, all
spam-cancels are sent out manually and deliberately by actual human
beings. (They happen to use a program that is commonly referred to
as a "cancel-bot".)
A cancel-bot, misnomer aside, is a program that sends out cancel
messages; you feed it the message-IDs of posts, and it sends out a
cancel message for each one (see RFC 1036.) Cancel messages are
normally sent out by a newsreader in response to a user's request
to cancel a message, using a newsreader command, *if* the user was
also the original poster of the message. Sites will ignore cancel
messages that don't appear to come from the original poster.
Cancel-bots work around this restriction by using header lines that
make it look like the original poster sent out the cancel; they'll
usually add something like a "Cancelled-By" header line as well, to
keep things nominally above-board.
Use of a cancel-bot against anything besides 'consensus spam'
outrages people, as it should. See alt.religion.scientology for
sample discussions.
For more information on cancels (especially in regards to net
abuse), Tim Skirvin has written a very good FAQ, which used to be
avaliable at:
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/cancel.faq
3.14) Where can I get me a cancel-bot?
If you have to ask, you should probably wait a while.
3.15) How do the spam-cancellers cancel spam?
* They make bloody sure they know how to use their cancel-bot;
* They confirm the spam themselves;
* They announce their action to n.a.n-a.announce. This prevents
everyone from waiting around and wondering whether anyone's done
anything.
Here's a standard section from an old cancel-notification post by
the beloved Cancelmoose(TM):
The $alz cancel. and Path: cyberspam conventions were followed.
[The $alz convention is to create your cancel message-ID by
prepending 'cancel.' to the original one. The cyberspam convention
is to use- 'Path: cyberspam!usenet' so that sites that do not want
your cancels can easily opt out. Please use these when cancelling
spam.]
Many more disclaimers are commonly added by modern spam cancellers,
in an attempt to reduce confusion and misplaced anger.
3.16) Can I sic The Man on these MAKE.MONEY.FAST losers (or other types of
net abusers)?
You can complain about e-mail or Usenet pyramid schemes (at least
those involving Americans somehow) to the Federal Trade Commission:
STAFF CONTACT: Bureau of Consumer Protection
Ms. Broder
[email protected]
Before doing so, consider seriously whether you actually want to
encourage government intervention. The number of 'net cases the FTC
has been involved in is very low at this point; in an ideal world,
it would probably remain that way.
But if you really want to go after MMF lusers (or anybody spammy
any type of tax fraud scheme), you can complain to the IRS:
] Subject: Reporting MMF to the IRS [long]
] Date: 11 Mar 1997 09:26:20 -0500
] Reply-To: Inspector Andrew Fried
]
] Over the past six months, my email address has appeared in the "fraud
] killer list", a list of agency contacts used to report potential tax
] fraud violations by the "make money fast" (MMF) Usenet spammers. Since
] complaints such as those don't fall under my specific area of
] jurisdiction, I have been manually forwarding all such messages to the
] appropriate department within my agency.
]
] In order to facilitate routing complaints to the IRS via email, I have
] established two special mailboxes. Email sent to those addresses will
] be automatically forwarded to the correct organizations within the
] Service. This will assure faster delivery and reduce congestion on
] my personal email account. The addresses are as follows:
]
] [email protected]
] Use this address to report make money fast (MMF) schemes. Mail sent to
] this address will be forwarded to the Criminal Investigation Division
] (CID) for appropriate action.
]
] [email protected]
] Mail sent to this address will be forwarded to Internal Security
] (Inspection), the IRS's "internal affairs" type organization. Internal
] Security is responsible for investigating criminal acts which attempt to
] corrupt our tax system. Internal Security is also responsible for the
] protection of all Service employees. Use this address to report
] attempted bribery of IRS employees, conspiracy to defraud the tax
] system, threats against the IRS or IRS employees or any other suspected
] criminal acts affecting the integrity of our tax system. Please don't
] forward the infamous "IRS Abuse" reports here.
]
] Reports of tax fraud should be sent directly to your regional IRS
] Service Center; there is currently no Internet email address for
] reporting those suspected offenses.
