Scott Dorsey wrote:

> In article <ured45$38ql5$1@paganini.bofh.team>,
> Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>
>>> You don't have to be an admin to issue nocems, you just have to have admins
>>> trust you.
>>
>>What _software_ is used to send that "nocem cancel request" to all the
>>server admins? Is it a simple email? Or a special usenet post. Or what?

> Just like with the creation of a new group or with a conventional cancel,
> a message is posted to the "control" newsgroup, with the issuance of a
> nocem a message is posted to the "nocem.misc" newsgroup. You can join
> these newsgroups and watch sausage being made if you are interested in
> doing so.
> --scott

Most nocem are now posted to news.lists.filters

I think most admins are using custom scripts to produce nocem messages. I know that I am. It's just necessary to produce a properly formatted and signed post, so not too complicated. I produce mine (i2pn2.org) with a php script, then post it with a bash script.

--
Retro Guy

On 25/02/2024 14:14, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> In article <urelti$tv6$1@rasp.pasdenom.info>,
> Gelato <gelato@.is.invalid> wrote:
>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>
>>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at all.
>>> Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't acquired by
>>> Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet didn't have
>>> anything to do with Google.
>>
>> What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a login &
>> password were apparently able to control spammers, so why couldn't Google?
>
> Because Google didn't have actual admins as far as I could tell. I know
> hundreds of people who have worked for Google and always asked them if they
> had ever met anyone working for Google Groups and nobody had. The
> groups-abuse@google.com address seemed to be unmanned.

Emails to abuse@googlegroups.com bounced with something like 'this group
doesn't exist, but if you'd like to create it ...'.

I think the system
> was just running perhaps with some occasional upkeep of the software but
> without any actual administration.

This is Google's SRE in action. You automate away any and all human
involvement - because the enigneer's time is better spent elsewhere. If
the system is stuggling under the load, then automatically spin up extra
ressouces - which, for course, is perfect for serving spam.

And why they didn't change that is
> likely because there wasn't any money in it.
> --scott

On Sun, 25 Feb 2024 14:08:08 +0000, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> Yes, in the last six months, a group of one or two users increased the
> spam volume more than 10,000 times.

Last month, spam rejects here averaged about thirty thousand a day, for
past several days since google pulled the plug, spam rejects now average
only nine hundred a day.

(we outright blocked googlegroups a long time ago, so the 30K value will
likely contain legitimate poster collateral damage, but I doubt that
number would be in the thousands)

googlegroups GONE

googlecloud needs to be next (although google does at least keep their
customer IP ranges separate to their core business making it easier to
block everything but p25 from them - unlike microsoft who dont care, and
if they dont we don't, we warn our hosts they likely wont end up in
bing's search because of that)

Of course G's cloud is nowhere near as bad as digitalsewer or ovh.
There is no real valid reason for a customers general cloud account to
access other web servers content, only script kiddies have that reason.

lastly gmail needs to go or stop anonymyzing senders to make them more
accountable - granted, that will only catch out the casual arseholes, the
professional parasites will still find a way, of course still traceable,
but much harder to get co-operaion through the chain.

On 25/02/2024 06:34, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> all the spammers will be looking for new injection
> points.
>

I doubt it. They will move to other forum based support sites. They have
no interest in newsgroups operated by other hobbyists and enthusiasts.
In fact I doubt career spammers knew about newsgroup

On 25 Feb 2024, Dutch Spammer <noreply@dutch.spammer> posted some
news:urgkaj$3c6nv$1@paganini.bofh.team:

> On 25/02/2024 06:34, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>
>> all the spammers will be looking for new injection
>> points.
>>
>
> I doubt it. They will move to other forum based support sites. They have
> no interest in newsgroups operated by other hobbyists and enthusiasts.
> In fact I doubt career spammers knew about newsgroup

Too much work with too little reward to spam forums.

We most certainly knew. Where did you think we got all the valid email
addresses back then?

On 2/25/24 11:01, Richard Harnden wrote:
> This is Google's SRE in action.  You automate away any and all human
> involvement - because the enigneer's time is better spent elsewhere.

I don't know if it's the SRE or not.

It may very well be management. Google management had a love hate
relationship with system administrators, as in they love to hate system
administrators. Google got rid of system administrators multiple times.
Each time they realized the folly of their action and hired systems
administrators again. It's a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth.

--
Grant. . . .

On Sun, 25 Feb 2024 21:28:00 -0600, Grant Taylor wrote:

> It may very well be management. Google management had a love hate
> relationship with system administrators, as in they love to hate system
> administrators. Google got rid of system administrators multiple times.
> Each time they realized the folly of their action and hired systems
> administrators again. It's a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth.

I wouldn't blame Google so much as the spammers themselves, where it may
have been a single "spam king" for all we know, where I never understood
what the purpose was since the English-language spam was nearly
incomprehensible.

