Sorry, that's the wrong term. It was a targetted spam. He was
flogging, if I recall correctly, oscilloscopes, and was posting
an "oscilloscope" faq to EVERY group whose subject matter could
have anything to do with a 'scope. Things like sci.geology f'r
instance.
An "alpha-spam" is a spam that starts at group a... and goes
thru z....
} > Propagation problems are probably one of two things:
} > - unstable Usenet systems and bad propagation
} > - explicit cross-posting limits that individual sites implement.
} > For example, worldnet.att.net rejects inbound postings with
} > more than 10 groups, and refuses local postings with more than
} > 5.
} Yikes. Sounds like a good reason not to post to more that 10 groups.
} (My Esperanto FAQ lists 9 groups, of which 3 are *.answers groups...)
} Do any other major ISPs have similar restrictions?
Yes. IBM for example. We do (while a major installation, we're
not an ISP). Many other ISPs have as well. Problem is that the
major news software packages have no means by which they can implement
an exception for *.answers crossposting even if they wanted to.
Hippo/Cleanfeed are far more versatile and can do a better job.
They do this because this simple configuration trick cuts out
an awesome amount of sex spam. Over 95% of all spam is sex
spam in alt groups.
I tend to think that a FAQ that's cross-posted to 10 or more groups
is insufficiently well targetted, and either should be subsetted,
or reside mostly in *.misc higher level groups. Or some such.
That's just a personal opinion, and doesn't effect despamming in any
way.
-- Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated. Cold but happy, please pass the thermos!For more information on spam, see http://spam.abuse.net/spam Fight spam, support Rep. Chris Smith's TCPA extension: http://www.cauce.org