]
] Please distribute this message to newsgroup moderators and members of
] your newsgroups. Should you have any other non-tax related questions,
] feel free to write to me directly at:
] [email protected]
]
] --
] Inspector Andrew Fried IRS Internal Security
] Voice: (202) 622-3535 1111 Constitution Ave, NW
] Fax: (202) 622-8681 Washington, DC 20224
A non-governmental organization which deals in such things (and
more) is the National Fraud Information Center, which is funded by
grants from major corporations and works in cooperation with
federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies.
Their purpose is organize, classify, and forward "stuff" to the
appropriate body: state's a.g, FTC, FBI, Secret Service, wherever.
Thus they are not "law enforcement" and the problems of inaction by
local district attorneys, etc. persist (d.a's have "too much work
to do" to go after an individual posting a chain letter). You can
e-mail them at <[email protected]>, or get information from
their web page, which is at:
http://www.fraud.org/
For stock fraud and the like, some people have been complaining to
the Securities and Exchange Commission at the address
<[email protected]>. And, they've started prosecuting. Please
only send them reports of stock fraud, however -- they don't have
the authority to deal with anything else.
3.17) What is a killfile, and how do I use one?
A killfile enables you to permanently avoid reading posts by
certain people, or from a certain site, or whose Subject: lines
contain particular words... Check out the RN killfile FAQ at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/killfile-faq/faq
.html
If your newsreader doesn't allow killfiling (some news clients call
'em "filters"), write the author of the software and ask them to
add support for killfiles. 'The "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval"
for Usenet Software', which recommends that filtering be included
in all news clients, can be viewed at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/
for more information on what makes a good newsreader.
And, for good advice on who to ignore, see the Global Killfile:
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin/global/
3.18) How do I killfile all crossposted messages?
It's becoming quite common for people to killfile all messages
crossposted to more than X newsgroups, because this cuts down on
the amount of blatantly off-topic crap they have to read.
This is simplest to do in the rn family (rn, trn, strn, etcetera)
using a killfile entry like the following:
/^Newsgroups: .*,.*,.*,.*,.*,./h:,
That one kills anything posted to more than six groups, plus all of
the followups in that thread (that's what the comma at the end
means.) For less groups, use less .* entries -- for more groups,
use more.
Peter Kappesser suggests a somewhat more efficient form for servers
which support the Xref extension to the News Overview database file
(if you aren't sure if your server supports it, just check and see
if there's an Xref: header in the messages you see. If there is, it
does.):
/:.*:.*:.*:.*:.*:/HXref:,
In this, the number of colons equals the threshold number of
groups. This is more efficient because the Xref header line is
transferred with the NOV file when you enter the group, so trn can
process it quickly. If you kill on the Newsgroups line, trn has to
fetch from the server at least the header for every article in the
group in order to examine it for the kill.
One slight difference is that Xref contains only those groups
carried by the server, which may not necessarily be all those
listed in Newsgroups. However, this isn't often a problem -- most
ECP's are to a dozen or more groups, so it doesn't matter that
Newsgroups lists 27 groups while Xrefs only has 18, it's still
greater than 6!
3.19) What is the Usenet Death Penalty (UDP)
There are two different things commonly referred to as "UDP."
The one least argued about could be called "shunning" or
"aliasing," in which a newsadmin (running INN unoff3 or above, or
using the 'shun' patch to earlier versions of INN) can add a site's
pathhost to their ME line. They simply won't get any messages from
that site. Some may consider this censorship, but it fits quite
well with the simple but often forgotten concept that a newsadmin
can do whatever they want on their own machine so long as it
doesn't cause any problems for other newsadmins.
The other Usenet Death Penalty is automatic cancellation of all
messages from a site, or from a person, or based on a regular
expression. This is sometimes done when a spam (or spew) continues
unabated even after the spam cancellers and other net-abuse
activists have attempted to contact somebody and ask them to stop.
As you can guess, there are arguments about this which have
literally been going on for years.
