Usenet (was: Re: Royal Back of Canada Phish coming from Google Gmail)

On 9 Dec 2024 23:17:49 -0000
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Randolf Richardson =?UTF-8?B?5by15paH6YGT?=  <noc@inter-corporate.com> wrote:

Or is there something I'm missing here?  Do you think an
eMail provider such as Google GMail should be held
responsible for the actions of their users?  Perhaps the
problem is that user accounts of scammers are not being
shut down?  (If so, then I wonder if perhaps that could
make them liable as ongoing facilitators.)

 
It is expected that any provider would make basic attempts to prevent
spam.  That includes shutting down the accounts of users who have
engendered spam complaints, as well as throttling email or shutting
down accounts when obvious spam signatures are found.  If someone is
sending thousands of messages a day to consecutive addresses, it is
worth investigating them to see if they are spamming.

I believe that this is a reasonable expectation.  It's a problem
when the internet provider is also the spammer, but I don't have
any reason to suspect that Google is in the spam business -- at
their stature I suspect that they wouldn't even want to risk it.

gmail actually does an okay job of this but a lot of them fall through
the cracks just because of the number of users they have.  And Google
Groups, although it no longer can be used to spam Usenet, can be set up
with distribution mailing lists to send spam and Google completely
ignores those.

More users typically also means more variety, so this makes sense.

I was disappointed when Google shutdown their Usenet connection,
because it meant that fewer people would be using it.  I think
they wanted to divorce themselves of the headache though, and I
don't blame them for this because the vast majority of postings I
see in the more popular newsgroups are spam and/or hostile trolls.
who've essentially ruined the technology for most people.

NNTP does need updating, of course, but most people have moved on
to web-baseed forums and social media instead, which all seem to
have the same problems with spammers, scammers, and angry trolls,
so it's clearly more of a social problem than a technical one.

--
Randolf Richardson 張文道, CNA - noc@inter-corporate.com
Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
Beautiful British Columbia, Canada
https://www.inter-corporate.com/