Why all the spam lately in this discussion group?

[Artemisia]

Does anybody know if this is a recent phenomenon? Is there a way to delete
those posts, or can we only ignore them?

 

[Trevor Lawrence]

Does anybody know if this is a recent phenomenon? Is there a way to delete
those posts, or can we only ignore them?

Well, I guess any public group is vulnerable to spam

I use OE6 to read the NG, and if I see spam I just delete it. It doesn't
delete it from the sever, but at least I don't see it any more - unless I
retrieve "All Messages" again

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Keep in mind, this isn't actually a discussion group. What you are using is
a web-based interface to talk to Microsoft's public news server. News
servers are easy to spam to since they don't have many filters on them
typically. The spam bot is probably posting to a large ISP's news server
that will have aggregated newsgroups from servers all over the world and
then those news messages get passed on to the owning news servers. Deleting
is an entirely different beast and, as Trevor pointed out, if you're using a
news client such as Outlook Express or Windows Mail (in Vista) to connect to
news.microsoft.com, you can simply delete the message that was downloaded in
your nwes reader.

 

[Artemisia]

Yes, I do use the Web-based interface just out of personal preference.

It still annoys me that we can't flag the messages for deletion from the
server, just because I HATE spammers. I don't like their messages hanging
around there. Especially that recent one where someone went out of their way
to use a FrontPage-related subject line. Oh well, it sounds like the best
thing we can do is ignore them.

 

[Steve Easton]

I think you'll find that if you check back later, that most of the SPAM will have magically disappeared.

;-)

Also, you might consider using the NNTP servers and reading the news group using Outlook Express,
or other NNTP capable newsreader.

It is much, much easier and much faster.

The server is: news.microsoft.com
The newsgroup is: microsoft.public.frontpage.client

It's free.


--

Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
FP Cleaner
http://www.95isalive.com/fixes/fpclean.htm
Hit Me FP
http://www.95isalive.com/fixes/HitMeFP.htm

 

[Artemisia]

Still waiting for that magic wand!

I think you'll find that if you check back later, that most of the SPAM will have magically disappeared.

;-)

Also, you might consider using the NNTP servers and reading the news group using Outlook Express,
or other NNTP capable newsreader.

It is much, much easier and much faster.

The server is: news.microsoft.com
The newsgroup is: microsoft.public.frontpage.client

It's free.


--

Steve Easton
Microsoft MVP FrontPage
FP Cleaner
http://www.95isalive.com/fixes/fpclean.htm
Hit Me FP
http://www.95isalive.com/fixes/HitMeFP.htm

 

[Andrew Murray]

Still waiting for that magic wand!

On that point, how does one delete messages from Thunderbird? It comes
up with error about not being able to cancel other peoples posts;
Outlook Express lets you delete the messages; I thought I was deleting a
locally cached copy, but it appears TB is trying to delete the original
server copy - won't let me and says I can delete my own posts, but not
those created by others.

Also, the "Junk" mail icon is greyed out, so can't mark the junk posts
in newsgroups as Spam.