[SpamCop-List] Re: Reporting USENET spam?

[Mike Easter]

NerdRevenge wrote:
> Is it appropriate to report Usenet spam via spamcop if there is an IP
> address?

Appropriate is a complicated word, but the short answer before the
philosophy is 'yes' -- maybe it will work and maybe it won't.

Reporting usenet spam is complicated by the fact that usenet headers are
very often unreliable.  It is also complicated by the fact that what you
might think is 'usenet spam' isn't necessarily usenet spam, because the
criteria for acceptably posting something into a newsgroup are very very
different than the unacceptability of someone emailing you the same
item.

It is also typically 'unclear' about whether or not usenet spamming is
actually against any given provider's AUP or not.  Some providers
consider usenet 'misbehaviors' in a very vague way.  A surprising number
of providers have a usenet policy which is roughtly equivalent to "Be
nice." because they don't want to enforces anything about newsgroup
misbehavior because it can be defined so variably.  An
oversimplification is that some newsgroups permit commercial messages -
and some providers allow some kind of usenet spamming - and some usenet
spamming is permissibly defined by such things as the Breidbart index.

You should also read SC's 'bizarre' advice about reporting usenet spam.
SC advises you to send an email to the spammer and ask hir to not do
that.

Very often when you parse a usenet spam with the SC parser it will bail
on determining a source because SC requires that a usenet spam header be
'just so' before it will offer to make a report.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin