Counter-spam: Change the subject

[Paul McGuire]

On Dec 11, 2:28 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:23:43 -0800, Paul McGuire wrote:
> > On Dec 11, 5:59 am, dfg <sofiya... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Breakthrough - How To Turn Your Dull Website into Money Making Website
> > <snip>
>
> > I was surprised at how effectively the spam posting the other day,
> > "Jesus in the Quran" was masked and defused by a reply titled "J in the
> > Q".  It seems this might be a simple tool for cleaning up some of the
> > spam posting clutter, just by "changing the subject" (double entendre
> > not intentional, it just happened).  Instead of these breathless,
> > shouting subjects full of '#' signs and capital letters, we just
> > acronymify them to "H T T Y D W into M M W" by posting a reply and
> > editing the subject.
>
> > Could this work?  It seems too simple.
>
> I don't get it. I simply don't understand -- why do you want to reply to
> the spam in the first place, with or without the same subject???
>
> My ISP does a good job at filtering the spam from this newsgroup. If
> yours does not, I feel your pain, but rather than replying to the spam
> and changing the subject, how about if you just don't reply at all?
>
> --
> Steven.

When viewing in Google Groups, the original post is masked by
subsequent posts with a different subject.  My ISP's news server only
works for me when I am connected locally, not when I am travelling.
So I've moved over to just using Google Groups for viewing and
interacting with newsgroups.

-- Paul