Is there evidence for it being one small set of spammers software doing
most of the exponential increase in spam that escalated only a few months
prior to Google shutting the whole thing down?

On Sun, 25 Feb 2024 23:52:32 +0000, Dutch Spammer wrote:

>> all the spammers will be looking for new injection
>> points.
>>
>
> I doubt it. They will move to other forum based support sites. They have
> no interest in newsgroups operated by other hobbyists and enthusiasts.
> In fact I doubt career spammers knew about newsgroup

There is evidence they only spammed "google groups" (of which USENET was a
portion) since they didn't spam the Windows, Firefox & Thunderbird groups,
which are not archived by the Google Groups mechanism (AFAIAA).

Indira wrote on Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:26:14 +0530 :

> No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this newsgroup
> <https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
>
> "Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
> Historical content remains viewable."
> <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>

Notice it doesn't say historical content will remain 'searchable.'
https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Online-Troubleshooting-HOWTO/usenet.html

Let's hope there are archives out there of the past & future content.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pky7km/usenet-archive-utzoo-online

But all the tutorials have to be re-written to remove GG from them.
https://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/finding-what-you-want-on-usenet.html

On 23/02/24 03:10, Nigel Reed wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:26:14 +0530
> Indira <indira@ghandi.net> wrote:
>
>> No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this
>> newsgroup <https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
>>
>> "Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
>> Historical content remains viewable."
>> <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
>>
>> The question to iron out in this thread would be what are the
>> alternative web-based no-account Usenet-only search engines for
>> general use which are updated and which provide a unique pointer to
>> any given message post?
>
>
> And the dozen or so remaining news admins breathe a sigh of relief.
>
> To answer your question, if I had oodles of disk space to create such a
> service, then I would lol. I can't imagine how much you would need to
> index it all, but since each article has a unique article-id anyway (or
> should) have, it should be easy to generate a unique pointer to a given
> message.

I'm hearing that non-binary Usenet volume is on the order of megabytes
per day, and some of that is spam you can delete without archiving.
That's on the order of gigabytes per year. I expect that one of my spare
hard drives could hold the entire archive since the beginning of time.

*Binary* Usenet volume might be more like a gigabytes per *minute*. I
looked at a couple providers' peering requirements; they want you to
acquire a 10Gbit or 100Gbit dedicated cross-connect in their data
center. Most providers just resell other providers with a cache layer in
front, because they don't want to deal with the storage requirements.
Internet-based peering is right out.

-------- Original Message --------
From: immibis <news@immibis.com>
Date: lun, feb 26 2024 02:47:14PM GMT+00:00
Subject: Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or
subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
>
> I'm hearing that non-binary Usenet volume is on the order of megabytes
> per day, and some of that is spam you can delete without archiving.
> That's on the order of gigabytes per year. I expect that one of my spare
> hard drives could hold the entire archive since the beginning of time.
>

My text-only server moving 1,5/2GB daily. x2 in/out.
My history go back to '90, and I have 8TB of data saved. Now I'm working
to do a webinterface for it due to closing of GG.

> *Binary* Usenet volume might be more like a gigabytes per *minute*. I
> looked at a couple providers' peering requirements; they want you to
> acquire a 10Gbit or 100Gbit dedicated cross-connect in their data
> center. Most providers just resell other providers with a cache layer in
> front, because they don't want to deal with the storage requirements.
> Internet-based peering is right out.

I have a full-feed, and my bin-server moving 80/100GB daily, x2 in/out.
I'ts manageable for everything, but you need a good storage box to do
more than 1 week history (my storage box it's a 150TB, and I have only 3
month history live for all bin groups).

--
Ivo Gandolfo

On 26/02/24 15:59, Ivo Gandolfo wrote:
>> *Binary* Usenet volume might be more like a gigabytes per *minute*. I
>> looked at a couple providers' peering requirements; they want you to
>> acquire a 10Gbit or 100Gbit dedicated cross-connect in their data
>> center. Most providers just resell other providers with a cache layer
>> in front, because they don't want to deal with the storage
>> requirements. Internet-based peering is right out.
>
> I have a full-feed, and my bin-server moving 80/100GB daily, x2 in/out. > I'ts manageable for everything, but you need a good storage box to do
> more than 1 week history (my storage box it's a 150TB, and I have only 3
> month history live for all bin groups).

Quite a lot lower than expected. That's only a 100Mbit connection, and
any business with actual money should have no problem acquiring a
petabyte of storage per year (circa $30k/year in new hard drives and
servers). If that's truly a full feed, I wonder why they require direct
peering connections.

