*BSD News Article 97089


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!news-xfer.cybernet.dk!news.onramp.net!news.nkn.net!news.panther.net!nemesis!uhclem.ami
From: uhclem.ami@nemesis.lonestar.org (Frank Durda IV)
Subject: Re: Newsgroup spamming (by accident?)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Organization: The Big Blue Box
Message-ID: <EB8Bv2.DK9@nemesis.lonestar.org>
References: <5n0ump$909@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 02:21:02 GMT
Lines: 37
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42363

Brian Somers (brian@shift.utell.net) wrote:
: Doug, I got your name as the administrative contact for
: airnews.net from InterNICs whois database.
: Looks like you were right about your recent "I've got duplicate
: messages" posting Jordan !

Yeah, it was a badly-configured system at "gymnet.com" running a looped
"suck" feed.  Groups that he/she "sucked" are the ones with duplicates,
although looped articles with certain header entries were deflected,
so fortunately she/he didn't loop 100% of what he/she pulled down.

The offending account has been terminated as of 1100CDT 3-Jun-97.

The long Message-Id are added to posts made via the Airnews NNRP portal
and it is there to work around a bug in the Forte news client (which is
used by about 70% of the customer base) that causes article duplicates.
Failed posting attempts from Forte clients (including timeouts) are retried
automatically (later) with different Message-IDs and date stamps each time
for the same article content.  Duh.  Forte has said they will not fix this
"feature".  Forte is flooding thousands groups with duplicates too, but
with the long ID change, at least Airnews isn't contributing to that
problem anymore.

This change also prevents a lot of spam from being originated from Airnews
(320Meg worth intercepted just on Memorial Day), so the long ID does have
other benefits.

We've got a reasonable fix in mind to this looping problem that we will
implement ASAP.  When it's working, we'll post the fix in the
news.software.nntp group.


Frank Durda IV - only these addresses work:|"The is the Internet.  This
   <uhclem.pri%nemesis.lonestar.org>       | is the Internet with Spam.
or <uhclem.pri%nemesis%rwsystr.nkn.net>    | Any questions?"  "They look
These Anti-spam addresses expire in 28 days| exactly the same!"