Currently, the general consensus among news.admin.net-abuse.misc
participants is that UDP of either type should only be employed
after every other method has been tried and failed.
In the useless trivia column, the term "Usenet Death Penalty" was
first coined by Eliot Lear. The first software to perform it was
written three years earlier by Karl Kleinpaste in 1990, and was 28
lines long. Karl is also known as being the author of the anonymous
server software.
The second (previous versions of the FAQ referred to it as the
first) was written by Rich $alz (the inventor of INN) in Perl in
April, 1993. It was 76 lines long, including instructions for use.
3.20) Do all hierarchies have the same rules?
Nope. This FAQ mainly deals with what's considered net abuse in the
"Big 8" (comp.*, humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*,
and talk.*) and alt.* (we also touch on biz.* a little bit.) But
there are many hierarchies -- especially regional and local --
which have begun to adopt much stricter policies on net abuse.
The main reason behind this is that the local hierarchies usually
have a smaller target audience. For example, dc.* exists for the
Washington, D.C. metropolitian area, fl.* for the state of Florida,
and so forth. Long ago in the history of Usenet (okay, it was only
two or three years ago) all the news hosts in Florida traded fl.*
with each other, and it didn't leak too far out-of-state -- but
now, with so many national news providers, you can read fl.* pretty
much anywhere in the world.
The point, however, is that just because you have /access/ to a
heirarchy doesn't mean your message is appropriate for it. Many
locally oriented groups, especially *.forsale and *.jobs groups,
are deluged with non-local messages, which are often crossposted to
a large number of different, incongruent local heirarchies. While
these don't individually set off alarms on the world's
spam-watching software, they can make a group become useless for
local postings because it's so hard to wade through all the
misplaced stuff.
So, most local hierarchies now have people (or, more often, groups
of people) watching over them, sending copies of the FAQ or Charter
to people who post inappropriately, and -- in extreme situations --
cancelling the misplaced messages. Cancellation after the fact is
commonly referred to as "retromoderation," and is still a topic of
hot debate.
For more specific information, the Regional Guidelines and Periodic
Postings Database can be viewed at:
http://www.unicom.com/regional/
Or, watch the group itself for a while to see if there're rules of
any type. Remember that in this case, "a while" means at least two
weeks, since FAQs don't get posted every day, and "but I saw other
people advertising their thigh cream here!" is a really lame
excuse.
There is also a mailing list dedicated to discussing the mechanics
and policies that regional FAQ maintainers and retromoderators
follow. For more information, contact
<[email protected]>.
3.21) How about we start a campaign to stop all the spammers?
We already did -- and it's about time!
http://spam.abuse.net/
______________________________________________________________
GROAN
4.1) I hate net-cops like you people.
Who will watch the watchmen? net-cop.cops like this, apparently. ;}
Anyways, anyone who wanted to police the net would be a pig-headed,
unrealistic fool. Thankfully, we (the regular participants in
news.admin.net-abuse.*) just want to stop spam.
Anyways, if you don't like spam being cancelled at your site, you
can alias your site to "cyberspam". (Actually, you can only do that
if you're the newsadmin -- but users are subject to the whim of
their newsadmin anyway, and if you don't like your newsadmin's
policies, you can always just build your own server and get a feed
from someplace else.)
4.2) Isn't cyberporn a bigger problem than spamming?
No matter what the more sensationalistic media outlets may try to
tell you, "cyberporn" is not a real problem. For more information,
see cyberNOTHING's Cyberporn Report, at:
http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/reports/cyberporn.html
As for illegal stuff, like child pornography -- there are existing
laws against that in most countries, so those people will go to
jail, and good riddance.
Net abuse, as described in this document, is a big problem, and
will continue to be a problem unless Something Is Done.
Nevertheless, a case could be made that other issues
(Government-imposed censorship, loss of natural resources,
etcetera) are more or equally important. But that's not what this
FAQ, or the net-abuse newsgroups, are about.
4.3) Hey, I think my group's being invaded by alt.syntax.tactical!