["Followup-To:" header set to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.]
On 2024-02-26, Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
> On 2/25/24 11:01, Richard Harnden wrote:
>> This is Google's SRE in action.  You automate away any and all human
>> involvement - because the enigneer's time is better spent elsewhere.
>
> I don't know if it's the SRE or not.
>
> It may very well be management. Google management had a love hate
> relationship with system administrators, as in they love to hate system
> administrators. Google got rid of system administrators multiple times.
> Each time they realized the folly of their action and hired systems
> administrators again. It's a pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth.

Huh, I never heard of that. When did that happen?
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

["Followup-To:" header set to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.]
On 2024-02-25, flour <flour@porters.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 24 Feb 2024, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> posted some
> news:878r3959y0.fsf@hope.eyrie.org:
>
>> Gelato <gelato@.is.invalid> writes:
>>> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 20:33:23 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
>>
>>>> 1995 is not only before Google Groups, it's before Google existed at
>>>> all. Google the company was founded in 1998. Deja News wasn't
>>>> acquired by Google until 2001. The original spam problems on Usenet
>>>> didn't have anything to do with Google.
>>
>>> What is hard to understand is the nntp news admins who required a
>>> login & password were apparently able to control spammers, so why
>>> couldn't Google?
>>
>> Spam filtering requires ongoing effort since it's adversarial
>> (spammers adapt), and Google stopped caring about Google Groups years
>> ago. I suspect the service has been mostly running on autopilot for a
>> while.
> Nod agreement.
>> It will be interesting to see how well other servers continue to hold
>> up against spam now that all the spammers will be looking for new
>> injection points.
>
> Seems google could have easily dealt with the most offensive bunch.
>
> 2402:800:61ae:79a9:a880:d836:6245:38d9
> 2402:800:61ae:3567:ede0:c2a8:5dfd:7c8a
> 2402:800:61a7:4f07:7192:a97:d907:f1f
> 2402:800:61a7:4f07:4997:dc42:fc1f:17d7
>
> Viettel Group
> inet6num: 2402:800::/32
> route6: 2402:800::/32
> descr: VIETTEL-VN
> origin: AS7552
> mnt-by: MAINT-VN-VNNIC

Well, at least other server admins now know.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

["Followup-To:" header set to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.]
On 2024-02-26, Andrew <andrew@spam.net> wrote:
> Indira wrote on Fri, 23 Feb 2024 07:26:14 +0530 :
>
>> No longer can you "search before you post" at this URL for this newsgroup
>> <https://groups.google.com/g/news.admin.peering>
>>
>> "Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions.
>> Historical content remains viewable."
>> <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
>
> Notice it doesn't say historical content will remain 'searchable.'
> https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Online-Troubleshooting-HOWTO/usenet.html
>
> Let's hope there are archives out there of the past & future content.
> https://www.vice.com/en/article/pky7km/usenet-archive-utzoo-online
>
> But all the tutorials have to be re-written to remove GG from them.
> https://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/finding-what-you-want-on-usenet.html

That does seem really worrying.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

W Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:00:11 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 napisal:

> I never heard of that. When did that happen?

Grant used to work at Google so much of what he knows is insider
information. You're not an insider. Me neither. I'm just a somebody.

That's why we need Grant around.
And that's why we need the peering folks too.

They know more than we regular folk do.

I'm just happy the spam is gone.
But I'm sad the easy to use search engine is also gone with it.

But at least I can take solace in that the spammers themselves wasted their
money for only three months (or so) of having free reign over all of us.

On 2/26/2024 4:05 PM, candycanearter07 wrote:
>> Notice it doesn't say historical content will remain 'searchable.'
>> https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Online-Troubleshooting-HOWTO/usenet.html
> That does seem really worrying.

The Google Groups announcement doesn't say anything about the search engine
remaining, but I would think it's low maintenance on their part to keep it.

What's needed is a search engine that does two things.
(1) It adds all new Usenet articles
(2) It searches the existing Google search engine after that

With that, there would be two sections of the search engine results.
(1) Present
(2) Past

Dunno if anyone is writing that new Usenet-only search engine though.

["Followup-To:" header set to news.admin.net-abuse.usenet.]
On 2024-02-26, Jan K. <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote:
> W Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:00:11 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 napisal:
>
>> I never heard of that. When did that happen?
>
> Grant used to work at Google so much of what he knows is insider
> information. You're not an insider. Me neither. I'm just a somebody.

Oh, cool!

> That's why we need Grant around.
> And that's why we need the peering folks too.
>
> They know more than we regular folk do.
>
> I'm just happy the spam is gone.
> But I'm sad the easy to use search engine is also gone with it.

A couple (well more than a "couple") bad actors ruined it for everyone :(

> But at least I can take solace in that the spammers themselves wasted their
> money for only three months (or so) of having free reign over all of us.

