"Dr. Sydney Shall" <sydney.shall at kcl.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:37AADF3C.BEBFF0CD at kcl.ac.uk...
> I think that this problem is in the nature of the subject matter.
> Because many people think they can make a lot of money from the concern
> people have about ageing, we get a lot of rubbish. Someone should
> repeatedly complain to the person sending the spam. It might stop them.
No, unfortunately, just about every unmoderated newsgroup on usenet gets
these messages. There is specialized software designed for posting the same
message to every newsgroup at once. Replying to such messages is the worst
thing you can do because even if they did leave a real address, which
usually isn't the case, all your email would do is let them know that they
are reaching an audience. They would add your email address to their list
of addresses to spam, and continue on. If you really repeatedly complained,
say you sent 10,000 messages back to them simultaneously, you'd just crash
the server they were using and they'd switch to another. It's not certain
what can be done, but in the meantime, most newsgroup software allows you to
make a "ignore" list or filter out messages containing specified words, and
this will make it easier to find relevant material.
Check www.cauce.org for more information.