I'm sorry to hear that. Please don't bring that subject up again
here. Good luck... Keith "Justified and Ancient" Cochran, who has
been wrongfully accused of a.s.t involvement himself, adds: "I
would suggest the first thing you do is take a chill pill." (Note
that there is no second thing to do. However, you may want to pass
the time reading the alt.bigfoot FAQ:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/bigfoot/top.html
--particularly the part about cats.)
See also 3.17, "What is a killfile, and how do I use one?"
4.4) Hey, I think my group's being invaded by the "Usenet Freedom Council!"
The abusive "Usenet Freedom Council" seems to be made up of a
number of accounts all owned & operated by Dr. John Grubor, a.k.a.
Manus, a.k.a. DrG, a.k.a DrGodFuck, ad nausea infinitum. It used to
include former Kook of the Month Steve Boursy, and former Kook of
the Month Nominee Vladimir Fomin (who also no longer has access to
the net under that pseudonym.)
Now that news.admin.* people have pretty much unanimously killfiled
him, he's started going to other newsgroups and attempting to get
outraged responses from people by posting what can only be
described as patent bullshit.
The best thing to do is ignore him. This, of course, made easier
with a good killfile (see 3.15, "What is a killfile, and how do I
use one?") The REAL "Usenet Freedom Council" was dreamt up by Dave
Hayes. The best way to understand it is to view his "Freedom
Knights" home page, at:
http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet/
Afterwards, I'd suggest reading "Dave Hayes / Freedom Knights: An
Alternative View," which some feel is a little more realistic (and
there are even those who say it's being too nice.)
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/dave-hayes.html
4.5) Hey, somebody posted an ad in {newsgroup}!
So?
All right, all right: first, check to see if the post was obviously
forged (see 3.5, "How can I tell if a post is forged?")
Then check to see if it's spam (see 2.1, "What is Spam?" It's
probably not. We only want to hear about it if it's spam.
If the ad is off-topic, and you really can't let it go, check out
the advice in 4.6, "Hey, so-and-so's not being nice in
{newsgroup}!"
4.6) Hey, so-and-so's not being nice in {newsgroup}!
Happens all the time. We don't want to hear about it. However, here
are some things you can do (written by Keith "Justified and
Ancient" Cochran):
"The first thing to do is take it up with [email protected]. If you
can't achieve a mutual understanding, then you _MIGHT_ (note, not
WILL, _MIGHT_) want to mail [email protected] with your
complaint. If you are going to write to [email protected], be
sure to include the full, unedited post you have a problem with, a
short but descriptive summary of why you have a problem with it,
and a short, but descriptive explanation of what you would like to
have happen. "Note that this does not apply to MAKE.MONEY.FAST. If
you see a copy of M.M.F, just e-mail [email protected],
including the article ID, and the first paragraph of the post."
Of course, the descriptive explanation of what you would like to
have happen must also be realistic. Since most ISP's have a policy
regarding commercial posts, it's common to ask the postmaster to
reiterate or reinforce whatever policy they may have on hand,
rather than asking right away for the user to be nuked. It's not
nice to tell system administrators what to do -- especially if you
don't know the entire situation yourself.
See also 3.15, "What is a killfile, and how do I use one?"
4.7) Hey, the "Good Times" virus--
...is a total, 100%, long-proven hoax. For the complete story, see:
http://www.nsm.smcm.edu/News/GTHoax.html
4.8) Hey, there's this (AT&T, Jerry Garcia, whatever) banner message in the
newsgroup descriptions!
We know, we know... It's a fairly common prank to add bunches of
newsgroups whose descriptions spell something out. Ask your local
news adminstrator to remove the whole lot.
4.9) Hey, one of those net.cops posted an ad for {something}! Haw! Haw!
"Ad" does not equal "spam".
"Ad" does not equal "net-abuse".
______________________________________________________________
This document is Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 by
Scott Southwick and J.D. Falk. Permission is granted for it to be
reproduced electronically on any system connected to the various
networks which make up the Internet, USENET, and FidoNet so long as
it is reproduced in its entirety, unedited, and with this copyright
notice intact.
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