Cheers!
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

Using <news:urfp0j$f99$1@panix2.panix.com>, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> uages identify the customers of the spammer but not necessarily
> the spammer himself. Since we have one spammer who is posting messages in
> a wide variety of languages including English, Thai, Hindi, and Bhasa
> Indonesia, knowing the language does not tell you much about who is running
> the spam itself, only the people who have hired him.

Has anyone figured out what exactly the payload was of the immense new spam
that flooded the text newsgroups in the past few months at the rate of tens
of thousands of spams per day?

Most of what they spammed made no sense to anyone.

What was their profit motive given an effort to spam 30K per day for
months?

Andrew wrote:

> Indira wrote:
>
>> <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
>
> Notice it doesn't say historical content will remain 'searchable.'

It does, if you follow the learn more link ...

"You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content
posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups."

On 26/02/24 15:59, Ivo Gandolfo wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: immibis <news@immibis.com>
> Date: lun, feb 26 2024 02:47:14PM GMT+00:00
> Subject: Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or
> subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
>>
>> I'm hearing that non-binary Usenet volume is on the order of megabytes
>> per day, and some of that is spam you can delete without archiving.
>> That's on the order of gigabytes per year. I expect that one of my
>> spare hard drives could hold the entire archive since the beginning of
>> time.
>>
>
> My text-only server moving 1,5/2GB daily. x2 in/out.
> My history go back to '90, and I have 8TB of data saved. Now I'm working
> to do a webinterface for it due to closing of GG.
>
>> *Binary* Usenet volume might be more like a gigabytes per *minute*. I
>> looked at a couple providers' peering requirements; they want you to
>> acquire a 10Gbit or 100Gbit dedicated cross-connect in their data
>> center. Most providers just resell other providers with a cache layer
>> in front, because they don't want to deal with the storage
>> requirements. Internet-based peering is right out.
>
> I have a full-feed, and my bin-server moving 80/100GB daily, x2 in/out.
> I'ts manageable for everything, but you need a good storage box to do
> more than 1 week history (my storage box it's a 150TB, and I have only 3
> month history live for all bin groups).
>

Here, a Giganews representative says their full binary feed is 20
gigabits, sometimes 30:
https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/184iecj/usenet_peering/

That is approximately 200 terabytes per day.

On 26/02/24 19:07, Andy Burns wrote:
> Andrew wrote:
>
>> Indira wrote:
>>
>>>   <https://i.postimg.cc/RZkhn6bj/googlegroups.jpg>
>>
>> Notice it doesn't say historical content will remain 'searchable.'
>
> It does, if you follow the learn more link ...
>
> "You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content
> posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups."
>

All this actually means is that Google will wait at least 2 weeks before
deleting their search archive.

-------- Original Message --------
From: immibis <news@immibis.com>
Date: lun, feb 26 2024 06:20:42PM GMT+00:00
Subject: Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or
subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable>>
>
> Here, a Giganews representative says their full binary feed is 20
> gigabits, sometimes 30:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/184iecj/usenet_peering/
>
> That is approximately 200 terabytes per day.

It depends on what you bring as binary peering.
Currently I carry the binaries of the general hierarchies, almost all
the national or private hierarchies, and some alt.* binaries. And it is
the latter that has a lot of traffic, also because there are groups that
make no sense, and others with pirated stuff (films, TV series,
software, etc) and user backups, yes users keep their backups on usenet.
Now, you understand why I don't bring all alt.* for the bins, but I do
filter a lot of stuff.

--
Ivo Gandolfo

On 26/02/24 20:20, Ivo Gandolfo wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: immibis <news@immibis.com>
> Date: lun, feb 26 2024 06:20:42PM GMT+00:00
> Subject: Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or
> subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable>>
>>
>> Here, a Giganews representative says their full binary feed is 20
>> gigabits, sometimes 30:
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/184iecj/usenet_peering/
>>
>> That is approximately 200 terabytes per day.
>
>
> It depends on what you bring as binary peering.
> Currently I carry the binaries of the general hierarchies, almost all
> the national or private hierarchies, and some alt.* binaries. And it is
> the latter that has a lot of traffic, also because there are groups that
> make no sense, and others with pirated stuff (films, TV series,
> software, etc) and user backups, yes users keep their backups on usenet.
> Now, you understand why I don't bring all alt.* for the bins, but I do
> filter a lot of stuff.
>
>
Doesn't really make sense to call it a full feed if you are filtering
99.9% of it, does it?

-------- Original Message --------
From: immibis <news@immibis.com>
Date: lun, feb 26 2024 07:38:45PM GMT+00:00
Subject: Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or
subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable
> Doesn't really make sense to call it a full feed if you are filtering
> 99.9% of it, does it?

I have write 99,9%? No. I'm filter only the 6/7% of the total (I
excluded the group's for the user backup, and some groups clearly
useless/piracy).
But that's easy recover that group if you want it.

--
Ivo Gandolfo